How it Works (Version 2.0)

Dynamite Rankings take five things into account:

1. Margin of victory: Beating a team by 30 points is more impressive than beating a team by 10, which is more impressive than losing by 7.
2. Strength of schedule: Playing well against Alabama is more impressive than playing well against Massachusetts.
3. Home field advantage: Home teams win by 4 points on average. Dynamite Rankings correct for that.
4. Rushing yards: An analysis of last year's bowl games showed that including rushing yards doubled the explanatory power of the model. The fact that teams that are ahead run more to eat up the clock might explain why.
5. Win-loss record: On top of margin of victory, the win-loss record is considered at the end of the calculation to reward teams with better overall records.

For each game, the margin of victory, the strength of the opponent, the rushing yard margin, and whether the team had home-field advantage on their side are combined to score a team's performance in that game. A team's ranking is determined by averaging over all the games of the season. Before every team has played three games, last season's performance is also included (weighted as a single game) to "seed" the calculations. What results is a system of 127 equations with 127 unknowns (since a team's performance score depends on their opponents' performance) that you ask your computer to solve for you. (For ease of calculation, all FCS teams are lumped together into one team.)

After this calculation, scores are shifted such that the worst team has a score of 0. Then, to determine the final scores, each team has its score multiplied by:

(number of wins + 2) / (number of games played + 4)

The result is a number that is roughly how many points you'd expect that team to beat the worst FBS team at a neutral location.