Original Logo 1992

CompuBall began in 1977 with a few simple mathematical evaluation equations.  The NFL conformed to a predictable system.  It was compact (not too many teams) and the teams were consistent in play.  College football had far too many teams, and they play too few games for the size of the sample.  College Football consisted of varying conferences where there was no linking inter-conference.  And lastly, but most importantly, college football teams were inconsistent in performance.  College teams depend upon one or two star players, and when those players have an "off day", or were injured, the teams would show inferior performance. In professional football, the teams had good depth with many fine players waiting for a chance.  The replacement players would perform at about the same level as the "first stringer" they replaced.  Often they would out perform the "first stringer" that had been playing with a nagging and worsening injury (since the "Salary Cap", pro teams have behaved as inconsistently as colloege teams).

By using a pencil and paper to do about 30 minutes of calculating (using raw scores), I was able to predict the outcome of future games as nearly as well as anyone.  In 1979 the first CompuBall computer program was written in Basic on an Apple II.  The statistics used were expanded and the computer did the computations.  It would run to equilibrium, or until I ran out of computer time (I was renting by the hour).  Over the next few years I wrote on about every computer manufactured in the US.  At times the work load was very high, because the computers were not standardized.  The program had to be re-written and the growing data had to be re-entered.  By 1988, (writing in C language) I was on an IBM XT clone (8088) and thrilled about the standardization of the computer industry (and why today I will buy nothing Apple).  This is where Bill Gates got his start with MSDOS that was packaged with the first open architecture of the "IBM Personal Computer". CompuBall got its name and went online in 1990 (the days of CompuServe).  It was here that I began writing for the new operating system that was point and click.  DOS and C were becoming antiquated, so I began the next version of the program in Visual C++.

By 1992, I knew the point spread before Las Vegas did.  In 1996 I moved to Nevada and was finally set to have the program automatically make bets.  Then I noticed a problem.  The NFL was becoming less stable every year and the teams were losing all consistency. Over the years, the Federal government had granted the NFL exemptions from nearly every regulation, and granted them unlimited power in the courts.  The worst result was the "Salary Cap" system.  As the teams came off of the Grandfather Provisions ... the league was slipping into low quality and inconsistent "equality". The sports version of socialism had provided for all, by making every team as bad as the lowest denominator.  By 2000, it was obvious that the NFL no longer met the criteria originally required for the mathematical evaluation.  I could still do as well as Las Vegas, but the poor and inconsistent play kept the computer from being able to make any real profit. CompuBall was pronounced dead in 2000.  If a professional football league ever arises, that lets them "have at it" ...  I will resurrect CompuBall. 

I used the website while I was writing my book.  It is still here and someday I may even start writing again.  You'll find links to it (Inquisition) and my Freemen site to the left.  Or you can go to Inquisition.us or Freemen.US to be brought back to their pages here.