David Mease's Football Rankings

Below are my ranks for all 128 FBS teams based on all games played through Monday, January 11, 2016. The ranks were produced using a penalized maximum likelihood model I developed which is described in a paper I wrote in 2003. The model uses ONLY wins and losses as its input and ignores margin of victory, location of the game, conference affiliation, date of the game, etc. Moreover, the model does not use any prior information such as pre-season rankings. Despite its simplicity, the rankings produced have agreed more strongly on average with the AP and Coaches polls than all 10 computer models that have been used in the BCS, as discussed in my paper.

Click here to download my paper, updated July of 2003. The paper was published in the November 2003 issue of The American Statistician.

Click here to view the SAS code or R code which ranks teams using my model.

Special thanks to Derek, Vijay, and Earl for all the help they have given me with this project and to Kenneth Massey for including my rankings on his comparison page.

Rank	Team	Rating	Wins	Losses
1	Alabama	1.8839	14	1
2	Clemson	1.6601	14	1
3	Ohio St.	1.4604	12	1
4	Michigan St.	1.3891	12	2
5	Stanford	1.3301	12	2
6	Oklahoma	1.2519	11	2
7	Iowa	1.2312	12	2
8	Houston	1.1674	13	1
9	Mississippi	1.1274	10	3
10	TCU	1.1239	11	2
11	LSU	1.0875	9	3
12	Notre Dame	1.0752	10	3
13	Michigan	1.0631	10	3
14	Northwestern	1.0245	10	3
15	Navy	0.9583	11	2
16	Florida	0.9138	10	4
17	Oklahoma St.	0.9053	10	3
18	Wisconsin	0.8673	10	3
19	Utah	0.8416	10	3
20	Georgia	0.8339	10	3
21	Tennessee	0.8226	9	4
22	Western Kentucky	0.8201	12	2
23	Baylor	0.8193	10	3
24	Oregon	0.7945	9	4
25	Mississippi St.	0.7863	9	4
26	Toledo	0.7784	10	2
27	Florida St.	0.7645	10	3
28	Arkansas	0.7167	8	5
29	North Carolina	0.7057	11	3
30	Appalachian State	0.6677	11	2
31	Memphis	0.6104	9	4
32	USC	0.6009	8	6
33	Texas A&M	0.5488	8	5
34	Temple	0.5472	10	4
35	California	0.5274	8	5
36	Bowling Green	0.5080	10	4
37	Auburn	0.4708	7	6
38	Pittsburgh	0.4676	8	5
39	Brigham Young	0.4637	9	4
40	UCLA	0.4396	8	5
41	West Virginia	0.4268	8	5
42	Louisville	0.4022	8	5
43	Washington St.	0.4019	9	4
44	Miami, Fla.	0.3955	8	5
45	San Diego St.	0.3929	11	3
46	Penn St.	0.3826	7	6
47	Western Michigan	0.3166	8	5
48	Texas Tech	0.3165	7	6
49	Marshall	0.2845	10	3
50	Washington	0.2822	7	6
51	South Florida	0.2466	8	5
52	Georgia Southern	0.2429	9	4
53	Minnesota	0.2287	6	7
54	La. Tech	0.2133	9	4
55	Arkansas St.	0.2118	9	4
56	Nebraska	0.2066	6	7
57	Boise St.	0.1392	9	4
58	Texas	0.1169	5	7
59	Arizona St.	0.1087	6	7
60	Arizona	0.1004	7	6
61	Duke	0.0883	8	5
62	Ohio U.	0.0882	8	5
63	So. Mississippi	0.0765	9	5
64	Cincinnati	0.0759	7	6
65	Kansas St.	0.0319	6	7
66	North Carolina St.	0.0218	7	6
67	Indiana	0.0184	6	7
68	Virginia Tech	0.0099	7	6
69	Illinois	-0.0139	5	7
70	Akron	-0.0168	8	5
71	No. Illinois	-0.0280	8	6
72	Central Michigan	-0.0282	7	6
73	Air Force	-0.0490	8	6
74	Missouri	-0.0499	5	7
75	Middle Tennessee	-0.1371	7	6
76	Connecticut	-0.1766	6	7
77	Vanderbilt	-0.1943	4	8
78	Kentucky	-0.2332	5	7
79	Utah St.	-0.2463	6	7
80	New Mexico	-0.2842	7	6
81	Tulsa	-0.2894	6	7
82	Colorado St.	-0.3070	7	6
83	East Carolina	-0.3087	5	7
84	Maryland	-0.3146	3	9
85	Virginia	-0.3251	4	8
86	Nevada	-0.3505	7	6
87	Syracuse	-0.3924	4	8
88	Rutgers	-0.4313	4	8
89	San Jose St.	-0.4320	6	7
90	Iowa St.	-0.4385	3	9
91	Georgia Tech	-0.4627	3	9
92	South Alabama	-0.4725	5	7
93	Buffalo	-0.5288	5	7
94	South Carolina	-0.5508	3	9
95	Colorado	-0.5698	4	9
96	Georgia St.	-0.5765	6	7
97	Old Dominion	-0.6520	5	7
98	Purdue	-0.6592	2	10
99	Florida Intl	-0.6988	5	7
100	Rice	-0.7011	5	7
101	Texas El Paso	-0.7015	5	7
102	Wake Forest	-0.7309	3	9
103	Idaho	-0.7442	4	8
104	Oregon St.	-0.7678	2	10
105	Troy	-0.7679	4	8
106	Boston College	-0.7707	3	9
107	Ball St.	-0.8252	3	9
108	Kent	-0.8324	3	9
109	La. Lafayette	-0.8645	4	8
110	Florida Atlantic	-0.8665	3	9
111	Fresno St.	-0.8709	3	9
112	Massachusetts	-0.9315	3	9
113	Miami, Ohio	-0.9502	3	9
114	UT San Antonio	-0.9515	3	9
115	Nevada Las Vegas	-0.9680	3	9
116	New Mexico St.	-0.9876	3	9
117	Texas St.	-1.0186	3	9
118	Tulane	-1.0284	3	9
119	Hawaii	-1.0447	3	10
120	SMU	-1.0505	2	10
121	Wyoming	-1.2079	2	10
122	Charlotte	-1.2863	2	10
123	La. Monroe	-1.3513	2	11
124	North Texas	-1.4564	1	11
125	Army	-1.4664	2	10
126	Eastern Michigan	-1.5523	1	11
127	Kansas	-1.5549	0	12
128	Central Fla.	-1.8056	0	12