Welcome!

What is the goal for this site?

Hopefully, this will be a source of information about computer rating and ranking systems used in sports.  My goal is to provide links to ranking systems that are available on the web, archives of some historical material about computer ranking methods, links to score and schedule data, legacy source code, and more.

There are quite a few people who know more about this than I do, but it takes a village.  Hopefully I can provide a unique contribution with this site.

Items below [in brackets] are links to be added.  I began this project in late December 2023, and there is a ton of work to do, pages to develop, and words to write.  Please be patient as I get this site off the ground

Most important content

Favorite systems of mine

(There's more to add here... working on it...)

David L. Wilson

Insert bio from David's website

Here is David's [original explanation of his system], preserved from his University of Wisconsin website.  I've also saved the [C source code] which still works (with lots of warnings).  I still run his ratings for college football and basketball, over on my own ratings site.

David Rothman & FACT

David (1935-2004) was the founder of the Foundation for the Analysis of Competitions and Tournaments (FACT) and provided his rankings to the early years of the BCS, before they chose to abandon margin of victory in their systems.  David was a frequent attendee of sports analytics conferences, presenting papers at ___ and ___, among others.  [His Wikipedia page] has a more complete biography.

There is a collection of [random writings] of David's which explain his philosophy on how to rate and rank teams.

If you want to run his ratings for yourself, well, be ready to go back in time: his [source code: link to my GitHub repository], at least the version I have, is written in BASIC! That means it works great on retro computers (think: Windows 98 and older); in the present era, you'll need DOSBox or QB64.  If you want to know more about how to do this, reach out to me as I've had success with both of those methods.

Dr. Peter Wolfe produces the Rothman rankings during college football and men's basketball seasons, and I produce them for [other sports: links] in addition to those.

Systems used in the Bowl Championship Series (will have its own page)

How to create your own ranking (will have its own page)

Suggestions or Comments?

If you have suggestions or non-hateful comments for this page, feel free to reach out via email.  I'm just getting this site going, so there is lots of work to do.  Thanks in advance for your feedback.

 

Page updated on January 3rd, 2024



My College Football Top 6

As of December 29
1. Michigan (13-0)
2. Texas (12-1)
3. Washington (13-0)
4. Oregon (11-2)
4. Alabama (12-1)
6. Ohio State (11-2)
(more...)

My Men's College Basketball Top 10

As of December 30
1. Houston (12 - 0)
2. Purdue (12 - 1)
3. Connecticut (11 - 2)
4. Arizona (10 - 2)
5. BYU (11 - 1)
6. Memphis (10 - 2)
7. Clemson (11 - 1)
8. Florida Atlantic (10 - 2)
9. Marquette (10 - 3)
10. Duke (8 - 3)
(more...)