My Favorite Sites

There are a lot of interesting computer rating systems. It is difficult to choose examples but I do have personal favorites. Here is a list of the ones I view most often in no particular order:

Todd Beck - Prediction Tracker. Need I say more?

Jay Coleman's MinV - This is great. If only he could figure out how to come up with only one very best possible alignment instead of zillions, which tells us there will never be a perfect system based upon such a small number of games. In any case, he has developed a way to line the teams up (not rate them) to get the least possible number of "upsets." Unfortunately, there is not a single best lineup.

Wes Colley's ColleyMatrix - I once came up with this great idea and showed it to the world. Unfortunately, Todd Beck informed me that someone was already doing this, so now I just go look at Wes's.

Harry DeVold - This guy has been doing football ratings since the game began. Well, a long time, anyway. He still does it the hard way, too. How can you not appreciate experience? NOTE: Harry has probably retired due to illness. After 63 years of rating college teams, the incredible series is over. Hopefully not for good. Get well, Harry.

James Howell - How can you not like the guy that went back into history to gather every college football score he could get his hands on? All of us who have ratings back to the beginning, or at least the thirties, owe him much gratitude. His ratings are great, too.

Edward Kambour - Dr. Kambour's ratings are described by him as a "Dynamic Hierarchical Bayesian Linear Forecaster." Okay, and they're pretty good, too.

Kenneth Massey - Okay, now this guy rates everything, I think. Once someone asked if I knew if anyone rated a certain sport I didn't know existed and I said: I'll see if I can find out. I asked Kenneth if he would like to try it and it's right there on his site now. If we had to pick a sports rating king, I vote for him. Did I mention that he rates everything? And the best thing he does is the Ranking Comparison. Cool. Okay, outstanding.

Sonny Moore's Computer Power Ratings - I've been watching this guy's ratings for years. I like them because they are unique. They sort of go against the grain and I like that. Since they are pretty accurate, it even makes them more appealing.

David Rothman's FACT - We lost David not long ago. He was on the cutting edge of ratings as well as on the backs of the powers that be. He was a good spokesman for computer ratings.  I would personally like to thank Dr. Wolfe right here in public for continuing David's ratings. You be sure to thank him, too.

Jeff Sagarin -  You've probably seen Jeff's ratings at one time or another. If you've ever picked up a USA Today and turned to the sports section, you are probably remembering them now. I didn't used to like Jeff's ratings but over the years he has fine-tuned them and they are consistently among the best. His ratings were what caused me to move my own ratings to the Internet once I got the chance. He put into form what had previously been rolling around in my head.

Ray Waits - Well, now, come on. If my ratings weren't among my favorites, what would be the point of their existence? I actually have three favorites to throw into the mix. The first is another one of those great discoveries that you discover someone else beat you to - well, sort of. There were a couple of twists that make mine different. My Retrodictive Ratings are maintained by one of the two greatest computer ratings guys, David Wilson. Even though my idea was very similar to his, he humored me and set my ratings up and ran them all the way back to 1869. Now, that's cool. You can see, however, that his ratings and mine don't pick the same champion every year. The second of my own favorite ratings are also maintained by David Wilson and he is half-owner of them. This rating system is the Superlist and it is actually a special formulaic combination of nine excellent computer rating systems. It does rather well on Todd Beck's Prediction Tracker, too. My third favorite rating system is my Predictive Ratings. This system fine-tunes the teams' ratings slightly each week to make them as accurate as possible. And as an added free toy for the numbers aficionado, I also track the odds makers and line the teams up according to their predictions. That's very revealing.

David Wilson's Performance Ratings - Well, you knew this list is in alphabetical order, right? And you knew David was next, right? These are the ratings that are very similar to my Retrodictive Ratings. Where mine start the season with last season's results, David's start the season from scratch. It's fun to watch these ratings that are so bizarre at the first of the season (like Wes Colley's) develop into something so accurate and logical at the end of the season. Besides his ratings and a lot of other people's that he posts, David has a lot of information about college football including the directory from which I made this list. David is responsible for helping a lot of people get their ratings noticed. Even the king, the other greatest computer ratings guy on the Internet, Kenneth Massey, owes a lot of his incredible popularity to David Wilson.

This is certainly not an extensive list. I may add some more to it later but it is quite sufficient for a beginner to use to familiarize himself or herself with Internet computer ratings. If you can't find what you need with what's on this page, you probably won't find it.

In addition to noting David Rothman's early departure, Herman Matthews will not be with us this season. I do not know the details as he has not told me other than that there are problems with his health. Wish him well. I hope he will be back. Another former rater I would like to hear from is Eric Packard. I still have his interview. And whatever happened to Flyman? I have found him on the Internet but not his ratings. That reminds me, I need to finish my interview with Harry DeVold. Unfortunately, I don't know if he is able. We may just have to settle for what we have. It was difficult to corner him when he was healthy because he was very busy.

One thing I have noticed is that of more than 100 computer raters, zero are women. How can that be? Tell me I'm wrong. Please. My wife is the sports fanatic of my family. I'm trying to get her started. There is a great injustice here. How can an interest like rating teams be 100% men? Tell me, please. I must have missed somebody. Well, now my wife does her own ratings, so there's at least one. Check out The Girl's Ratings. She's coming back this season and she's going to be more careful than last season when her spreadsheet got out of hand.

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