Mailbag: Special Guest Cody Mills Talks Rankings

Cody Mills answers questions about ways to adjust USAU's ranking algorithm and allocation process.

Texas's Domenica Sutherland against Cal Poly SLO at Stanford Invite 2019.
In a probabilistic allocation system, Cal Poly SLO and the Southwest would get an extra bid, while Texas and the South Central would lose one. Photo: Rodney Chen – Ultiphotos.com

The Mailbag is now for subscribers only. That’s going to do a few things: it will keep Charlie committed to writing it every week. It will reward subscribers with a weekly column they can count on. And it will allow us to offer a free one-month Mini subscription for the best email or comment we get and publish in the Mailbag. If you’re already a subscriber, you get a free extra month (or a discount). If you’re not, you can come in and check out the benefits.

You can email Charlie anytime at [email protected] with questions, comments, ideas — whatever you’ve got.

Welcome our in house algorithms expert, Cody Mills, who runs frisbee-rankings.com. He also coaches the men’s team at Cal Poly SLO. Intro is over, from here on out, it’s all Cody.

Important disclaimer: contrary to popular belief (#fakenews), I am not an algorithms expert.1 I’m just a guy with a hobby. I would defer on virtually any mathematical argument to the extremely qualified individuals who serve on the working group.2

Q: How would you change the D-III algorithm so that it isn’t always so wacky?

A: My off-hand reaction to this question is to clarify that there is no separate D-III algorithm. Every result from the college division goes into the same data set that produces the rankings; D-III rankings use all the results involving D-I teams as well. It’s just that the D-I teams are filtered out of the final rankings.


  1. Editor: Oops. 

  2. of which I am not a member 

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  1. Cody Mills
    Cody Mills

    Cody Mills currently coaches New York PoNY, Cal Poly SLO, and the USA U-20 Open team. He was a captain then coach at Stanford and has previously coached San Francisco Revolver and Oakland Guerrilla in the club men’s division. He also runs frisbee-rankings.com

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