Talisman Red's College Football Computer Ratings

The Wilson Formula

One of the first rating systems I ever saw the source code for was one by Mr. David Wilson (Wilson Performance Ratings; UW-Milwaukee '65, '66, UW-Madison '67). I loved its simplicity, and I have adapted it for numerous sports over the last 20 years. David passed away in January 2024 at the age of 80, and he left an important mark on the early days of the college football internet (see more in the About page). I am happy to continue producing his ratings to honor that legacy.

Wilson's system does *not* produce predictions, point spreads, etc.; it only serves as a way to rate teams based on games played. All games are weighted evenly (although his code can be set up to count postseason games twice -- I'll do that here too), and game locations and points scored/allowed do not matter.

Brief Methodology

I'm working on writing up a more detailed description of David's formula (his website was scrubbed from the UW servers a few years ago, but god bless the Internet Archive). In the meantime, it is pretty much this:

"For each game a team plays it gets a Game Performance Rating. This is equal to the opponent's rating plus 100 if the team won or minus 100 if the team lost. The team's Performance Rating is the average of its Game Performance Ratings. All of the Game Performance Ratings are recalculated each week based on the latest ratings for the opponents."

The bottom line: if you win against strong teams, you get a higher rating. If you lose against weaker teams, you get a lower rating. Sum up the results, and that's it.

--- Division I FBS ---
                        W  L  T
                        -  -  -
  1  Indiana            0  0     998
  2  Oregon             0  0     932
  3  Ohio State         0  0     907
  4  Mississippi        0  0     903
  5  Georgia            0  0     902
  6  Texas Tech         0  0     899
  7  Brigham Young      0  0     895
  8  Miami (FL)         0  0     893
  9  Alabama            0  0     871
     Notre Dame         0  0     871
 11  Oklahoma           0  0     869
 12  Texas              0  0     868
 13  Texas A&M          0  0     866
 14  Utah               0  0     863
 15  Iowa               0  0     852
 16  Tulane             0  0     846
 17  Southern Cal       0  0     845
 18  Illinois           0  0     844
 19  Vanderbilt         0  0     841
 20  Michigan           0  0     839
 21  Arizona            0  0     838
 22  Houston            0  0     834
     TCU                0  0     834
 24  North Texas        0  0     831
 25  Washington         0  0     826

--- Division I FCS ---
                        W  L  T
                        -  -  -
  1  Montana St.        0  0     788
  2  Montana            0  0     752
  3  Illinois St.       0  0     731
  4  Tarleton St.       0  0     724
  5  Villanova          0  0     709
  6  Lehigh             0  0     708
  7  Stephen F.Austin   0  0     707
  8  UC Davis           0  0     706
  9  South Dakota       0  0     702
 10  S. Dakota St.      0  0     699
 11  Yale               0  0     691
 12  Abilene Christian  0  0     685
     North Dakota       0  0     685
 14  Harvard            0  0     678
 15  Youngstown St.     0  0     675
 16  Tennessee Tech     0  0     673
     Idaho St.          0  0     673
 18  S. Illinois        0  0     665
 19  N. Arizona         0  0     662
 20  SE Louisiana       0  0     660
 21  West Georgia       0  0     658
 22  S. Utah            0  0     655
 23  Lamar              0  0     651
 24  Dartmouth          0  0     650
 25  Rhode Island       0  0     647

Input files

• names.txt (List of team names, going back to 1800s)
• games.txt (Games played - in 2025, collected by Dr. Peter Wolfe)
• conf.txt (Conference affiliations)

Output files

• byrating.txt (Teams listed in order by rating)
• byname.txt (Teams listed alphabetically)
• byrate1.txt (Division I FBS by rating)
• byrate2.txt (Division I FCS by rating)
• byrate3.txt (Division II by rating)
• byrate4.txt (Division III by rating)
• byrate5.txt (NAIA by rating)
• standing1.txt (Division I FBS Conference standings)
• standing2.txt (Division I FCS Conference standings)
• standing3.txt (Division II Conference standings)
• standing4.txt (Division III Conference standings)
• standing5.txt (NAIA Conference standings)
• gam_neat.txt (games.txt made neat)

An adjustment I make

David's philosophy was that every team started the season with the same rating, regardless of who they were. I disagree a little bit, and so early in the season, I use games from last year to provide a more meaningful starting point for the ratings. By the time everyone has played about 8 games, that influence is gone and the ratings are "true" to the current season.

Source code

I have saved David's original source code from 1994 in a Github repository. Feel free to download it, run it for college football or another sport or even your own league, and tell me how it goes.

More detailed methodology

[I'll add this soon...]