One of the first rating systems I ever saw the source code for was one by Mr. David Wilson (UW-Milwaukee '65, '66, UW-Madison '67;Wilson Performance Ratings). I loved its simplicity, and I have adapted it for numerous sports over the years. David retired completely a couple years ago, and no longer produces his college football ratings -- but the source code is available, and so I'm happy to continue doing so.
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.
One thing I do differently: The Wilson system starts every team from scratch, every year (a 500 rating, by his choice). This means that until 6 or 7 games are played, the original ratings would have very little meaning. But instead, I "seed" the ratings with games from last year -- still noisy, but more reasonable. This way, the early part of the season has something that might be of value.
| 8 July 2026: Welcome to a new season! I've cleared out the standings, using the principle from the previous paragraph -- and need to double check that I've gotten all the conference alignment shifts correct. |
Inputs. The input files are:
Ratings. Last updated at 03-Aug-2026 06:04 PM, the output files are:
For input, I use the games file from Dr. Peter Wolfe (link on the front page).
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FBS Top 25 --- Division I FBS ---
W L T
- - -
1 Indiana 0 0 998
2 Oregon 0 0 932
3 Ohio State 0 0 907
4 Mississippi 0 0 903
5 Georgia 0 0 902
6 Texas Tech 0 0 899
7 Brigham Young 0 0 895
8 Miami (FL) 0 0 893
9 Alabama 0 0 871
Notre Dame 0 0 871
11 Oklahoma 0 0 869
12 Texas 0 0 868
13 Texas A&M 0 0 866
14 Utah 0 0 863
15 Iowa 0 0 852
16 Tulane 0 0 846
17 Southern Cal 0 0 845
18 Illinois 0 0 844
19 Vanderbilt 0 0 841
20 Michigan 0 0 839
21 Arizona 0 0 838
22 Houston 0 0 834
TCU 0 0 834
24 North Texas 0 0 831
25 Washington 0 0 826
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FCS Top 25 --- Division I FCS ---
W L T
- - -
1 Montana St. 0 0 788
2 Montana 0 0 752
3 Illinois St. 0 0 731
4 Tarleton St. 0 0 724
5 Villanova 0 0 709
6 Lehigh 0 0 708
7 Stephen F.Austin 0 0 707
8 UC Davis 0 0 706
9 South Dakota 0 0 702
10 S. Dakota St. 0 0 699
11 Yale 0 0 691
12 Abilene Christian 0 0 685
North Dakota 0 0 685
14 Harvard 0 0 678
15 Youngstown St. 0 0 675
16 Tennessee Tech 0 0 673
Idaho St. 0 0 673
18 S. Illinois 0 0 665
19 N. Arizona 0 0 662
20 SE Louisiana 0 0 660
21 West Georgia 0 0 658
22 S. Utah 0 0 655
23 Lamar 0 0 651
24 Dartmouth 0 0 650
25 Rhode Island 0 0 647
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