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           11  0     961
  2  Texas A&M         11  0     943
  3  Ohio State        11  0     935
  4  Georgia           10  1     929
  5  Mississippi       10  1     922
  6  Oregon            10  1     910
  7  Brigham Young     10  1     909
  8  Oklahoma           9  2     907
  9  Texas Tech        10  1     903
 10  Alabama            9  2     902
 11  Notre Dame         9  2     882
 12  Vanderbilt         9  2     877
 13  Texas              8  3     873
 14  Utah               9  2     870
 15  Michigan           9  2     868
 16  Southern Cal       8  3     861
 17  Miami (FL)         9  2     854
 18  Tennessee          8  3     851
 19  Arizona St.        8  3     849
 20  Missouri           7  4     845
 21  Louisiana St.      7  4     844
 22  Tulane             9  2     843
 23  North Texas       10  1     840
 24  Illinois           7  4     835
 25  Arizona            8  3     834

--- Division I FCS ---
                        W  L  T
                        -  -  -
  1  N. Dakota St.     12  0     786
  2  Lehigh            12  0     760
  3  Montana St.       10  2     757
  4  Montana           11  1     739
  5  Tarleton St.      11  1     738
  6  UC Davis           8  3     711
  7  Tennessee Tech    11  1     710
  8  Harvard            9  1     709
  9  Yale               8  2     703
 10  South Dakota       8  4     702
 11  Stephen F.Austin  10  2     700
 12  S. Dakota St.      8  4     699
 13  Abilene Christian  8  4     694
 14  Illinois St.       8  4     691
 15  North Dakota       7  5     683
 16  Youngstown St.     8  4     681
 17  Idaho St.          6  6     677
 18  Villanova          9  2     669
 19  Dartmouth          7  3     667
     West Georgia       8  3     667
     N. Arizona         7  5     667
 22  SE Louisiana       9  3     666
 23  S. Illinois        7  5     665
 24  S. Utah            7  5     664
 25  Lamar              8  4     660

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...]