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  Ohio State         7  0     955
  2  Brigham Young      8  0     949
  3  Indiana            8  0     938
  4  Georgia            6  1     931
  5  Mississippi        7  1     928
  6  Texas A&M          8  0     925
  7  Alabama            7  1     916
  8  Vanderbilt         7  1     905
  9  Notre Dame         5  2     903
 10  Navy               7  0     900
 11  Georgia Tech       8  0     894
 12  Michigan           6  2     889
 13  Texas              6  2     882
 14  Oregon             7  1     880
 15  Houston            7  1     879
 16  Miami (FL)         6  1     877
 17  Louisville         6  1     875
 18  Tennessee          6  2     874
 19  Illinois           5  3     873
 20  Oklahoma           6  2     872
     Louisiana St.      5  3     872
 22  Utah               6  2     870
 23  Missouri           6  2     869
 24  Southern Cal       5  2     867
 25  Texas Tech         7  1     865

--- Division I FCS ---
                        W  L  T
                        -  -  -
  1  N. Dakota St.      8  0     877
  2  S. Dakota St.      7  1     813
  3  Montana            8  0     785
  4  Tarleton St.       9  0     778
  5  Montana St.        6  2     764
  6  Lamar              7  1     762
  7  UC Davis           6  1     757
  8  North Dakota       6  2     738
  9  South Dakota       5  4     720
 10  Harvard            6  0     718
 11  Lehigh             8  0     716
 12  Tennessee Tech     8  0     711
 13  Illinois St.       5  3     700
 14  S. Illinois        5  3     697
 15  Youngstown St.     5  3     692
 16  Stephen F.Austin   6  2     691
 17  N. Arizona         5  3     687
 18  SE Louisiana       6  2     683
 19  Cal Poly-SLO       3  5     680
 20  Dartmouth          5  1     678
 21  Monmouth (NJ)      7  1     677
 22  West Georgia       6  3     675
     Abilene Christian  4  4     675
 24  Gardner-Webb       5  3     669
 25  Mercer             6  1     668

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...]