I started writing the system during the 1995 college football season. My initial reason for doing so was that I got fed up with reading the weekly polls for college football and seeing teams ranked much higher or lower than I thought they should have been. I had known about the Sagarin and NY Times computer systems since the late 80's and had heard that more people were beginning to try their hand at this artform and decided to give it a go.

 

 

First off, I look at each game and how each team fared score-wise. Then I compare the each team's performances in that game to their opponents average against that statistic. IOW, if Team A beats Team B 30-10, and Team B usually gives up 25 pts/game, then Team A earns 5 points for the game for having scored 5 points better than Team B's average pts/allowed statistic. I also assess a win bonus or a loss penalty (no bonus or penalty for ties) to each team, give a modest bonus to away teams (or a lesser bonus for playing on a neutral field), assign a "game difficulty bonus" for playing good teams, then tally up all of these calculations into a game score. I then take a weighted average of the games played with more recent games counting more than less recent games. Strength of schedule is then determined on a similarly weighted average, and then I publish the results on the website.