One of the first rating systems I ever saw the source code for was one by Mr. David Wilson (UW-Milwaukee '65, '66, UW-Madison '67;Wilson Performance Ratings). I loved its simplicity, and I have adapted it for numerous sports over the years. David retired completely a couple years ago, and no longer produces his college football ratings -- but the source code is available, and so I'm happy to continue doing so.
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.
One thing I do differently: The Wilson system starts every team from scratch, every year (a 500 rating, by his choice). This means that until 6 or 7 games are played, the original ratings would have very little meaning. But instead, I "seed" the ratings with games from last year -- still noisy, but more reasonable. This way, the early part of the season has something that might be of value.
| 8 August: welcome to 2024! I've cleared out the standings, using the principle from the previous paragraph -- and need to double check that I've gotten all the conference alignment shifts correct. |
Inputs. The input files are:
Ratings. Last updated at 09-Jan-2026 11:09 PM, the output files are:
For input, I use the games file from Dr. Peter Wolfe (link on the front page).
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FBS Top 25 --- Division I FBS ---
W L T
- - -
1 Indiana 15 0 998
2 Oregon 13 2 932
3 Ohio State 12 2 907
4 Mississippi 13 2 903
5 Georgia 12 2 902
6 Texas Tech 12 2 900
7 Brigham Young 12 2 895
8 Miami (FL) 13 2 893
9 Alabama 11 4 871
Notre Dame 10 2 871
11 Oklahoma 10 3 869
Texas 10 3 869
13 Texas A&M 11 2 866
14 Utah 11 2 864
15 Iowa 9 4 852
16 Tulane 11 3 846
17 Southern Cal 9 4 845
18 Illinois 9 4 844
19 Vanderbilt 10 3 841
20 Michigan 9 4 839
21 Arizona 9 3 838
22 Houston 10 3 834
TCU 9 4 834
24 North Texas 12 2 832
25 Washington 9 4 826
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FCS Top 25 --- Division I FCS ---
W L T
- - -
1 Montana St. 14 2 788
2 N. Dakota St. 12 1 766
3 Montana 13 2 752
4 Illinois St. 12 5 732
5 Tarleton St. 12 2 724
6 Villanova 12 3 709
7 Lehigh 12 1 708
8 Stephen F.Austin 11 3 707
9 UC Davis 9 4 706
10 South Dakota 10 5 702
11 S. Dakota St. 9 5 699
12 Yale 9 3 691
13 Abilene Christian 9 5 685
North Dakota 8 6 685
15 Harvard 9 2 679
16 Youngstown St. 8 5 676
17 Tennessee Tech 11 2 673
Idaho St. 6 6 673
19 S. Illinois 7 5 665
20 N. Arizona 7 5 662
21 SE Louisiana 9 4 660
22 West Georgia 8 3 658
23 S. Utah 7 5 655
24 Lamar 8 5 651
25 Dartmouth 7 3 650
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