A B C1 C2 All 11 ManI have been computing ratings for high school and college football for 9 years now. I have tinkered with various formulas to come up with an objective rating system which can help explain why games go the way they do. Although I have been know to place a wager or two on various animals such as dogs and horses, these ratings are most certainly NOT for gambling purposes. In fact, if you desire to bet on high school football, you need to go to gamblers annonymous worse than I could ever explain.
The formula that these ratings are derived on is a combination of the RPI used to help choose the NCAA basketball tournament field and a consideration of victory margins. For those of you who wish to replicate these rankings, I sum the team's own record, their opponent's records and their opponent's opponents records. Then I multipy that sum by 45, the mercy rule level in the small school (8 man) classes. In eleven man footbal, games played against Class B schools are discounted by 25%. Games played against class C schools are discounted 50%. In 8 man football, I do not discount because the differnces in school size tends to be insignificant. (they're all real small.) I then multiply this product by 3, and add in the teams average victory margin (or deficit). This is to give three times the weight to schedule strength as victory margin. Finally, I divide by 3, which usually results in the class A and 8 man champions having ratings near 100. The formula gives you a chance to compare teams across classes. I publish all 11 man and all 8 man ratings to make those comparisons.
The new milleneum is creating an interesting challenge for me, in that I am doing the Nebraska High School Rankings this year from Columbia, Maryland. I am assigned here with my real employer for a one year detail. I will likely be back in Nebraska a couple of times during the football season, around playoff time.
The season is over, and the ratings are complete as posted. In all classes except B, the State Playoff Champion ended up number 1. In general, once again other than in class B, I'm reasonably comfortable with how the ratings came out below number 1 as well. In A, I'd agree that Prep probably should be 2 and Millard West 3, but in truth, the top 3 in A were all quite a bit better than the balance of the state, and a 4 game series among the 3 of them may have ended up with 3 2-2 records.
In class B, one of the big weaknesses in computer ratings shows up. Crete's rating did improve about 15 points during their run to the state title. However, the teams they beat only lost 3 to 5 points. Since Crete started almost 25 rating points behind the top of Class B, they did not make up the diference in the rankings. Cret's success is a strong arguement for leaving the A and B state playoffs at 16 teams. There were teams in Class C1 specifically that may have been able to replicate Crete's run, but did not get in the playoffs. Lincoln Lutheran, in particular, was playing very good football at the end of the year. I note there is a proposal to go back to 32 teams in the lower class playoffs, which may not be a bad idea.
As to my playoff predictions, well, I nailed the finals in C1. That's about it. I didn't look at the major dailies that closely, but I don't think they did much better than 1 out of 6 either. I refer you to my admonition in paragraph 1 of this web page concerning gambling on high school atheletes.
I'd be extremely interested in any comments you have on these ratings. Thank you for looking!
A B C1 C2 D1 D2 All 8 Man All 11 Man 2000 Rankings. All class 1999 Nebraska 11 Man Footabll Rankings D1, D2 Six Man All 8 man 1999 Rankings. 1997 HS Football Rankings
A B C1 C2 All 11 Man
D1 Gridiron Conference D2 All 8 man Six Man
Final 1996 Nebraska High School 11 Man Rankings
Final 1996 Nebraska High School 8 and 6 Man Rankings
