Matrix Ranks Wake Forest No. 9, New Coke No. 1

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS--The Colley Matrix, where illusion is reality and nothing is as it seems, released its Week 6 college football rankings, in which Wake Forest checked in at number 9, Rutgers number 10, and Washington number 12.

The Matrix was designed by obvious football fanatic Wes Colley (pictured below).

Wes Colley: Tie from the Tucker Carlson Collection. Eyebrows from the Chip Caray Collection.

Colley earned his Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton. We went upstairs from Colley's basement room and asked his mother how her son had become a football expert. His mother said:

"I always asked him, 'Wes? What are you going to do with a Ph.D. in whose-a-whatsical science?' and he would say, 'I'm going to make a college football ranking system, Mom, and I specifically asked you to cut off the crusts!'"

In describing his ranking system, Colley's football genius can be seen. From Colley's website,

"[T]here is no ad hoc weighting of opponenents' winning percentage and opponents' oppponents' winning percentage, etc., ad nauseam (no random choices of 1/3 of this + 2/3 of that, for example). In this method, very simple statistical principals, with absolutely no fine tuning are used to construct a system of 117 equations with 117 variables, representing each team according only to its wins and losses, (see Ranking Method). The computer simply solves those equations to arrive at a rating (and ranking) for each team."

In just that one paragraph, Colley manages to use three Latin phrases, including back-to-back phrases, "etc." and "ad nauseam." As Dave Barry has pointed out, using Latin phrases is one way to win an argument by telling people, "I speak Latin and you do not." Other examples of Colley's superior football intelligence are his clear mastery of addition of fractions, as 1/3 of "this" + 2/3 of "that" clearly add up to one whole "this 'n' that." Also notice that Colley successfully hyperlinked the phrase "Ranking Method" to an actual page which describes the Ranking Method.

We at HLS, skeptical of Colley's "purely mathematical" poll, decided to test the poll's ability to rank other items of interest. We received the following results:

Best Coke:

1. New Coke
2. Coca-Cola Classic

Hottest American Idol

1. Ruben Studdard
2. Clay Aiken
3. Kelly Clarkson

Best Team in Football, 1993

1. Florida State
2. Notre Dame

Best Star Wars Movie

1. The Phantom Menace
2. Attack of the Clones
3. Revenge of the Sith
4. Return of the Jedi
5. A New Hope
6. The Empire Strikes Back

Hottest Lindsay Lohan

1. Anorexic coke whore Lindsay Lohan
2. Healthy not-yet-on-coke Lindsay Lohan

Best Celebrity Sex Tape

1. Screech
2. Tonya Harding
3. Paris Hilton
4. Pamela Anderson

Colley's Matrix is used by the BCS to help determine which teams earn BCS bowl births, potentially costing schools millions of dollars in bowl money. Colley's Matrix. Whoa.