For several decades now, season after season, one question has frustrated fans of college football: “Who is the number one team?” It’s a simple question, and it should have a simple answer. But with a lack of any real on-field method to find the top teams, this question lingers. What’s left is to devise systems to rank and evaluate teams, such as mathematic formulas and opinion polls.

Opinion polls are subject to various biases and omissions. “Computerized” rankings attempting to be fair have become too complicated to understand, and statistical analysis is too sterile a tool to use to determine a teams’ ranking.

What the Berkeley Points-Awarding System (BPAS) intends to do is show, in simple and understandable terms, how teams can be ranked without resorting to arcane statistical analysis. It uses only one basic statistic: winning games.