I took this off the NCAA football pre-Championship manual. NCAA simple rating system (NCAA SRS) The NCAA Division I Football Championship Committee will use the NCAA Simple Rating System (NCAA SRS) as a tool for evaluating teams for selection into the 24-team championship. The NCAA SRS is a ranking system used to gauge team quality. Within the NCAA SRS, the rating of a team will be calculated largely by two components: a strength-of-schedule measure (SOS) and a win-loss differential (WL). A team’s SOS measure is simply the average NCAA SRS rating of that team’s opponents for the season. A team’s WL measure factors whether a game was won or lost; the location of the game (home/away/neutral site); and the NCAA (sub)division of the opponent. 1. In a game between two FCS teams played at a neutral site, the winning team gets one point and the losing team loses one point. 2. In a game between two FCS teams played at a non-neutral site, a home win counts 0.75 for the home team and -0.75 for the losing team. A road team win counts 1.25 for the visiting team and -1.25 for the home team. In other words, there is a bonus/penalty of +/- 0.25 for the home/away teams depending on the outcome. 3. An additional bonus/penalty of +/- 0.1 is added/deducted for games that FCS teams play against FBS/non-Division I opponents. For instance, a home FCS win against a Division II opponent counts only as +0.65 points (0.75 for a home win - 0.1 penalty for playing a Division II opponent). In addition, a road FCS win against an FBS opponent counts +1.35 points for the FCS team (1.25 points for a road win + 0.1 bonus for beating an FBS opponent). 4. The WL measure is then doubled to equalize the contributions of the WL factor and SOS factor toward a team’s NCAA SRS rating. 5. Finally, new for the 2015 season, margin of victory will be factored into a team’s NCAA SRS rating. This component is capped at 21 points. The teams’ ratings are independent in that one team’s rating depends on its opponents’ ratings, which depend on their opponents’ ratings, etc., based on the “network” of college football games played each week during the football season. The NCAA SRS will also standardize the data in order to equalize the variance in total number of games played (i.e., 11 or 12 regular-season games). Games against Division III or non-NCAA opponents are not factored into any team’s NCAA SRS rating. The time of the season in which a game is played (early-season versus late-season games) is also not factored into a team’s NCAA SRS rating. The NCAA SRS will not “force select” any teams into the championship; rather, it is one of several resources that the Football Championship Committee will have at its disposal when debating the merits of teams under consideration for championship selection. The NCAA Division I Football Championship Committee will begin reviewing NCAA SRS data during the later portion of the football season as it prepares for championship selections. At that time, NCAA SRS rankings may also be posted on the NCAA website (www.ncaa.com/fcs). This makes the Wins at Wyoming and Portland St. huge because they were road victories.
