The Bowl Championship Series will release its first standings of the year on Sunday. One-third of the formula that will eventually determine the matchup for college football’s national championship game comes from a compendium of six computerized ranking systems that deal in mathematical minutiae. The nerds did not just crash the jocks’ party. They were invited.

Since the inception of the B.C.S. in 1998, it has used the computers as a shield against cries of partisanship in the polls that make up the other two-thirds of the formula. One of the computer rankers for the B.C.S. is Richard Billingsley, a stress-management expert from Hugo, Okla.

His knowledge of college football history is encyclopedic. His knowledge of mathematics, the foundation of any accurate computer-ranking system, is not.

“I’m not a mathematician,” Billingsley said. “I’m not even a highly educated man, to tell you the truth. I don’t even have a degree. I have a high school education. I never had calculus. I don’t even remember much about algebra. I think everyone questions everything I do. Why is he doing that? Does he know what he’s doing, a crazy kook in Oklahoma?”