David Mease's Football Rankings

Below are my ranks for all 124 FBS teams based on all games played through Monday, January 7, 2013. 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	1.6647	13	1
2	Ohio St.	1.6028	12	0
3	Notre Dame	1.5991	12	1
4	Oregon	1.4832	12	1
5	Florida	1.4344	11	2
6	Stanford	1.3569	12	2
7	Georgia	1.3300	12	2
8	Texas A&M	1.3270	11	2
9	South Carolina	1.3112	11	2
10	Kansas St.	1.1936	11	2
11	LSU	1.1442	10	3
12	Clemson	1.0911	11	2
13	Oklahoma	1.0613	10	3
14	Florida St.	1.0097	12	2
15	San Jose St.	0.9249	11	2
16	Nebraska	0.8895	10	4
17	Louisville	0.8100	11	2
18	Utah St.	0.7627	11	2
19	Northwestern	0.7613	10	3
20	Oregon St.	0.7459	9	4
21	Texas	0.7016	9	4
22	No. Illinois	0.6955	12	2
23	Michigan	0.6802	8	5
24	Vanderbilt	0.6692	9	4
25	Boise St.	0.6380	11	2
26	Arkansas St.	0.6258	10	3
27	Cincinnati	0.5551	10	3
28	UCLA	0.5465	9	5
29	Arizona	0.5230	8	5
30	Oklahoma St.	0.5173	8	5
31	Baylor	0.5108	8	5
32	Tulsa	0.5007	11	3
33	Kent	0.4991	11	3
34	Penn St.	0.4953	8	4
35	La. Tech	0.4683	9	3
36	Wisconsin	0.4383	8	6
37	Ball St.	0.4322	9	4
38	Michigan St.	0.4011	7	6
39	Central Fla.	0.4009	10	4
40	Mississippi St.	0.3866	8	5
41	Texas Tech	0.3718	8	5
42	Toledo	0.3659	9	4
43	USC	0.3397	7	6
44	Rutgers	0.3317	9	4
45	Mississippi	0.3267	7	6
46	Syracuse	0.3205	8	5
47	Washington	0.2996	7	6
48	Brigham Young	0.2898	8	5
49	TCU	0.2825	7	6
50	Arizona St.	0.2788	8	5
51	Miami, Fla.	0.2696	7	5
52	La. Lafayette	0.2631	9	4
53	North Carolina	0.2501	8	4
54	West Virginia	0.2449	7	6
55	Missouri	0.2444	5	7
56	Fresno St.	0.2370	9	4
57	San Diego St.	0.2255	9	4
58	Virginia Tech	0.1559	7	6
59	Iowa St.	0.1498	6	7
60	Navy	0.1201	8	5
61	Ohio U.	0.1074	9	4
62	Georgia Tech	0.0951	7	7
63	Bowling Green	0.0644	8	5
64	La. Monroe	0.0600	8	5
65	Middle Tennessee	0.0086	8	4
66	North Carolina St.	0.0074	7	6
67	Duke	-0.0326	6	7
68	Tennessee	-0.0338	5	7
69	East Carolina	-0.0344	8	5
70	Purdue	-0.1007	6	7
71	SMU	-0.1089	7	6
72	Minnesota	-0.1338	6	7
73	Arkansas	-0.1510	4	8
74	UT San Antonio	-0.1591	8	4
75	Western Kentucky	-0.1700	7	6
76	Utah	-0.1925	5	7
77	Central Michigan	-0.2151	7	6
78	Pittsburgh	-0.2163	6	7
79	Wake Forest	-0.2440	5	7
80	Iowa	-0.2633	4	8
81	Rice	-0.2806	7	6
82	Nevada	-0.3391	7	6
83	Connecticut	-0.3596	5	7
84	Virginia	-0.3805	4	8
85	Auburn	-0.4221	3	9
86	Troy	-0.4305	5	7
87	California	-0.4476	3	9
88	Indiana	-0.4587	4	8
89	Houston	-0.4723	5	7
90	Temple	-0.4933	4	7
91	Marshall	-0.5263	5	7
92	Maryland	-0.5379	4	8
93	North Texas	-0.5522	4	8
94	Miami, Ohio	-0.5562	4	8
95	Buffalo	-0.5852	4	8
96	Air Force	-0.6013	6	7
97	South Florida	-0.6129	3	9
98	Kentucky	-0.6156	2	10
99	Washington St.	-0.7268	3	9
100	Western Michigan	-0.7331	4	8
101	Texas St	-0.7469	4	8
102	Memphis	-0.8094	4	8
103	Florida Intl	-0.8186	3	9
104	Florida Atlantic	-0.8378	3	9
105	Wyoming	-0.8424	4	8
106	Colorado St.	-0.8671	4	8
107	Illinois	-0.8685	2	10
108	Texas El Paso	-0.8756	3	9
109	Boston College	-0.9296	2	10
110	UAB	-0.9761	3	9
111	Tulane	-1.0120	2	10
112	Kansas	-1.0149	1	11
113	New Mexico	-1.0167	4	9
114	Eastern Michigan	-1.0378	2	10
115	Hawaii	-1.0741	3	9
116	Army	-1.1283	2	10
117	Colorado	-1.2283	1	11
118	South Alabama	-1.2459	2	11
119	Nevada Las Vegas	-1.3312	2	11
120	Massachusetts	-1.3806	1	11
121	Idaho	-1.4371	1	11
122	Akron	-1.4409	1	11
123	New Mexico St.	-1.5657	1	11
124	So. Mississippi	-1.6787	0	12