Talisman Red's College Softball Computer Ratings

Raw Text Files

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

For D-I only, using the site owner's own formula:

Or using the Wilson formula, data for any division:

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 softball, 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, and I do that for Division I only. The second one, in use for all divisions, was created by David Wilson (UW-Milwaukee '65, '66, UW-Madison '67) and has been around for as long as almost all others you might have heard of (Jeff Sagarin; Ken Pomeroy; etc.). It has consistently produced reliable results in every test I've put it through. I continue sharing his because I want to pay respects to him, since he got me into the whole world of rating and ranking teams, many years ago.

Where do the predictions come from?

Again, the score predictions you see do NOT use Wilson's system, but my formula. I just use slightly different math and more modern code that allows me to do that.

Are the predictions any good?

Great question. I'll admit that I've never tracked them for softball! 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.