Fields in the form

• Years - The range of years to tabulate. Each value must be between 1869 and 2023 inclusive. The specified range is inclusive -- the listed endpoints are included in the totals. Though a range of "1980 to 1990" might seem like it would select a decade, it would actually include eleven years ([1] 1980, [2] 1981, [3] 1982, [4] 1983, [5] 1984, [6] 1985, [7] 1986, [8] 1987, [9] 1988, [10] 1989, [11] 1990).
• % Years - Minimum percentage of years with data. If a team does not have data for at least this fraction of the years in the specified range, that team will not be ranked in the list. (For example, if the % Years value is set to 55 and the range spans ten years, then teams that only have data for five (50%) or less of the ten years will be excluded from the table.)
• Games - Minimum games played over the given span. Teams playing less games over the specified range of years will not be ranked. Be careful with this value if the range includes years near (or before) the turn of the century. Back around 1900, a full season could be anything from four games to fifteen.
• Span Start - Require data on or before the first year of the range. When checked, schools which started playing football (or entered the highest division) after the start of the range will be excluded. (For example, if the box is checked and the range "1990-1999" is entered, then teams that joined I-A after 1990 will not be included.)
• Span End - Require data on or after the last year of the range. When checked, schools which stopped playing football (or ended up in a lower division) before the end of the range will be excluded. (For example, if the box is checked and the "all-time" range is used, then Ivy League teams will be excluded because they were placed in I-AA when Division I was split in 1978.)
• Current I-A - Require that the team be a current I-A member. When checked, schools which are not considered "major" as of the most recent year in the database will be excluded from the table.
• Plain Text - Format table as plain text. When checked, the table is put together with mono-spaced ASCII text, rather than HTML tables. It makes for easier copy-and-paste of the table results into E-mail and/or USEnet postings.
• Sort By - What to sort the teams by. You can sort the selected teams (those meeting the conditions specified by the above fields) on several quantities. Currently the teams may be sorted by: winning percentage, total games played, total number of wins, total number of losses, or total number of ties.

Hints and notes

• Use the "Span Start," "Span End," and "Current I-A" check-boxes to restrict the list. For example, Ivy League teams have been in I-AA since 1978. Ivy League teams will normally be present in an all-time list (1869-1998), because they all have qualifying data for a significant percentage of the years in that range. But they would be excluded if "Span End" were checked, as they do not have I-A data all the way to the end of the range. (If the requested time span covers only years when the teams would be considered major -- for example if the range of interest were 1920-1929 -- then the only way to exclude them is to use the "Current I-A" check-box.)
• The NCAA's official method of computing winning percentage is to count a tie as ½ win and ½ loss. A record of 6-1-3 is scored as "6+(3/2)" wins and "1+(3/2)" losses, or 7½-2½. Thus, a record of 6-1-3 is a winning percentage of 0.750 (7.5/10) -- not as some folks believe 0.857 (ties dropped from computation = 6/7) or 0.600 (ties counted as losses = 6/10).
• Some data is missing and it is unclear exactly what should be done with some teams. See the notes file for a complete discussion of this topic.
• Don't forget that the specified range of years is inclusive. The range of "1980-1990" is not a "decade" because it spans eleven years (including both 1980 and 1990).