Anderson & Hestor/Seattle Times: Chris Hestor and Jeff Anderson are graduates of the University of Washington. Their ranking does not consider margin of victory and focuses on conference strength, according to how teams do in out-of-conference games. Hestor is a sports broadcaster in Seattle, and Anderson is a political science professor at Air Force. They have been doing their rankings since 1993.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Colley Matrix: Wes Colley earned a doctorate in Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton and is employed as a missile tracker at MIT. He says his system "is absolutely free from human influence or opinion, accounts for schedule strength, ignores runaway scores and yet produces common sense results." His ratings have been posted on the Internet since 1998, but this is the first year his rankings have been included in the BCS.
Richard Billingsley: A self-employed personal consultant, Billingsley is also the president of the College Football Research Center, headquartered in Hugo, Okla. He has written several books about college football, and his rankings have been around since 1970. His rankings are carried over from the previous year, and he values the early part of season more highly. By the way, Billingsley has crowned a national champion since 1970, as well as every year dating back to 1869. His 1984 champ? Florida.
Kenneth Massey: His "Massey Ratings" have been around since 1995. Massey is a doctoral candidate in the mathematics department at Virginia Tech. "When there is a large disparity in schedule strength," he writes on his Web site, "win-loss records lose their significance. The computer must evaluate games involving mismatched opponents, as well as contests between well-matched teams."
David Rothman: A retired statistician, Rothman has been doing rankings since 1963. He graduated from Wisconsin and is the executive director of the Foundation for the Analysis of Competitions and Tournaments. He does not share much information about the way his rankings operate.
Jeff Sagarin/USA Today: Sagarin, who earned a math degree from MIT and an MBA from Indiana, has supplied USA Today with ratings since 1985, and he does not disclose how his ratings work.
Herman Matthews/Scripps-Howard News Service: Matthews, 71, teaches math at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn. Very little is known about his system.
Peter Wolfe: A physician and associate clinical professor at UCLA, Wolfe ranks all NCAA and NAIA teams. His system has a cap of 21 points on margin of victory, and the rankings are based on actual outcome vs. predicted outcome. This is the first year Wolfe's rankings have been included in the BCS.