Which ranking systems are the best? In particular, which Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings are best?
That depends on what you’re looking for. Not all ranking systems are the same. There is always a bias toward something. Herman Matthews, who publishes his rankings in the Scripps Howard newspapers, is probably the best in the business. His rankings are good at just about everything. They rank well top-to-bottom, and they’re highly predictive. The fact that other systems are just now beginning to match his accuracy, even though he has been using the same methodology since the mid-1960s, says something. For predictive ability only, it’s hard to go wrong with Jeff Sagarin, who publishes his rankings in USA Today. His rankings are slightly more predictive than Matthews. The best for ranking teams from highly-disparate leagues – especially for ranking high school teams from different classes – is the late David Rothman’s FACT system. This ranking also has the advantage of being publicly-available. Unfortunately, both Matthews and Rothman opted to drop out of the BCS, leaving Sagarin as the
