Greg Heineman's College Football Ratings

The formula for the calcualtion is to take the sum of the teams win loss perecntage (WL%). Opponents WL% and the Opponent' s Opponent's WL%, and multiply that figure (around 2 for a really good team, under 1 for the Akron Zips) by the widest margin of victory calculated for any team (I think this year, Florida had a 30 point a game margin.) I then multiply that figure by 3 and add to it the teams own average victory margin. The theory behind this is to make the strength of schedule factors 3 times more important than the average victory margin. This helps to downgrade runaway scores, but also allows one to compare a WAC team that wins all their games by three touchdowns to a Big 12 team that wins their games by 1 touchdown in a tougher league.

What happened in the 1996 rankings was that Ohio State got really strong credits for a schedule that included Notre Dame, Penn St. Michigan, Iowa and Arizona St. Florida split with FSU, beat Tennessee and Alabama, but really didn't have too many other impressive wins. Nebraska ended up ahead of BYU, due to the fact they dominated Kansas St 30-3, while BYU squeeked by K State in the Cotton Bowl. BYU also lost to Washington, who was handled easily by Colorado.

As you can find from looking at the dozen or so web sites with football rankings posted, you can manipulate the formulas about any which way to raise or lower certain weights. It's probably why the NCAA has a selection committee for the NCAA basketball tourney rather than just using the RPI for the 34 at large teams. The RPI is very incestuous, in that the major conferences tend to inflate their members RPI's by having the weaker sisters play a relatively weak non conference schedule, so even teams like Northwestern go into the Big 10 season at 9-1. Then, as conference play goes on, all the Big 10 (or Big 12, ACC, Big East, SEC, Pac 10) are always playing games against other teams with winning records. The result is , the big conferences end up with the best RPI's, and get the bulk of the at large bids. (which doesn't bother CBS in the least.) the selection committee, although at times considered to be the toady's of the big conferences, probalby end up eliminated 8th and 9th place teams in some major conferences who would make it in with the RPI formula.

I do feel as comfortable with these results as I do looking at Sagarin or the New York Times. College rankings are actually more of a sideline for me. I'm working with a local high school football paper in Nebraska to get my High School Football rankins for Nebraska published. Nebraska had seven classes in high school football. Six of my seven pre playoff number 1's won their state championship. To that extent, I think this formula has some degree of validity.

Meanwhile, I'm not quitting my day job.

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