A guy named Dick started running the numbers on college football from his house in 1929. No computers. No internet. No ESPN. Just formulas, paper, and a level of mathematical obsession that would make most people question their priorities. Almost a century later, his family is still running the same index. And people are still arguing about it.
That’s a legacy worth understanding.
Quick Facts
| Info | Details |
| Full name | The Dunkel Index (also: Dunkel College Football Index) |
| Founded | 1929 |
| Founder | Richard C. “Dick” Dunkel, Sr. (1906–1975) |
| Origin purpose | Settle the East vs. West debate about who’s the best college football team |
| NCAA recognition | Listed in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book |
| Classification | “Power index system” (NCAA’s term) |
| First sport covered | College football |
| Basketball ratings start | 1935 (continuous) |
| Radio program | “Dick Dunkel Football Forecasts” — late 1930s through early 1960s |
| BCS involvement | One of eight computer polls used in the BCS formula |
| BCS period | 1998–2013 (Dunkel was part of this) |
| 1997–98 bowl season accuracy | 86.9% |
| Current ownership | Bob Dunkel and his son Ben |
| Sports covered today | Football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer |
| Sponsorship (late 1990s) | Daytona Beach News-Journal |
The Problem Nobody Could Solve in 1929 (Until One Guy Did)
Here’s the situation Dick Dunkel walked into. It’s 1929. College football is wildly popular. National pride is absolutely tied to which team finishes on top. But the logistics of the sport at the time created a genuinely unsolvable argument.
Teams from the East coast rarely played teams from the West coast. You just didn’t travel like that. So every year, both sides declared their champion and the other side declared that was ridiculous, and nobody had any objective way to settle it. The debate was loud, constant, and going nowhere.
Dick Dunkel looked at this and thought: what if you took the available data — scores, opponents, outcomes — and ran actual math on it? What if instead of arguing, you calculated?
He was 23 years old when he started. Born 1906, started the index 1929. The NCAA wasn’t going to build something like this. No institution was. He just sat down and built it himself.
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The Methodology Nobody Fully Knows
Here’s the thing about the Dunkel Index that drives analytical types absolutely crazy: the exact formula has never been fully disclosed. Dick Dunkel described his system as producing results that were “scientifically produced” based on point differentials. The NCAA classified it as a “power index system.” That’s roughly all the public documentation you’re going to get.
What’s known is that the index places heavy emphasis on strength of schedule. You don’t just get credit for winning — you get credit for who you beat and how convincingly. A team running up wins against weak opponents gets penalized relative to a team earning close wins against genuinely tough competition.
The “difference by scores” framing Dunkel used suggests the margin of victory has always factored in. Not just whether you won but by how much, adjusted for who you were playing. That’s a reasonable approach. It’s also opaque in the specific implementation, which became a problem when the Dunkel Index was embedded in a system that determined who played for national championships.
The Radio Era: When the Dunkel Index Was Actually Famous
Before the internet. Before ESPN. Before any of the infrastructure we now take for granted for sports coverage. Dick Dunkel had a weekly radio program.
“Dick Dunkel Football Forecasts” ran from the late 1930s through the early 1960s. That’s a two-decade run. On radio. In an era when being on radio meant something, when people scheduled their week around specific programs, when a sports commentator with genuine mathematical credibility could build a real following just by being consistently useful.
That’s the context for understanding what the Dunkel Index meant in its prime. It wasn’t a website you glanced at. It was a weekly event. People tuned in because they trusted the math and they wanted to know what it said before the games.
Dick also began issuing continuous college basketball ratings in 1935, six years into the football work. His brother Bob eventually joined the enterprise and expanded it into professional basketball and football. The index grew beyond what one man was doing from his calculations into something approaching a genuine ratings service.
Death, Succession, and the Index That Survived
Dick Dunkel died in December 1975 at age 69. He had been running these ratings for 46 years without stopping. That’s not a hobby. That’s a vocation.
Bob Dunkel carried the operation forward. Bob’s son Ben joined. The family-owned structure has stayed intact from 1929 to the present day, which is genuinely unusual in an era when most media enterprises get absorbed, sold, or dissolved within a generation.
The continuity matters for a specific reason: it means the ratings methodology carries a direct lineage back to Dick’s original work in 1929. Whatever the formula is, it wasn’t rewritten from scratch by a new owner who wanted to go a different direction. The family preserved it. That’s either admirable tradition or calcified stubbornness, depending on your point of view.
The BCS Years: Prime Time and Prime Controversy
The Bowl Championship Series ran from 1998 to 2013 and was the most controversial system in college football history. Its purpose was to produce a legitimate national championship game by combining human polls and computer ratings into a single formula. In theory, objective math would cut through the politics of who got to play for the title.
