The Maxwell Ratings will rank the Georgia High School Association's 422 teams throughout the 2018 season. The ratings are based entirely on historical performance and on field results and do not consider personnel changes on the player roster or coaching staff.
Interesting results:
- Colquitt County is rated just shy of two touchdowns and a field goal better than their nearest competitor, Grayson. While the playoffs have yet to start and the Parkers are, at best, only two-thirds of the way through the season, they’ve dominated Class AAAAAAA to the point where the computer gives them a 74.6% chance to walk away with the title (assuming Tift County as the At-Large seed).
But perhaps more interesting than if they are the best team in the state is whether they are the best Packer team in history. At this point -- not quite. Coach Rush Propst’s 2015 version is rated slightly higher (104.89 vs 104.60) as is Jim Hughes’ 1994 outfit (104.69 vs 104.60). But a strong showing over the next five games could easily make this year’s team the best to ever emerge from Moultrie.
- Similarly, Lee County, nearly *three* touchdowns and a field goal better than Class AAAAAA #2 Creekview and an 83.5% favorite to win it all, has probably secured their highest rating ever regardless of what happens in the playoffs. They are rated over five points better than their 2005 incarnation, a 10-2 squad in one of the toughest regions in the state and featuring Class AAAA Offensive Player of the Year D’Vontrey Richardson.
Maxwell GHSA Football Ratings
As this season's games are played, the Maxwell Ratings will be based on a modified logistic regression of the current football season's results in combination with each team's historical performance. More recent games and games against similarly rated opponents carry more weight and the weight of each team's historical performance diminishes as the team's season progresses.
The current total weight of all team's historical performance is 0.14%.
For the current season, the ratings accurately account for the winner of 1,928 of 2,062 total games including 0 tie(s) (93.50%) and accurately reflect approximately 68.3% of all game margins within 13.65 points.
The ratings are scaled so that 100.00 is the rating required to win 91.5% of all games in an infinite round robin tournament against all teams in the highest classification. The schedule strength is the rating required to win 50% of all games in an infinite round robin tournament against a particular team's opponents.
All data is courtesy of the Georgia High School Football Historians Association.
The Maxwell Ratings are a regular feature of Georgia High School Football Daily, a free e-mail newsletter. To join the mailing list, click here.
Home Advantage: 1.33
By Class
All-Class
Classification rankings are shown in [brackets]. Each team links to its page at the Georgia High School Football Historians Association.
Regions
Each region is shown with its “Competitive Rating”, which is the Competitive Rating is the rating required for a new team to that region to have a chance of going undefeated in a round robin schedule among region teams equal to the chance of being selected region champion if picked at random. For example, there are four teams in 1-AAAAAAA, so the chance of a new team being region champion if picked at random is 1 / (4 + 1) = 20%. Therefore the Competitive Rating is the rating required to go undefeated in a round robin tournament among region teams 20% of the time. This rating favors regions with larger numbers of highly rated teams. The “Average Rating” is the rating required to win 50% of all games against the region’s teams in an infinite round robin competition.
Least Likely Results
These are the least likely results of the season using the ratings above. These may change as the season progresses. Each row shows the game data, the difference in the teams after accounting for the home advantage, the expected winning percentage of the favored team, and the likelihood of the on-field result.
Highest Rated Matchups
These are the highest rated matchups of the season using the ratings above. The game rating is the rating required to win 50% of all games in an infinite round robin competition against the expected rating of the loser of the game, which favors games with highly rated and closely matched opponents. These may change as the season progresses. Each row shows the game rating, the game data, the difference in the teams after accounting for the home advantage, and the expected winning percentage of the favored team.
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