David Mease's Football Rankings

Below are my ranks for all 120 Division 1-A teams based on all games played through Monday, January 9, 2012. 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	LSU	1.8108	13	1
2	Alabama	1.6863	12	1
3	Oklahoma St.	1.5774	12	1
4	Arkansas	1.3697	11	2
5	Boise St.	1.1963	12	1
6	Oregon	1.1901	12	2
7	Houston	1.1784	13	1
8	South Carolina	1.1750	11	2
9	Kansas St.	1.1224	10	3
10	Stanford	1.0983	11	2
11	Oklahoma	1.0947	10	3
12	Baylor	1.0858	10	3
13	Michigan	1.0258	11	2
14	USC	0.9644	10	2
15	TCU	0.9009	11	2
16	Michigan St.	0.8556	11	3
17	Wisconsin	0.8528	11	3
18	Georgia	0.8498	10	4
19	Virginia Tech	0.8255	11	3
20	So. Mississippi	0.7443	12	2
21	West Virginia	0.7273	10	3
22	Clemson	0.6967	10	4
23	Texas	0.6907	8	5
24	Auburn	0.6898	8	5
25	Nebraska	0.6600	9	4
26	Penn St.	0.6576	9	4
27	Missouri	0.5869	8	5
28	Cincinnati	0.5507	10	3
29	Texas A&M	0.5381	7	6
30	Brigham Young	0.4834	10	3
31	No. Illinois	0.4732	11	3
32	Tulsa	0.4655	8	5
33	Notre Dame	0.4193	8	5
34	Florida St.	0.4106	9	4
35	Rutgers	0.3994	9	4
36	Arkansas St.	0.3897	10	3
37	Toledo	0.3302	9	4
38	Mississippi St.	0.3126	7	6
39	Florida	0.3039	7	6
40	Iowa St.	0.2919	6	7
41	SMU	0.2204	8	5
42	Georgia Tech	0.2118	8	5
43	Virginia	0.1908	8	5
44	Ohio U.	0.1853	10	4
45	La. Lafayette	0.1775	9	4
46	Marshall	0.1705	7	6
47	Utah	0.1600	8	5
48	Washington	0.1540	7	6
49	Iowa	0.1454	7	6
50	North Carolina	0.1421	7	6
51	North Carolina St.	0.1331	8	5
52	Temple	0.1320	9	4
53	California	0.1050	7	6
54	Louisville	0.0897	7	6
55	La. Tech	0.0736	8	5
56	Texas Tech	0.0649	5	7
57	Illinois	0.0526	7	6
58	San Diego St.	0.0418	8	5
59	Ohio St.	0.0362	6	7
60	Tennessee	0.0288	5	7
61	Wyoming	0.0284	8	5
62	Vanderbilt	0.0199	6	7
63	Purdue	-0.0035	7	6
64	Arizona St.	-0.0456	6	7
65	UCLA	-0.0461	6	8
66	Miami, Fla.	-0.0829	6	6
67	Pittsburgh	-0.1029	6	7
68	Florida Intl	-0.1254	8	5
69	Western Michigan	-0.1329	7	6
70	Wake Forest	-0.1371	6	7
71	Nevada	-0.1449	7	6
72	Ball St.	-0.1552	6	6
73	Kentucky	-0.1563	5	7
74	Northwestern	-0.1768	6	7
75	Western Kentucky	-0.1884	7	5
76	Syracuse	-0.2020	5	7
77	South Florida	-0.2287	5	7
78	Air Force	-0.2302	7	6
79	Utah St.	-0.2534	7	6
80	Connecticut	-0.2549	5	7
81	East Carolina	-0.2774	5	7
82	Eastern Michigan	-0.3125	6	6
83	Arizona	-0.3152	4	8
84	Navy	-0.3287	5	7
85	Rice	-0.3582	4	8
86	Kent	-0.3620	5	7
87	North Texas	-0.4000	5	7
88	Bowling Green	-0.4035	5	7
89	Central Fla.	-0.4185	5	7
90	Texas El Paso	-0.4820	5	7
91	San Jose St.	-0.4883	5	7
92	Kansas	-0.5133	2	10
93	Boston College	-0.5315	4	8
94	Washington St.	-0.5585	4	8
95	Hawaii	-0.6132	6	7
96	Oregon St.	-0.6163	3	9
97	Minnesota	-0.6338	3	9
98	Miami, Ohio	-0.6409	4	8
99	Colorado	-0.6619	3	10
100	La. Monroe	-0.7217	4	8
101	Mississippi	-0.7556	2	10
102	Central Michigan	-0.7781	3	9
103	Fresno St.	-0.7812	4	9
104	Duke	-0.7848	3	9
105	New Mexico St.	-0.8053	4	9
106	UAB	-0.8325	3	9
107	Maryland	-0.8621	2	10
108	Army	-0.8861	3	9
109	Troy	-0.8922	3	9
110	Buffalo	-0.9093	3	9
111	Colorado St.	-1.0181	3	9
112	Idaho	-1.1741	2	10
113	Middle Tennessee	-1.2015	2	10
114	Nevada Las Vegas	-1.2220	2	10
115	Indiana	-1.2276	1	11
116	Memphis	-1.2775	2	10
117	Florida Atlantic	-1.3615	1	11
118	Tulane	-1.3753	2	11
119	New Mexico	-1.4851	1	11
120	Akron	-1.4943	1	11