In practice, it created a new set of arguments with mathematical clothing on them.
The Dunkel Index was one of eight computer polls feeding into the BCS formula. That placement was significant — not just for visibility, but because a single computer poll’s output could shift rankings and, by extension, which teams played in which bowl games with massive financial consequences for conferences and schools.
ESPN documented the Dunkel Index’s role in the BCS in October 1999, noting its near-70-year history and specifically calling out its emphasis on strength of schedule. The 86.9% accuracy rate for the 1997-98 bowl season was the number being thrown around to establish credibility.
Then came the arguments.
The Tech vs. Penn State Moment Nobody Forgot
November 1999. Virginia Tech is in the national championship conversation. The Dunkel Index rankings shift in ways that don’t match what fans, coaches, or analysts expect.
Woody Brammel, writing for TechSideline, captured the frustration in real time. After Tech had been ranked first in the Dunkel, a close win at West Virginia dropped them five positions. The movement didn’t match what anyone’s intuition said about how a close road win should affect a team’s standing.
Meanwhile Penn State fans were furious about their own ranking. A student at the Penn State Collegian published a public criticism of the Dunkel Index, essentially arguing the system was broken because it wasn’t ranking Penn State first. (Penn State was at 11-7 at the time that particular critic was writing, so the credibility of that specific objection is debatable.)
The broader frustration was real though. Because the Dunkel’s formula wasn’t public, observers couldn’t audit the outputs. They couldn’t trace why a specific team moved up or down after a specific game. They could only see the result and argue about whether it made sense.
Brammel’s piece landed on a dark joke as a conclusion — wondering if there was a line of code that added 20 points to any Big Ten team’s index rating automatically. That joke existed because the BCS era computer polls were black boxes operating in a system with enormous stakes, and the Dunkel’s opacity was a genuine problem when your output directly determined who played for a national championship.
The USC Problem of 2004
One of the most discussed Dunkel outputs came from the 2004 season. The BCS selected LSU and Oklahoma to play for the national title. USC finished ranked first in the Dunkel Index after dominating Illinois in the Rose Bowl 49-17, while LSU won the BCS championship game against Ohio State 38-24.
So you had a situation where the human polls gave USC the AP national championship while LSU held the BCS title. The Dunkel’s rankings placed USC at the top of its post-season index, directly contradicting the official BCS result.
That split still comes up in college football history conversations. It represents exactly the problem the BCS was supposed to solve — a disputed champion — and the Dunkel’s independent assessment added fuel rather than clarity. Depending on your USC allegiance, either this proves the Dunkel is correct and the BCS was broken, or it proves the Dunkel’s methodology needs explaining.
After the BCS: What the Dunkel Index Looks Like Now
The BCS ended in 2013 when the College Football Playoff replaced it. The CFP uses a selection committee — actual humans making judgment calls — rather than a formula that mixes polls and computers. Computer ratings like the Dunkel are no longer part of the official championship selection machinery.
This could have meant the end of the Dunkel’s cultural relevance. It didn’t.
The dunkelindex.com website continues operating under Bob and Ben Dunkel’s management. The current incarnation covers college football, professional football, college and professional basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer. The ratings go out regularly. The family continues what Dick started.
A 2023 website update showed revised historical rankings for seasons from 2002 onward, adjusting the pure index rating by won/loss record — producing different top-ranked teams in several seasons compared to earlier versions. USC, Ohio State, LSU, USC again, Texas, and Oregon topped those revised rankings for 2005 through 2010 in sequence. The willingness to revise and update suggests the methodology isn’t completely frozen in amber from 1929, even if the core approach carries direct lineage to Dick’s original work.
The Specific Charm of a Family Operation That Outlasted Every Rival
Here’s what’s actually remarkable. The computer poll landscape that existed alongside the Dunkel in the BCS era has mostly fragmented or faded. The Billingsley Report, the Massey Ratings (though Massey continues in different forms), the FACT Index — some kept going in various capacities, others didn’t.
The Dunkel Index has been running continuously since 1929. Through Dick’s death. Through the transition to Bob. Through the BCS years. Through the end of the BCS. Past its own 90th and then 95th anniversaries. The family-owned structure that might look like a limitation is actually what’s kept it alive — no corporate restructuring, no acquisition, no budget cuts from a parent company that decided sports ratings don’t fit the portfolio.
The index website describes Dick’s original goal with genuine clarity: settle a dispute. The East Coast and West Coast were arguing about who was best and nobody could prove anything because the teams weren’t playing each other. Math could answer what geography prevented.
