[qwerty49]

There is certainly also some skill in predicting how close a game will be; but the scoring system focuses much more on the individual numbers and how far away they are from the final result.  

This is a good point, we should definitely attempt to address this in the 2020 edition of the game.

Maybe there could be several "scoring components" of the game.  One could be closeness of prediction to actual scores and another could be closeness of predicted spread to actual score spread.  And weight them if you wish.  I will leave that to finer minds than mine to figure that out.  I feel like that moment where you look up and say, "wait, no one said there would be math!"

[qwerty49]

There is certainly also some skill in predicting how close a game will be; but the scoring system focuses much more on the individual numbers and how far away they are from the final result.  

This is a good point, we should definitely attempt to address this in the 2020 edition of the game.

Maybe there could be several "scoring components" of the game.  One could be closeness of prediction to actual scores and another could be closeness of predicted spread to actual score spread.  And weight them if you wish.  I will leave that to finer minds than mine to figure that out.  I feel like that moment where you look up and say, "wait, no one said there would be math!"