The Colley Matrix Ranking System

Dr. Wesley N. Colley

Center for Modeling, Simulation and Analysis
University of Alabama in Huntsville

22 April 2011
218 Shelby Center
3:00 (Refreshements at 2:30)

Abstract

The Colley Matrix ranking system was developed for automatically ranking college football teams. College football presents a particular rankings challenge, which is that a large number of disparate teams play relatively few games. Record, the single standard for seeding almost all professional playoffs, is, therefore, an insufficient statistic for seeding college football's (single game) playoff, known as the BCS National Championship Game. Colley's method deals with this issue, the "strength-of-schedule" problem, in a relatively natural way. The system can be seen as a small extension to a probability technique developed by Laplace; that technique can be regarded as a result of usual binomial principles.