Heuristic rules may be devised to allow for this possibility, but some discretion seems necessary. I would like to demonstrate one kind of ranking now available in the public domain. Most other computer systems are secret or proprietary, but this one has been presented to several meetings of the American Statistical Association and mentioned in the 11 November 1991 issue of Sports Illustrated, as well as on pp 55-58 of the latest issues of NCAA Football. In order to meet the wins and margins conditions, we first grade all scores according to a formula. The payoff is clearly diminishing.
Losses are worth one minus the grade of the winner.
An iterative procedure eventually produces the ranking in minutes on a personal computer according to an otherwise standard method of pairwise comparisons published at least 40 years ago. Estimates are then converted to a logistic scale corresponding to a standard deviation of 15. The above system meets all the required conditions from October to the end of the season, except for championships. Any team within 1.8 points of the leader automatically shares in a cochampionship, and other teams within 3.0 points of the leader share at my discretion. Championships have been awarded on this basis by the Foundation for the Analysis of Competitions and Tournaments since the 1970s, and retroactive to 1968.