FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
What is NovaKingSports?
NovaKingSports is an independent, data-driven sports ratings and rankings site covering college football, college basketball, and the NFL. It's built and maintained by one person, and it combines sports journalism with sports analytics - every ranking and prediction is generated by an algorithm called NovaModel, with the reasoning behind it meant to be inspectable rather than hidden.
What is NovaModel?
NovaModel is NovaKingSports' own team and player rating system. It's an iterative, opponent-adjusted model: every team starts at a neutral rating, and the model repeatedly re-scores each game using the opponent's current rating, so a win only counts as much as the strength of the opponent it came against. It's not a human poll or panel - it's computed directly from game results.
How are NovaModel college football rankings calculated?
The live NovaModel college football rankings use a "résumé-adjusted" version of the model, which weighs win/loss record and head-to-head results more heavily than a pure margin-of-victory predictor would. That's a deliberate choice: it trades away some raw predictive accuracy in exchange for a ranking that lines up more closely with how human polls and the College Football Playoff committee actually evaluate a résumé - record and quality wins first, not just who's statistically the better team on a neutral field.
How does NovaModel differ from the AP Poll or Coaches Poll?
The AP Poll and Coaches Poll are human panels voting on where they believe teams belong, updated weekly by opinion. NovaModel is computed entirely from game results and each team's full schedule of opponents, with no human ranking input. The two often agree, but NovaModel can also disagree with the human polls - NovaKingSports' rankings/polls page shows both side by side specifically so that comparison is easy to see.
How does NovaModel differ from Vegas betting lines?
Vegas lines are set by sportsbooks to balance betting action and reflect market consensus, including public perception. NovaKingSports' predictions are generated by a separate, more predictive version of the model - built and tuned specifically to forecast final scores and yardage rather than to produce a resume-style ranking - and are shown alongside the actual result once a game is played, so the comparison is checkable rather than just asserted.
Does NovaModel treat wins over weaker (FCS/lower-division) opponents differently?
Yes. Rather than excluding those games entirely, NovaModel treats a lower-division opponent as a real but statistically weak team and runs the game through the same opponent-adjustment math as every other game. This avoids two failure modes: ignoring the game entirely (which understates a team that's genuinely playing well) and crediting a blowout win over a weak team the same as a win over a strong one.
Who built NovaKingSports?
NovaKingSports is an independent project built and maintained by one person who believes sports rankings should show their work, rather than asking people to just trust a number. More on the reasoning behind that is on the About page.