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         5  0     918
  2  Mississippi        5  0     902
  3  Oregon             5  0     888
  4  Indiana            5  0     876
  5  Missouri           5  0     859
  6  Georgia            4  1     856
  7  Miami (FL)         5  0     853
  8  Notre Dame         3  2     852
  9  Oklahoma           5  0     848
 10  Alabama            4  1     846
 11  Texas A&M          5  0     845
 12  Arizona St.        4  1     844
 13  Louisiana St.      4  1     843
 14  Michigan           4  1     842
 15  Illinois           5  1     837
 16  Texas              3  2     836
 17  Tennessee          4  1     832
 18  Brigham Young      5  0     829
 19  TCU                4  1     826
 20  Memphis            6  0     817
 21  Florida            2  3     816
 22  Georgia Tech       5  0     815
 23  Tulane             4  1     814
 24  South Carolina     3  2     813
 25  Vanderbilt         5  1     810

--- Division I FCS ---
                        W  L  T
                        -  -  -
  1  S. Dakota St.      5  0     794
  2  N. Dakota St.      5  0     789
  3  Montana St.        4  2     756
  4  Presbyterian       5  0     724
  5  UC Davis           4  1     713
  6  South Dakota       3  3     707
     Montana            5  0     707
  8  Tarleton St.       6  0     702
  9  Lehigh             6  0     696
 10  Illinois St.       3  2     695
 11  N. Arizona         4  2     694
 12  Tennessee Tech     5  0     680
 13  Abilene Christian  3  3     676
 14  Lamar              4  1     675
 15  Mercer             4  1     673
 16  Harvard            3  0     666
 17  S. Illinois        4  1     660
 18  SE Louisiana       4  2     656
 19  Stephen F.Austin   4  2     652
 20  West Georgia       5  1     651
 21  Incarnate Word     2  4     650
     Idaho              2  3     650
 23  Youngstown St.     3  2     645
 24  Yale               2  1     641
     E. Kentucky        2  3     641

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...]