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           16  0     998
  2  Oregon            13  2     932
  3  Ohio State        12  2     907
  4  Mississippi       13  2     903
  5  Georgia           12  2     902
  6  Texas Tech        12  2     899
  7  Brigham Young     12  2     895
  8  Miami (FL)        13  3     893
  9  Alabama           11  4     871
     Notre Dame        10  2     871
 11  Oklahoma          10  3     869
 12  Texas             10  3     868
 13  Texas A&M         11  2     866
 14  Utah              11  2     864
 15  Iowa               9  4     852
 16  Tulane            11  3     846
 17  Southern Cal       9  4     845
 18  Illinois           9  4     844
 19  Vanderbilt        10  3     841
 20  Michigan           9  4     839
 21  Arizona            9  3     838
 22  Houston           10  3     834
     TCU                9  4     834
 24  North Texas       12  2     832
 25  Washington         9  4     826

--- Division I FCS ---
                        W  L  T
                        -  -  -
  1  Montana St.       14  2     788
  2  N. Dakota St.     12  1     765
  3  Montana           13  2     752
  4  Illinois St.      12  5     732
  5  Tarleton St.      12  2     724
  6  Villanova         12  3     709
  7  Lehigh            12  1     708
  8  Stephen F.Austin  11  3     707
  9  UC Davis           9  4     706
 10  South Dakota      10  5     702
 11  S. Dakota St.      9  5     699
 12  Yale               9  3     691
 13  Abilene Christian  9  5     685
     North Dakota       8  6     685
 15  Harvard            9  2     678
 16  Youngstown St.     8  5     675
 17  Tennessee Tech    11  2     673
     Idaho St.          6  6     673
 19  S. Illinois        7  5     665
 20  N. Arizona         7  5     662
 21  SE Louisiana       9  4     660
 22  West Georgia       8  3     658
 23  S. Utah            7  5     655
 24  Lamar              8  5     651
 25  Dartmouth          7  3     650

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...]