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.
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.
Updated 26-Oct-2025 11am EDT --- 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
|
Updated 26-Oct-2025 11am EDT --- 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
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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.
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.
[I'll add this soon...]
