About OLC Digital Ratings
OLC Digital Ratings is an independent sports analytics project. It produces computer power ratings, game predictions, and postseason/championship projections for football — at the college level (NAIA, NCAA FBS, and NCAA FCS) and the professional level (NFL and CFL) — along with college soccer and volleyball.
Why OLC Exists
Traditional polls rank teams by vote — a panel of coaches, media members, or a committee decides who belongs where, informed by results but ultimately based on opinion. OLC takes a different approach: every rating is calculated directly from what happened on the field, using the same formula for every team in a sport. Nobody’s ballot decides where a team ranks; the results do.
That matters most for the teams a poll is most likely to get wrong — a team from a smaller conference that’s quietly beating everyone in front of it, or a name-brand program living on reputation more than results. A calculated rating doesn’t know which team is more famous. It only knows what happened in the games.
What OLC Covers
How the Ratings Work
Every OLC rating is built from the same four ingredients: how convincingly a team wins and loses, the strength of its schedule, how it performs against particularly strong or weak opponents, and its record adjusted for home field and travel. Those four factors combine into one 0–100 rating per team. The full formula is on the Methodology page.
Independence
OLC Digital Ratings is not affiliated with any conference, athletic department, or media organization. Ratings are generated the same way for every team regardless of conference, division, or profile.
How Often Ratings Update
Ratings recalculate after each week’s games are entered into the system — typically within a day or two of the last games being played each week. Early in a season, ratings can move sharply from week to week as new results connect teams and conferences that haven’t yet played common opponents; see the Limitations section of the Methodology page for more on reading early-season numbers.