Even if the table is being sorted into ranking order, ExGrunt's approach is better, because Sprogget's approach will not put the '=' in the right places. For example:
.....A...... B
1 Team A 1
2 Team B 2
3 Team C 2
4 Team D 2
5 Team E 3
You would expect to see an = in lines 2, 3 and 4. But by only comparing each line with the line above, Sprogget's approach would only result in an '=' in lines 3 and 4. ExGrunts approach takes each line in turn and produces of count of the number of ranks with the same value and compares it to 1. So lines 1 and 5 will not have an = because only 1 line has the same rank in each case, lines 2, 3 and 4 will, because the count will be 3 in each case.