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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 2007-2008 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

LSU

1.2959

12

2

2

Kansas

1.2618

12

1

3

Missouri

1.2278

12

2

4

Georgia

1.2045

11

2

5

West Virginia

1.0575

11

2

6

USC

1.0312

11

2

7

Virginia Tech

1.0272

11

3

8

Ohio St.

1.0183

11

2

9

Hawaii

0.9884

12

1

10

Oklahoma

0.9833

11

3

11

Arizona St.

0.8903

10

3

12

Tennessee

0.8732

10

4

13

Brigham Young

0.8683

11

2

14

Boston College

0.8594

11

3

15

Florida

0.8574

9

4

16

Texas

0.7849

10

3

17

Auburn

0.7796

9

4

18

Oregon

0.7473

9

4

19

Cincinnati

0.7049

10

3

20

Oregon St.

0.7030

9

4

21

South Florida

0.6914

9

4

22

Illinois

0.6345

9

4

23

Clemson

0.6189

9

4

24

Kentucky

0.6059

8

5

25

Wake Forest

0.5511

9

4

26

Penn St.

0.5467

9

4

27

Mississippi St.

0.5416

8

5

28

Arkansas

0.5410

8

5

29

Connecticut

0.5262

9

4

30

Michigan

0.5246

9

4

31

Wisconsin

0.5190

9

4

32

Virginia

0.5162

9

4

33

Texas Tech

0.5078

9

4

34

Central Fla.

0.4626

10

4

35

Utah

0.4367

9

4

36

Boise St.

0.4201

10

3

37

Texas A&M

0.3668

7

6

38

Oklahoma St.

0.3572

7

6

39

Tulsa

0.3518

10

4

40

Alabama

0.3507

7

6

41

Air Force

0.3445

9

4

42

Troy

0.3369

8

4

43

South Carolina

0.3354

6

6

44

Fresno St.

0.3340

9

4

45

California

0.3274

7

6

46

Florida St.

0.3132

7

6

47

Rutgers

0.2926

8

5

48

New Mexico

0.2671

9

4

49

UCLA

0.2517

6

7

50

Michigan St.

0.2150

7

6

51

TCU

0.2051

8

5