the bump in their overall BCS ratings via the computer ratings component. They went on to play and defeat the Big East Conference champion Pittsburgh in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl by a score of 35-7. A related example occurred during the 2006 NCAA men's basketball tournament where George Mason were awarded an at-large tournament bid due to their regular season record and their RPI rating and rode that opportunity all the way to the Final Four. Goals of some rating systems differ from one another. For example, systems may be crafted to provide a perfect retrodictive analysis of the games played to-date, while others are predictive and give more weight to future trends rather than past results. This results in the potential for misinterpretation of rating system results by people unfamiliar with these goals; for example, a rating system designed to give accurate point spread predictions for gamblers might be ill-suited for use in selecting teams most deserving to play in a championship game or tournament. Rating considerations Home advantage When two teams of equal quality play, the team at home tends to win more often. The size of the effect changes based on the era of play, game type, season length, sport, even number of time zones crossed. But across all conditions, "simply playing at home increases the chances of winning." A win away from home is therefore seen more favorably than a win at home, because it was more challenging. Home advantage (which, for sports played on a pitch, is almost always called "home field advantage") is also based on the qualities of the individual stadium and crowd; the advantage in the NFL can be more than a 4-point difference from the stadium with the least advantage to the stadium with the most. Strength of schedule Strength of schedule refers to the quality of a team's opponents. A win against an inferior opponent is usually seen less favorably than a win against a superior opponent. Often teams in the same league, who are compared against each other for championship or playoff consideration, have not played the same opponents. Therefore, judging their relative win–loss records is complicated. The college football playoff committee uses a limited strength-of-schedule algorithm that only considers opponents' records and opponents' opponents' records (much like RPI). Points versus wins A key dichotomy among sports rating systems lies in the representation of game outcomes. Some systems store