It's tempting to use this space to present an argument of how the Extended Standings would have done a better job of selecting and seeding this year's playoffs than the region standings or Class A power ratings, but in truth so many teams are invited (46%) there is little chance the most deserving teams are sitting at home.  Perhaps the seeding could be better, but still, given the simplicity and wide acceptance of the region structure, there's a strong argument to be made that the current method is adequate for the current circumstances.

Instead, I'll use this space to highlight once again that the circumstances are changing and the region structure is rapidly becoming untenable.

As elaborated on in Part IX of the Getting it Right series: "the greatest classification challenge facing the GHSA is Georgia's uneven population distribution. Although interest has been renewed with the upcoming Big 44, in truth this is part of an ongoing discussion from since the creation of Class AAAAAA in 2012, if not from a few years before then. The greater the effort to separate the largest schools for the purposes of competitive fairness, the greater the difficulty in maintaining an equitable region alignment for those few geographically-isolated large schools in South Georgia . . . [But] instead of questioning which teams should go in which region, we should be challenging the notion that the GHSA needs a region structure at all, at least for the Big 44."

In the end, the region structure forces inequitable logistic difficulties on isolated schools.  Big 44 schools, especially in South Georgia, would be better served by freely allowing them to make schedules and align themselves with other schools in conferences through a process of self-determination.

And that is where the true value of the Extended Standings or some similar tool can be realized -- Not necessarily because it provides a better answer to the question of "Which teams are deserving of a playoff invitation", but because it frees us from what we've become accustomed to thinking of as a hard constraint in answering the question: That we must have a region structure and all the associated difficulties along with it.

As an analogy, slide rulers gave way to calculators not necessarily because calculators were more accurate (although they were), but because calculators helped us solve more difficult problems.

And making competition equitable for all schools with Georgia's uneven population distribution is going to be a difficult problem for the Big 44.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, especially as to the viability of using the Extended Standings as a replacement for the current Class A power ratings and the idea of doing away with the region structure in Class A since it is not used to determine playoff invitations anyway.  If you're not familiar with these ideas, please read my Getting it Right series, especially Part IX where I outlined some of these ideas.

In the meantime, best of luck to your team!

Extended Standings

All data is courtesy of the Georgia High School Football Historians Association.

Please submit errors or omissions through their forums.

Extended Standings use the results of the season so far to project each team’s record if it were to play every other team, creating a set of "extended" standings between all 417 GHSA teams.

Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet used to calculate this week's Extended Standings is attached here: 2015 Extended Standings - Week 12 can be added, edited, or deleted to see the impact on the Extended Standings.

Brackets

Brackets are built using the Minimum Expected Great Circle Distance.

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Credit: Loren Maxwell

Full Extended Standings

Each team is shown below with it's overall rank, classification rank, seed, classification, actual record, adjusted winning percentage (adjW%), rating, extended wins and losses (xWin and xLoss), and extended winning percentage (xWin%).

Sum of the negative log-likelihood: 1100.611586819

Solution converged in 1,280 iterations