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           13  0     992
  2  Ohio State        12  1     933
  3  Georgia           12  1     931
  4  Oregon            11  1     923
  5  Mississippi       11  1     916
  6  Texas Tech        12  1     909
  7  Oklahoma          10  2     900
  8  Texas A&M         11  1     894
  9  Brigham Young     11  2     890
 10  Texas              9  3     882
     Alabama           10  3     882
 12  Notre Dame        10  2     871
 13  Vanderbilt        10  2     868
 14  Southern Cal       9  3     860
 15  Utah              10  2     859
     Michigan           9  3     859
 17  Miami (FL)        10  2     852
 18  Tulane            11  2     848
 19  Iowa               8  4     841
 20  Illinois           8  4     839
 21  Arizona            9  3     834
 22  Tennessee          8  4     831
     Arizona St.        8  4     831
 24  Washington         9  4     830
 25  Missouri           8  4     826

--- Division I FCS ---
                        W  L  T
                        -  -  -
  1  Montana St.       12  2     768
  2  N. Dakota St.     12  1     764
  3  Montana           13  1     761
  4  Illinois St.      11  4     726
  5  Tarleton St.      12  2     723
  6  Villanova         12  2     722
  7  Lehigh            12  1     712
  8  UC Davis           9  4     703
  9  South Dakota      10  5     702
 10  Stephen F.Austin  11  3     698
     S. Dakota St.      9  5     698
 12  Yale               9  3     690
 13  North Dakota       8  6     685
 14  Harvard            9  2     682
 15  Abilene Christian  9  5     681
 16  Tennessee Tech    11  2     676
 17  Idaho St.          6  6     675
 18  Youngstown St.     8  5     674
 19  S. Illinois        7  5     664
 20  N. Arizona         7  5     660
 21  West Georgia       8  3     656
 22  S. Utah            7  5     654
 23  Dartmouth          7  3     652
     SE Louisiana       9  4     652
 25  Rhode Island      11  3     649

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...]