Further Reading: Elo and Power Ratings
Original Elo System
"The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present" by Arpad Elo The definitive text on the Elo system from its creator. Covers mathematical foundations and practical implementation.
FIDE Rating Regulations Official documentation of chess Elo implementation. https://www.fide.com/fide/handbook
"History of the Elo Rating System" by Mark Glickman Academic history and analysis of rating systems.
FiveThirtyEight NFL Methodology
"How Our NFL Predictions Work" Detailed explanation of FiveThirtyEight's Elo approach. https://fivethirtyeight.com/methodology/how-our-nfl-predictions-work/
"Introducing NFL Elo Ratings" by Nate Silver Original article explaining NFL-specific modifications.
FiveThirtyEight Historical Elo Data Complete historical NFL Elo ratings database. https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/nfl-elo
Alternative Rating Systems
Simple Rating System (SRS) Pro-Football-Reference SRS Methodology https://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/index37a8.html
Football Outsiders DVOA "DVOA Explained" by Aaron Schatz Comprehensive guide to efficiency-based ratings. https://www.footballoutsiders.com/info/methods
ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) "How FPI Works" https://www.espn.com/nfl/fpi
Sagarin Ratings Long-running computer ratings system. https://sagarin.com/sports/nflsend.htm
Mathematical Foundations
"Probability and Statistics" by DeGroot & Schervish Rigorous treatment of probability theory underlying ratings.
"The Mathematics of Elo Ratings" by Jeff Sonas Mathematical analysis of Elo properties and optimizations.
"Glicko Rating System" by Mark Glickman Extension of Elo that tracks rating uncertainty. http://www.glicko.net/glicko.html
"TrueSkill: A Bayesian Skill Rating System" by Microsoft Research Advanced rating system used in Xbox matchmaking.
NFL-Specific Resources
Pro-Football-Reference Historical data for backtesting rating systems. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/
nflfastR / nfl_data_py Play-by-play data for efficiency-based ratings. https://github.com/nflverse/nfl_data_py
The Athletic Analytics Coverage Regular NFL analytics and rating discussions. https://theathletic.com/
Sports Prediction Books
"The Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver Chapter on sports prediction and rating systems. Essential context for understanding prediction accuracy.
"Scorecasting" by Moskowitz & Wertheim Debunks common assumptions, informs better models.
"Mathletics" by Wayne Winston Sports analytics fundamentals with rating system examples.
"Beating the Spread" by various Academic research on sports betting markets and ratings.
Academic Papers
"Extending the Elo Rating System to Margin of Victory" by various Academic treatment of margin-adjusted Elo.
"Rating the Strength of NCAA Athletic Programs" by Massey Kenneth Massey's rating methodology.
"Predicting the Outcome of Sports Events" by Stern Statistical frameworks for sports prediction.
"A New Rating System for Football" by Colley Matrix-based rating approach for college football.
Programming Resources
Python scikit-learn Documentation Machine learning library for advanced rating approaches. https://scikit-learn.org/
NumPy/SciPy Documentation Mathematical computing for rating implementations. https://numpy.org/
Pandas Documentation Data manipulation for historical analysis. https://pandas.pydata.org/
"Elo Rating Systems in Python" tutorials Various online tutorials for implementation.
Betting Market Context
"Sharp Sports Betting" by Stanford Wong How markets work and relate to rating systems.
"Trading Bases" by Joe Peta Wall Street approach to sports prediction.
"Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting" by King Yao Mathematical approach connecting ratings to betting.
Pinnacle Sports Resources Professional sportsbook with educational content. https://www.pinnacle.com/en/betting-resources
Historical Analysis
"Historical Elo Ratings for All NFL Teams" by FiveThirtyEight Complete historical database for analysis.
"The Best and Worst NFL Teams Ever" articles Historical perspective on rating extremes.
"Dynasty Analysis Through Ratings" by various Long-term team performance tracking.
Calibration and Evaluation
"Probability Calibration" by various Academic treatment of calibration methods.
"Brier Score and Proper Scoring Rules" Mathematical foundations of evaluation metrics.
"Evaluating Probabilistic Forecasts" by Gneiting & Raftery Comprehensive review of forecast evaluation.
Video Content
StatQuest with Josh Starmer Clear explanations of statistical concepts. https://www.youtube.com/c/joshstarmer
Thinking Basketball NBA-focused but excellent on rating methodology.
FiveThirtyEight Video Explainers Visual explanations of their methodology.
Online Communities
r/NFLstatheads Reddit community discussing NFL analytics and ratings.
r/sportsbook Betting community with rating discussions.
Analytics Twitter Follow #NFLAnalytics for ongoing discussions.
Conferences
MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Premier sports analytics gathering with rating presentations. http://www.sloansportsconference.com/
NESSIS New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports.
SABR Analytics Conference Originally baseball, expanding to other sports.
Tools and Software
Elo Calculator Tools Various online calculators for quick computations.
R packages (elo, PlayerRatings) R implementations of rating systems.
Python elosports package Python package for sports Elo calculations.
Key Papers to Start With
- Elo's original work - Foundation understanding
- FiveThirtyEight methodology - Modern NFL implementation
- Glicko system paper - Understanding rating uncertainty
- DVOA methodology - Efficiency-based alternative
- Market efficiency papers - Context for rating value
These resources provide depth for understanding, implementing, and improving NFL rating systems.
Implementation Checklist Resources
GitHub Repositories: - FiveThirtyEight Elo data - nflverse data packages - Open-source rating implementations
Documentation: - Pandas for data handling - NumPy for calculations - Matplotlib for visualization
Datasets: - Pro-Football-Reference game logs - nflfastR play-by-play - Historical spread data