Methodology
Everything that goes into the numbers. No black boxes.
The philosophy
Most college football models cling too tightly to preseason expectations deep into November. The Wire's system is designed to aggressively trust current-season performance. By midseason, what a team did last year barely matters. By late October, the preseason prior is essentially dead.
The system produces two outputs from a single engine:
Pure team strength. No wins or losses factored in. Answers the question: who would win on a neutral field?
The WPR plus a resume layer. Quality wins add points, bad losses subtract them. Answers: who deserves to be ranked?
Four components
1. Preseason rating
Every team starts with a preseason number built from a prior-year baseline and a roster grade. The roster grade weighs returning production (50%), incoming talent from recruiting and the transfer portal (35%), and a coaching modifier (15%).
Within returning production, the model weights quarterback and offensive line production most heavily (35% each), followed by receiver/tight end production (25%), with running back production at just 5%. On defense, sacks lead at 30%, followed by tackles for loss and defensive snaps at 25% each.
Transfer portal additions receive a 1.3x multiplier over incoming freshmen, reflecting that proven college players contribute more immediately. Portal losses are netted against additions, but only FBS-to-FBS transfers count as losses.
2. Information score
This is what makes the Wire different from other systems. Every game a team plays earns "information points" based on two factors: how good the opponent was, and how surprising the result was.
A game against a top-10 opponent earns 5.0 base points. A game against an FCS team earns 0.25. These base points are then multiplied by a surprise factor — a result that deviates 18+ points from the expected margin gets a 1.4x multiplier, while a result exactly as expected gets just 0.8x.
As information points accumulate, the preseason prior dies. At 10 points, the prior is down to 45% influence. At 30+ points, it reaches zero. Each team decays at its own pace based on the quality of opponents faced — a team that played three top-25 opponents by Week 4 gets judged on merit faster than a team that played three FCS schools.
3. Performance rating
The in-season engine measures team strength across offense, defense, and special teams. Key inputs include EPA per play (33%), success rate (24%), explosiveness (19%), and finishing drives (19%), with skill-based turnover metrics at 5%.
All metrics are opponent-adjusted using an iterative system that recalculates weekly across all 134 FBS teams. Margin of victory is capped at 28 points.
4. Game-day adjustments
When predicting a specific matchup, the model layers on home-field advantage (tiered by venue from 1-4 points), rest advantage, travel distance, and game-type modifiers. Rivalry games shrink the spread by 15%. Bowl games get a 10% compression.
The W/L resume layer (WP only)
The Wire Poll applies bonuses and penalties based on game outcomes: +1.5 points per top-25 win, +0.75 per top-50 win, -0.5 per loss to a top-10 team, and -3.5 per loss to a team ranked below 50th. This creates the resume-based ranking that mirrors the CFP committee's approach.
Transparency commitment
Every methodology change made during the season will be documented on the blog before the next set of rankings is published. If a weight changes, if a formula is adjusted, if a data source is swapped — it will be explained publicly.