About
A fan with a spreadsheet who decided to take it further.
The CFB Wire started with a simple frustration: college football rankings don't match the eye test, and the models that do a better job are black boxes that won't show their work.
So I built my own. The Wire Power Ratings and Wire Poll are a pair of ranking systems that share the same analytical engine but answer two different questions. The WPR tells you who's actually good. The WP tells you who should be ranked based on what they've done.
The entire methodology is public. Every weight, every formula, every change made during the season gets documented on the blog before the next rankings come out. If I'm wrong about something, I want to know — and I want you to be able to tell me exactly where the model breaks.
The rules I set for myself
When I started building this, I committed to a few principles:
Trust the current season more than last year. By midseason, what happened before August shouldn't matter much.
Never hide the methodology. If I can't explain why a team is ranked where it is, the model is broken, not the team.
Two outputs, not one. "Who's the best team" and "who deserves to be ranked" are different questions that deserve different answers.
Contact
The best way to reach me is on X/Twitter or Instagram. Feedback on the model, suggestions for improvement, complaints about your team's ranking — all welcome.