The Algorithm
How The BTN Score Works
Every team gets one BTN Score. It comes from four real inputs, not a raw win total that ignores who you actually played. Here's how it's built.
Performance
The base of the score. Wins and losses, adjusted so a win
against a strong team counts for more than a win against a weak
one, using the schedule a team has actually played (by
conference tier) — before Strength of Schedule gets applied on
its own below.
Strength of Schedule
This one looks at who was actually on the schedule, separate
from how those games turned out. It's built from each
opponent's own performance score, leaning more on the games a
team won than the ones it lost, then scaled by that team's own
win percentage. The idea: a hard schedule should count for more
when a team is actually beating those tough opponents, not just
showing up against them.
Big Game Bonus
Beat a top-10 team and you get a bonus — bigger for a
higher-ranked opponent, bigger for a wider margin. Lose to an
unranked team while you're ranked top-10 yourself, and it costs
you the same way, flipped. Every other game on the schedule
doesn't touch this number at all. It only cares about the
biggest moments.
Venue
Where the game was played matters a little. Win on the road,
get a small bonus. Lose at home, take a small penalty. Nobody
coasts on a cushy home record.
Plus, for College Football: Talent Dampener
College football gets one more ingredient the other sports don't: a
measure of each team's recruiting talent. When a team's results are
wildly out of line with what that talent would predict — way
better or way worse — this pulls the score back toward
expectation, more aggressively the bigger the gap. It sits on top
of the score above rather than replacing any part of it, and a
team's actual results still matter most.
Reading the Score
Before these four get combined, each one is scaled onto a
comparable range. That's what stops a single raw stat — a soccer
team's goal count next to a football team's yardage, say — from
quietly running away with the total. What's left is one BTN Score
per team, and it's what drives every ranking, leaderboard, and
matchup prediction on the site. Check it against actual teams on
This Week's Rankings.