A few weeks ago ESPN released “Prestige Rankings” for NCAA College Basketball teams from 1985 through 2008.  As ESPN states, 1985 was the first year the NCAA tournament had 64 teams.  After reading through their methodology and scoring system, I have come up with my own rankings for the same time period.

These rankings are solely mathematical and based off of teams’ success in the March Madness tournament rather than arbitrary criteria and point assignments.

After reading through ESPN’s rankings, the main visible flaw I found was that teams from smaller conferences were receiving much more credit than they deserved. 

This is because of the emphasis on regular season wins.  Teams in weaker conferences play much weaker teams; it is much easier for them to accumulate high win totals. 

In addition, there is no mathematical explanation for any of the point totals that ESPN assigns.  I encourage you to read through their scoring system and you will see what I mean.

In contrast, teams receive points in my rankings purely from their finish in each year’s NCAA tournament.

The scores that I give the teams for each year is essentially their rank based on what round of tournament play they were eliminated in.  For example, the champion is ranked No. 1 and the play-in game loser is ranked No. 65.

However, since I was assigning no score to teams that did not qualify for the tournament, I made higher scores more valuable.  I inverted the rankings; the champion receives a score of 65 and the play-in game loser receives a score of one.

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