RugbyMag > News > Rankings
Rugbymag.com College Rankings
DI Men's Rankings
DI Women's Rankings
DII Men's Rankings
DII Women's Rankings
The RugbyMag rankings began in the winter of 2004 when GoffonRugby began ranking the top men's DI colleges. Editor Alex Goff quickly expended that to include DI women, and in 2008, with GoffonRugby now part of ERugbyNews, the rankings were expanded to include DII men and women.
Rankings use a combination of mathematical formulae, coaches' opinions, and impartial analysis of results by the RugbyMag.com Staff. We do not (as is frequently suggested) have favorites, nor do we hold grudges against different schools. All the RugbyMag staff were perfectly happy with their college experience and do not wish to punish anyone by an unfairly low ranking.
When we rank teams we take into account the following (plus some other notes)
1. Results against other good teams.
2. Strength of schedule (some leagues are tougher than others, so a 3-3 team in one league will still be considered stronger than a 5-0 team in another league). We do not take into account games from the previous season. Everyone starts with a blank slate.
3. Games against higher-level opponents. DI colleges v. DI clubs or Super League teams, DII colleges against DI teams. These types of games can only help you. If your college plays the Denver Barbarians, for example, and loses 60-0, we can all chalk that up to a learning experience. If you beat them 32-28, you will find yourself moving up.
4. What's with the parentheses? When we list a team's record, we recognize that not all games are the same. The main record listed for a team is their record against other college teams (or U23 or Academy teams). Those games must be 80 minutes long (or planned to be). Records listed in parentheses include shortened tournament games, and games against club teams.
5. How you help us. Teams that don't respond when we ask for results, or teams whose websites are two, three or four years out of date will likely see their rankings drop. We cannot rank you if we don't get results. You might also want to make sure your local union or league posts results regularly.
6. Colleges whose coaches are unpopular, or whose schools are unpopular, or whose football team's lineback made a cheap shot on someone last week have no bearing on our rankings.
7. If a college is not playing during the fall, or plays very sparingly in the fall, they do not get ranked. We essentially have a Fall ranking season, and come January, we reconfigure the rankings for January through April.
8. Schedule. We rank DI men and women every week. We will try to do it by Wednesday afternoon, but chasing down scores sometimes takes a little longer. DII rankings come out every other week. So DII Men were published the week of September 21, women will be the week of September 28.
Rankings start in September, take a break over Christmas, and then go from January until the National Championships in early May.