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David Mease's Football Rankings

Below are my ranks for all 120 Division 1-A teams based on all games played for the 2008-2009 season including the bowl games. The ranks were produced using a penalized maximum likelihood model I have developed which is described in a paper I recently wrote. 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	Utah	1.7228	13	0
2	Florida	1.6032	13	1
3	Texas	1.5689	12	1
4	Oklahoma	1.4946	12	2
5	USC	1.4068	12	1
6	Alabama	1.2840	12	2
7	Texas Tech	1.1768	11	2
8	TCU	1.1601	11	2
9	Boise St.	1.1322	12	1
10	Penn St.	1.0395	11	2
11	Georgia	0.9714	10	3
12	Ohio St.	0.9087	10	3
13	Oregon	0.8626	10	3
14	Cincinnati	0.8237	11	3
15	Oregon St.	0.7850	9	4
16	Virginia Tech	0.7465	10	4
17	Missouri	0.7357	10	4
18	Mississippi	0.7237	9	4
19	Oklahoma St.	0.6986	9	4
20	Florida St.	0.6895	9	4
21	Nebraska	0.6837	9	4
22	California	0.6523	9	4
23	Michigan St.	0.6442	9	4
24	Pittsburgh	0.6265	9	4
25	Brigham Young	0.6229	10	3
26	Georgia Tech	0.6133	9	4
27	Ball St.	0.5981	12	2
28	Rice	0.5566	10	3
29	Boston College	0.5234	9	5
30	West Virginia	0.5174	9	4
31	Kansas	0.4901	8	5
32	Wake Forest	0.4814	8	5
33	North Carolina	0.4529	8	5
34	Iowa	0.4497	9	4
35	Tulsa	0.4468	11	3
36	LSU	0.4166	8	5
37	Maryland	0.3741	8	5
38	Northwestern	0.3563	9	4
39	Connecticut	0.3218	8	5
40	Rutgers	0.3215	8	5
41	Vanderbilt	0.2981	7	6
42	Miami, Fla.	0.2923	7	6
43	South Carolina	0.2881	7	6
44	East Carolina	0.2729	9	5
45	Clemson	0.2663	7	6
46	South Florida	0.2660	8	5
47	Air Force	0.2613	8	5
48	Arizona	0.2535	8	5
49	Western Michigan	0.2341	9	4
50	Navy	0.1966	8	5
51	Houston	0.1427	8	5
52	Kentucky	0.1363	7	6
53	Colorado St.	0.1242	7	6
54	North Carolina St.	0.1061	6	7
55	Notre Dame	0.0810	7	6
56	Virginia	0.0662	5	7
57	Wisconsin	0.0644	7	6
58	Arkansas	0.0116	5	7
59	Buffalo	-0.0026	8	6
60	Central Michigan	-0.0247	8	5
61	Nevada	-0.0424	7	6
62	Minnesota	-0.0455	7	6
63	Colorado	-0.0555	5	7
64	La. Tech	-0.0576	8	5
65	Troy	-0.0587	8	5
66	Stanford	-0.0722	5	7
67	Fresno St.	-0.0871	7	6
68	Tennessee	-0.1168	5	7
69	So. Mississippi	-0.1173	7	6
70	Hawaii	-0.1243	7	7
71	Auburn	-0.1351	5	7
72	Illinois	-0.1720	5	7
73	Florida Atlantic	-0.1988	7	6
74	Duke	-0.2225	4	8
75	Arizona St.	-0.2302	5	7
76	Louisville	-0.2321	5	7
77	San Jose St.	-0.2954	6	6
78	Nevada Las Vegas	-0.2965	5	7
79	Kansas St.	-0.3008	5	7
80	Baylor	-0.3036	4	8
81	UCLA	-0.3361	4	8
82	Bowling Green	-0.3460	6	6
83	Purdue	-0.3528	4	8
84	Mississippi St.	-0.3530	4	8
85	Texas El Paso	-0.3590	5	7
86	New Mexico	-0.3823	4	8
87	Texas A&M	-0.3899	4	8
88	Arkansas St.	-0.3970	6	6
89	La. Lafayette	-0.3977	6	6
90	Memphis	-0.4296	6	7
91	No. Illinois	-0.4325	6	7
92	Temple	-0.4774	5	7
93	Marshall	-0.4791	4	8
94	Syracuse	-0.5294	3	9
95	Akron	-0.5303	5	7
96	Middle Tennessee	-0.5416	5	7
97	Florida Intl	-0.5571	5	7
98	Michigan	-0.5634	3	9
99	Wyoming	-0.5672	4	8
100	Utah St.	-0.6360	3	9
101	Central Fla.	-0.6772	4	8
102	UAB	-0.6866	4	8
103	Indiana	-0.7042	3	9
104	Ohio U.	-0.7541	4	8
105	La. Monroe	-0.8327	4	8
106	Kent	-0.8396	4	8
107	Toledo	-0.8951	3	9
108	New Mexico St.	-0.8955	3	9
109	Eastern Michigan	-0.9118	3	9
110	Army	-0.9791	3	9
111	Iowa St.	-1.0406	2	10
112	Washington St.	-1.0865	2	11
113	Tulane	-1.0887	2	10
114	San Diego St.	-1.1248	2	10
115	Idaho	-1.2174	2	10
116	Miami, Ohio	-1.2465	2	10
117	Washington	-1.4082	0	12
118	Western Kentucky	-1.4229	2	10
119	North Texas	-1.4255	1	11
120	SMU	-1.4287	1	11