Method

MRI is a computer rating system for college football. It ran as an Excel workbook from 2000 to 2019 and was rebuilt in 2026. Two ratings are published: the original formula, unchanged, and its replacement.

MRI Classic

The 2018 formula, frozen. Each game earns a team credit weighted by how good its opponent was:

win   →  min( 35, margin) × OppWin%  × OppOppWin%
loss  →  max(−35, margin) × OppLoss% × OppOppLoss%

and the season rating adds those up alongside win percentage and four statistical z-scores:

MRI = 25 × Win%  +  25 × OppWin%  +  10 × OppOppWin%  +  Σ game credit
    +  5 × z(RushYds/G)  +  5 × z(PassYds/G)
    +  7 × −z(YdsAllowed/G)  +  3 × z(TurnoverMargin)

The Python port reproduces every rating published across the 2003–2019 workbooks to within 5×10⁻¹³, with identical top-25 ordering in all seventeen seasons. It is kept for continuity, and because a baseline you cannot beat is a baseline worth keeping.

MRI 2.0

Classic measures schedule strength as opponents' win percentage times their opponents' win percentage. That treats a 9–3 Sun Belt team and a 9–3 SEC team as equal tests, because win percentage does not know who anyone played.

MRI 2.0 turns every game into one equation —

margin  =  rating(home)  −  rating(away)  +  home field

— and solves the whole season at once. A team's rating then depends on its opponents' ratings, which depend on theirs, all the way down. Strength of schedule stops being a separate statistic and becomes a property of the solution.

Four further differences:

• Margin is compressed, not capped. Classic truncates at ±35, so a 34-point win and a 60-point win score the same. Here margin passes through a curve that is near-identity inside two touchdowns and flattens beyond it.
• Ratings are pulled toward a prior carried from last season, so the first month is signal rather than noise. The pull fades on its own as games accumulate.
• Home field is estimated from the games themselves rather than assumed, and neutral sites are excluded. It currently sits at 4.2 points.
• FCS opponents are rated individually. Classic pooled every non-FBS team into a single 7–105 entity, so beating North Dakota State and beating Mercer scored identically.

Two numbers

Power answers how good a team is, in points against an average FBS team, so the gap between two teams is a predicted spread. Résumé answers what a team has earned, measured as wins above what an average team would have managed against the same schedule at the same sites. Classic conflated these, which is why it was hard to bet with.

Does it work

Tested by walking forward through all seventeen archived seasons: fit on the games played so far, score the games that come next, never on data it has seen.

MRI 2.0 wins 13 of 17 seasons. Its hyperparameters were searched on 2003–2013 and the margin is reported on 2014–2019, which took no part in the search.

What it cannot do

A margin error near 13 points is roughly where closing betting spreads sit. That is the honest signal that this model should not be expected to beat a closing line. If it has an edge anywhere it is against opening numbers, and that claim will be backtested and reported here before it is acted on — including if the answer is no.