On a typical Sunday morning in the fall, rabid Oklahoma Sooners fan Richard Billingsley is anxious to get to work. Although his eyes are still heavy from the strain of watching up to 25 games the day before, he still runs to his computer to look up scores he doesn't know by heart.

The resident of Hugo, Okla., is one of millions of college football fans nationwide. He's a die-hard Sooners fan, despite the fact he didn't go to school in Norman.

But he's a little more influential that most of his fellow fans. He's part of the elite eightsome responsible for the computer portion of the BCS rankings.

It is a group made up of college graduate students, professors and professional pollsters. Some of them are raging college football fans, others simply love math and football. One doesn't even like to watch the sport.

Behind the BCS Rankings

The eight computer rankings are still only one of several factors, which include the Associated Press poll and USA Today/ESPN Coaches Poll, as well as a team's strength of schedule and number of games that they lost. The computer component is then determined by averaging the seven highest computer rankings, with the lowest ranking for each team being discarded. A quick rundown of the eight computer formulas: Billingsley: Analyses performance based on type of game a team played. Was it a major a minor upset? Was it a typical performance or a poor performance? Also accounts for strength of schedule, won-loss record and location of game. Dunkel Index: Factors in strength of schedule, won-loss record, stress most recent performances and the upset factor. Massey Ratings: Could be the most intricate as his ratings include an overall team rating, offensive and defensive ratings, strength of schedule, home field advantage and yes, even standard deviation. New York Times: Accounts for victor, win-loss margin and quality of opponent. Rothman: Includes wins, margin, opposition and other factors. Sagarin: Strength of schedule, margin of victory or defeat and location of the game. Scripps-Howard (Herman Matthews): Considers strength of schedule and score of game and has a limit that prevents the effect on the rankings of teams that inordinately run up scores. Seattle Times (Anderson & Hester): Strength of schedule and wins over quality opponents.

Billingsley has only a few steps to walk from his bed to his work place. The office is just big enough to fit the essentials: a desk with a calculator waiting; a computer with a very important program on it; a large filing cabinet with personal letters from Joe Paterno, Frank Broyles and Bear Bryant; and a bookshelf with every media guide from all 115 Division I-A schools with football programs.

With that, he helps shape the national championship picture.

Billingsley was first included in the BCS standings last year, when BCS coordinator Roy Kramer introduced five additional computer rankings to the previous three (the New York Times, the Sagarin ratings and the Seattle Times). It was a big break for the man who perfected his ratings system in 1970.

And he believes in his numbers. Although his team is undefeated heading into the Big 12 championship game Saturday, he is a little upset that his Sooners currently ranked second in his formula.

"I am a die-hard Sooners fan," pleaded Billingsley, worried Oklahoma fans will throw him in the nearby Red River. "I was born in Oklahoma and I was raised a Sooner fan. Honestly, this is my worst nightmare -- to have the Sooners in contention for the National Championship and then have my formula drop them to number two behind a Florida State team that has one loss. But I have to be fair. That's my formula and that's the way it works out."

Like Billingsley, Jeff Anderson and Chris Hester's favorite team is also number two in their rankings (Seattle Times). It's certainly interesting, given that only one other (Matthews/Scripps Howard) poll has their alma mater, the University of Washington, on track for the National Championship game. Anderson and Hester's results are understandable though, since their formula does not factor in margin of victory.

"We reward teams solely for beating quality opponents, which is the object of the game, rather than for posting large margins of victory, which is not," said Anderson, who is now a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Claremont (Calif.) Graduate University. Anderson and Hester created the poll seven years ago because they were "frustrated with the polls and the existing computer rankings."

There will be no conflicts of interest for Marjorie Connelly, who has overseen the New York Times rankings -- which were devised in 1978 -- since 1984. That's because the New York University grad is admittedly not a fan of college football. Not only does she not work for the sports department (she is an editor in the news surveys department), but she has never watched a full game. Connelly receives all the scores in an e-mail from the NCAA. On Sunday, she simply types the numbers in, runs the program and in an hour-and-a-half, the standings are complete.

"As long as the data is put in correctly and the program is running right, I don't care who is number 1, 2, 3 or 20," Connelly said. "That's one reason why I'm the perfect person to do this."

Connelly has no problem being the most anonymous member of the computer rankers, either.