That’s a clean problem statement. And the solution, however opaque its specific formula, worked well enough that the NCAA put it in the record book, the BCS made it part of its national championship formula, and three generations of Dunkels have kept it running.
Final Words
Honest opinion: most sports fans have heard the name and couldn’t tell you much more than that. The BCS era gave it high-profile exposure but also made it a target for criticism during a period when any mathematical system producing controversial outputs was going to get yelled at.
What gets lost in that framing is the longer picture. Dick Dunkel in 1929 was applying mathematical rigor to sports ranking before anyone else was doing it systematically. The NCAA acknowledges it as the first college football ratings system. It ran a weekly radio program for two decades before television existed. It helped determine national champions across multiple sports for nearly a century.
That’s not a small thing to have built. That’s not a small thing to have preserved.
The opacity of the methodology is a legitimate criticism — especially for a system that was embedded in the BCS with real championship stakes attached. If your ratings affect which schools go to which bowl games and collect which revenue shares, you owe the public more transparency than “it’s scientifically produced.”
But the existence of the thing, the longevity of the thing, and the genuine problem it was built to solve — that deserves credit. A 23-year-old in 1929 decided the East vs. West argument needed math instead of noise. He wasn’t wrong about that.
FAQs
1. What is the Dunkel Index?
A sports team rating system founded in 1929 by Richard “Dick” Dunkel, Sr. Originally developed to mathematically rank college football teams when cross-country travel made direct comparison impossible, it now covers multiple sports. The NCAA recognizes it as the first college football ratings system.
2. Who created the Dunkel Index?
Richard C. “Dick” Dunkel, Sr., born 1906, died December 1975 at age 69. He ran the ratings from 1929 until his death. His brother Bob and later Bob’s son Ben carried the family enterprise forward.
3. How does the Dunkel Index work?
The specific formula has never been fully disclosed. Dick Dunkel described it as producing results “scientifically” from point differentials. The NCAA called it a “power index system.” What’s publicly known is that it places significant emphasis on strength of schedule — quality of opponents heavily factors into each rating.
4. Was the Dunkel Index part of the BCS?
Yes. From 1998 to 2013, the Dunkel Index was one of eight computer polls used in the Bowl Championship Series formula that determined which teams played in the national championship game. Its BCS involvement gave it the highest visibility in its history — and also the most criticism.
5. Did the Dunkel Index have a radio show?
Yes. Dick Dunkel hosted “Dick Dunkel Football Forecasts” from the late 1930s through the early 1960s — roughly two decades on radio. This was before television dominated sports coverage and when a credible weekly sports analysis program could build a genuine national following.
6. What sports does the Dunkel Index currently cover?
College and professional football, college and professional basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer. Started with college football in 1929, added continuous college basketball ratings in 1935, then expanded over decades.
7. What was the USC controversy in the Dunkel Index?
In 2004, LSU won the official BCS national championship over Ohio State. USC, which dominated Illinois in the Rose Bowl, was ranked first in the Dunkel Index post-season despite not playing in the championship game. This contributed to the disputed-champion situation that year — AP gave USC the title, BCS gave it to LSU, and the Dunkel’s numbers sided with USC.
8. Is the Dunkel Index still active?
Yes. As of 2023-2026, dunkelindex.com continues operating under the stewardship of Bob Dunkel and his son Ben. Updated ratings cover multiple sports and recent seasons have included revised historical rankings going back to 2002.
9. What accuracy rate did the Dunkel claim during the BCS era?
For the 1997-98 bowl season specifically, the Dunkel Index was cited as achieving an 86.9% accuracy record — this was the number used when ESPN profiled the five computer rating services selected for BCS inclusion in October 1999.
10. Why was the Dunkel Index criticized?
Primarily for two reasons: opacity and inconsistency. Because the formula was never fully disclosed, fans and analysts couldn’t audit why teams moved in specific ways after specific games. And when outputs seemed counterintuitive — like Virginia Tech dropping five spots after a close road win in 1999 — there was no transparency to explain the movement. For a system embedded in a billion-dollar championship structure, that opacity was genuinely problematic.
11. Does the Dunkel Index still influence championship selection?
Not directly. The College Football Playoff, which replaced the BCS in 2013, uses a human selection committee rather than a formula incorporating computer polls. The Dunkel Index no longer has an official role in determining which teams play for national championships.
12. What made the Dunkel Index historically significant?
Two things: timing and longevity. It was the first college football ratings system, predating any competitors by years. And it has operated continuously for nearly a century — through deaths, retirements, media landscape changes, and formula system changes — as a family-owned enterprise without corporate restructuring or abandonment. The NCAA acknowledges it in the Football Bowl Subdivision Records book as part of the historical record.
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