Bill Born knows the score — even if he doesn’t bother watching the games

Bill Born has never seen Gov. Mifflin play a football game.

He wouldn’t know Nick Singleton from Nick Saban or Nick Jonas but he will tell you this: The Mustangs are the best team in Pennsylvania.

“I trust the numbers,” says the 80-year-old former math teacher from New Jersey who decades ago came up with a mathematical formula to rank football and basketball teams.

For more than 20 years he has published the Born Power Index on his website; prior to the Internet age they were published in newspapers throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including USA-Today.

Born spends hours and hours each week — 60 or more during basketball season, when high school and college teams play every day — inputting scores and applying his secret formula to rank more than 700 games each football weekend.

Bill Born’s top-rated Pennsylvania teams
Gov. Mifflin	109.7
St. Joseph’s Prep	109.6
La Salle College	109.6
Mount Lebanon	109.4
Belle Vernon	109.2
Pittsburgh Central Catholic	108.2
Erie Cathedral Prep	106.9
Gateway	101.7
Harrisburg	101.5
Thomas Jefferson	101.4

He does all the math by hand, using a calculator, and admits: “I can compute faster in my head than I can write.”

The elite high school football teams in Pennsylvania are rated at around 100 points. Gov. Mifflin, which is unbeaten, has a 109.7 rating, better than any team in the Commonwealth, regardless of classification.

Born won’t share his exact formula but says it is mostly predicated on margin-of-victory and strength-of-schedule, similar to a power rating system that ranks teams for the upcoming District 3 Tournament.

Born’s numbers are more fun, because they can be applied to compare teams. For example, the Born Power Index gives Wilson an 86.6 rating and its opponent in the opening round of the district tournament, York High, a 77.9 rating. That would make the Bulldogs an 8.7-point favorite.

Wyomissing has earned an 89 rating; its first-round opponent Northern Lebanon comes in at 24.5. That’s a 64 1/2-point spread. (That would also make the Spartans a favorite over the Bulldogs, were they to play.)

“It’s a completely mathematical formula,” said Born, who does not take into account factors such home field, injuries, lineup changes, ineligible players or styles of play . . . his ratings are completely objective.

And they’re usually right. Born proudly says his ratings were 82 percent accurate in Pennsylvania football in 2020.

One of the reasons he never attends games is to take the emotional side of it out of the equation. He wouldn’t want to be swayed but what he sees. The bottom line is all that matters.

“There’s no heart involved,” Born said. “I don’t care who wins. It’s strictly by the numbers.”

Born’s system is held in such high regard that in 2018 that the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association — the Garden State equivalent of the PIAA — enlisted him to seed teams for its state tournament.

He did it, and did it well — 19 of the 20 top-ranked teams won championships. His formula included a 2-6 Shawnee team, which caused the ire of many.

“I took all kinds of abuse,” Born said.

Not for long, though. Shawnee won a championship.

“That shut ’em up,” Born said. “Nobody said anything after that.”

Born’s relationship with the NJSIA didn’t last long. They wanted to know the precise details of his formula. Some coaches, he surmised, wanted to know exactly what was involved so they could improve their team’s rating. Born refused to give up his secret recipe.

Born ratings for district openers
Wilson	86.6	York High	77.9	+8.7
Exeter	84.7	South Western	46.8	+37.9
Waynesboro	64.7	Daniel Boone	61.9	+2.8
Spring Grove	72.2	Twin Valley	51.6	+20.6
Big Spring	66.4	Conrad Weiser	60.3	+6.1
Hamburg	46.8	Bermudian Springs	31.6	+15.2
Wyomissing	89	Northern Lebanon	24.5	+64.5

“I worked all those years (to develop it),” he said. “(I said:) ‘No, you’re not gonna get it.’ “

The NJSIA ended the relationship at that point.

Of his formula, Born said: “You’re better off beating a good team than you are beating a bad team, and you can improve your rating by losing to a better team, if you cover the spread, so to speak.”

He said a team begins each season with the rating it ended with the previous season. That can be problematic, he admits, especially with smaller schools, where there might be more turnover on the roster.

That problem is usually rectified by midseason; Born is confident at that point that he’s collected enough data to be accurate.

“It says on the website: ‘Early season ratings are subject to drastic fluctuation,’ ” Born noted.

Born began rating teams 60 years ago when he was a JV basketball coach at Scotch Plains High School in New Jersey. He was curious to know how his team would fare against future opponents, so he went about collecting data and creating a ranking system.

Once he believed he was onto something he mentioned it to a local sportswriter; next thing you know the Newark Star-Ledger was publishing his numbers. Word spread, and some newspapers even paid him for his work.

He has tweaked the formula over the years. He was bothered by “upsets” — lower-rated teams beating higher-rated ones — and adjusted accordingly.

“Should (highly rated teams) lose (their high ranking) if they come up with one clunker? Should it affect them badly?” he wondered. “They’re still the same team. I came up with a way of handling that; I worked it into the formula. You’re never quite as good as you are on your best day, and never quite as bad as you are on your worst day.”

Born used to golf as a hobby but gave that up a few years ago. Now his sole passion is working on his ratings.

“It’s a lot of fun,” he said.

Born doesn’t bet on games, and prefers that people don’t use his ratings to wager. He does ratings for NFL teams but doesn’t publish them. He makes no money from his number-crunching; it’s simply a labor of love.

Years ago friends would invite him to attend games but he usually declined.

“I know who’s gonna win,” he would tell them. “It’s no fun.”