By Mark Alesia
The Indianapolis Star

On his way to the Georgia-Florida game earlier this month, Wes Colley happily ran over a stuffed Gator planted by a Georgia fan. During five hours of tailgating, he ate chicken, drank beer and threw a football around.

His wife was there, decked out in Florida attire. So was his brother, who started as an offensive tackle for Georgia in the late 1980s.

Despite the pregame high jinks, Colley - the creator of one of the seven computer ranking systems used by the Bowl Championship Series - is hardly a typical fan. But neither is he the classic stereotype of a BCS computer guy.

"The truth is, I am biased toward Georgia and Virginia, but that doesn't affect a computer algorithm," said Colley, 31, who has a doctorate in astrophysics from Princeton and teaches at Virginia.

Through no fault of their own, the people behind the computers who compile BCS statistics are seen as remote and mysterious. Former BCS czar Roy Kramer insisted that these purveyors of the numbers that move college football do nothing that might suggest they actually enjoy the game.

The volunteer calculators, recruited by the BCS, are so low-profile that Big East Commissioner and current BCS czar Mike Tranghese said he never has met any of them in person.

One of them, Peter Wolfe, 48, a doctor in Beverly Hills, Calif., and college instructor specializing in infectious disease, said his friends and family are "as surprised as I am that I have anything to do with this."

Wolfe and the others are devoted to the job, highly educated and fiercely protective of the integrity of what they're doing. Fans - who aren't privy to the methods behind the calculations; only Colley's highly technical formula has been made public - become enraged when they believe the computers defy common sense.

"It can get pretty rough and nasty," said Richard Billingsley, 51, from Hugo, Okla. "My first year with the BCS, I got some awful, awful e-mails. Nasty. Last year, Brigham Young fans sent all the e-mails. But it was so different because they weren't vulgar. They all said they were disappointed BYU wasn't ranked higher, but they never used profanity."

Kramer, then commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, introduced official computer rankings in 1998 to settle disagreements in the coaches' and media polls and assure a No.1 vs. No.2 national championship game.

Kramer met with Jeff Sagarin of Bloomington, Ind., whose work has been published in USA Today since 1985.

"Kramer taught math and was a high school football coach," said Sagarin, 54, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Nothing gets by him. He understood everything I was throwing at him."

Generally, the BCS contacted candidates out of the blue and asked them to supply rankings from previous seasons as well as some assurance that they were objective. The New York Times computer is the only one without the name of a person attached.

The other people behind the BCS computers e-mail their rankings to the Big East office, the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind., and to SEC associate commissioner Charles Bloom, who helped set up the system with Kramer.

"There is a leap of faith that they're applying the formula correctly," said Jerry Palm of Schererville, Ind., widely recognized as the top expert on the BCS, who has caught rare data-entry errors.

Jeff Anderson, 33, a political science professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, said he and the co-creator of his BCS system, Seattle radio sportscaster Chris Hester, check each other.

"The L.A. Times had a score reversed," Anderson said. "I was using that paper. Chris was using something else. So we caught it."

Although the system probably won't change much - the BCS has a contract with ABC through the 2005 season - at least one of the computer guys advocates a different system.

Kenneth Massey, 26, a doctoral student in math at Virginia Tech, believes computers should be used only to break ties between the media and coaches' polls.

He would also like to see the BCS employ just one computer, with the formula made public.

"If you're going to use a computer, it should be something people can duplicate and plug in hypothetical results," Massey said. "It would help athletic directors with schedule strength. It would ease criticism, too. It seems so mysterious now. Coaches feel they have no control. They can't figure it out. It seems random."

Behind the names of the BCS

A brief look at the names behind the rankings that are key to the Bowl Championship Series standings:

Jeff Sagarin: Takes victory margins and difficulty of schedule into account, as well as a team's win-loss record. However, for the rankings he submits to the BCS, Sagarin eliminates the margin-of-victory component.

Wes Colley: Starts all teams equally and uses only wins and losses. Calculates strength of schedule based on wins and losses of opponents, opponents' opponents, etc.

Peter Wolfe: His ranking comes from measuring actual results against predicted results. No weight given to recent games, no consideration given to game site.

Kenneth Massey: Uses only wins and losses and strength of schedule. Describes it as "basically the same as Sagarin and Wolfe - with a few additional twists."

Richard Billingsley: Begins with a team's final ranking from the previous season. Emphasizes recent performance and gives extra weight to head-to-head results. Minor consideration given to site of the game.

Jeff Anderson and Chris Hester: The pair gives more weight to conference strength than the other rankers.

The New York Times: The method is unknown, but it was created in 1979 and is administered by an editor in the news survey department.

- Indianapolis Star