Talisman Red's College Hockey Computer Ratings

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Feel free to share these, but with credit to talismanred.com. Thanks.

Using the site owner's own formula:

• Ratings and rankings
• Conference standings
• Conference rankings
• Game predictions
  

Using the formula by David Rothman:

• Ratings and rankings

What is this about?

We have been using computer rankings in college football for 30+ years (remember the BCS?), and even the NCAA basketball selection committee uses an assortment of these rankings to help select and seed tournament teams. There are a few people who do this for college hockey, but not as many as should be, so I felt like this was an opportunity to contribute something new to the community. Here we are.

So it's just a math formula?

Yep, that's all that computer ratings are. You can do it this way, or you can do a human "poll" (coaches, writers, whoever).

I maintain a couple of formulas here. My own was designed to make game predictions. The second one was developed by David Rothman several decades ago, and consistently produces reliable results and was part of the college football BCS formula for a few years.

Where do the predictions come from?

The score predictions are my own formula. They consider scores, where games are played, and how recently games were played.

Are the predictions any good?

Great question. I'll admit that I've never tracked them for hockey! But in 2023-24, for college basketball, they predicted 70.3% of the correct winners (ESPN BPI got 71.4%). And for college football in 2023, they predicted 71.5% of the correct winners (ESPN FPI got 72.6%). So on any given night, I would argue the results are comparable to anyone else.

Who are you, anyway?

I have a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and am currently a faculty member at Indiana University in Bloomington. In addition to lots of teaching, I have research interests in the broad areas of thunderstorms and numerical weather prediction (forecasting using computers).

Contact me using this email form if you have questions or non-hateful comments.