"Most of my friends don't know I do this and most of them wouldn't care," said Connelly. "In New York, college football is not a big deal."

But Connelly sticks out like a tourist in Times Square.

Like every other pollster, David Rothman is a fan. He started experimenting with his own standings system in the spring of 1963 while working on his masters in mathematics at Harvard. He came up with his current methodology in 1971. Now retired, Rothman finds time to punch out his "ranking algorithms" every week in between his work on the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy and American constitutional reform.

In all his years of doing the rankings, which include every college that plays football (698 this year), Rothman said his biggest nightmare was getting the right numbers to put into the program.

"My worst problem was finding out the score of a Knoxville vs. Lane game which was played around 1986," said Rothman. "Every time I called I was given a new score, and I eventually had eight different scores."

You've Got (hate) Mail

Having control of one-eighth of the computer rankings (and only 3.125 percent of the total BCS ranking) is more dangerous than you would think. "I get a ton of hate mail," said Richard Billingsley, who said he gets about 250 pieces of e-mail from smack-talking fans each week. "Just this week I had an e-mail that said that if they ever found me they'd smash my face in. Fortunately, they were a Miami fan so I don't think that they are going to find me." Herman Matthews said that he has received "venomous remarks" regarding his Miami rating (last week his formula provided the only computer ranking that had them in fourth) and Florida State (which has been No. 1 for the majority of the season). Jeff Anderson flashes back to 1998 when he and Chris Hester 's standings had Kansas State at number three. "We were once alleged to perpetrate injustices comparable to slavery," according Wildcat fans. Of course, sometimes good things happen. Anderson remembers December 5, 1998 -- before the last games of the season were being played involving UCLA, Kansas State and Tennessee -- as the highlight of his rankings career. "I ate my breakfast while looking at my picture on the front page of the Washington Post sports section, which was a real Forrest Gump moment," Anderson said.

Kenneth Massey also rates all 698 teams. At 24, the youngest member of the group, he is working on his Ph.D. in math at Virginia Tech and is an intense Hokies fan. While he'd love to see his Hokies land a BCS at-large bid, his computer formula sometimes frustrates him. After all, he had Virginia Tech ninth last week.

Massey uses his "roll in the BCS to generate interest in math and its applications" in the Calculus class he teaches, but his role in the BCS doesn't add up financially.

"The BCS doesn't pay us and I don't have a contract with any newspaper," Massey said. "So if you count my expenses in computer equipment, I'm actually in the red."

Massey said he had to buy his own ticket to last year's Sugar Bowl, a game in which he remotely helped determine the matchup.

Herman Matthews, 70, is the oldest member of the BCS computer standings and is also currently the chairman of the math and computer science department at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn. His computer rankings, which have been published by Scripps-Howard for the past 12 years, have used relatively the same formula for the past 45 years. Matthews said his family members obviously understand his passion for football and his rankings.

"My wife is a football widow, but she puts up with it," Matthews said. "The children think it's great."

John Duck started working on the Dunkel Index in 1973 -- the same year their rankings became computerized. Dick Dunkel, Sr. created his Index while working on Madison Avenue in 1929, six years before the first sportswriter poll was released. Duck is now the executive producer of the Dunkel Index.

Duck has his allegiances as well. Although he graduated from UCF, he is a big Florida Gator fan and his wife, Becky, is a Gainesville native. That makes it tough when his formula keeps spitting out Gator-rival Florida State on top. She kids him by calling the Index "the Nole Poll, because Florida State has been at the top of it all but one week this season."

Jeff Sagarin needs little introduction and, many years ago, certainly had Massey beat as the rankings prodigy. Sagarin was only 10 when he started tinkering with ranking teams. The MIT graduate's work is definitely the most recognized computer rankings in the country, which has been published in USA Today since 1985. He has applied his formula and has ranked all four major sports, Major League Soccer and NASCAR, college football, basketball, volleyball and golf.

Yes, it is quite strange that the BCS doesn't pay their "computer team," which help determine the road to the National Championship. But for a great majority of those who sit at their computer on Sunday morning, punching in scores and watching it spit the numbers out, it doesn't matter.

"I always felt like it was such a tremendous honor to be a part of it all, that it didn't matter whether I was compensated or not," Billingsley said. "I'm not a computer geek and I'm not a math genius. I'm a college football fan."

Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espn.com.