By no means should these ratings be confused with the NCAA polls, or any other rating system. While we know that selection committee members do pay attention to our ratings, we do not encourage the use of our ratings for selection criteria for the playoffs. TER is a very complicated formula.
Teams earn bonus points for each category that they perform better than their opponents.
Winning percentage is pretty obvious - we total up all opponents winning percentage. Conference rating is a value based on conference average TER rating. Thus if a team plays in a stonger conference, the value of that opponent is larger than playing a team in a weak conference. Game location is also pretty obvious. If you beat team on the road, you get additional points.