This week let's take a look at the Class A Public rankings from three different sources -- The Extended Standings, the AJC poll, and the GHSA's Class A power ratings.  For the GHSA's rankings, we'll use the Class A power ratings courtesy of CheerTigerDad over on the GAVSV.com Class A forum.

Interestingly, three different teams can claim to be the best Class A public school, depending on where you look.  Let's quickly run down the top contenders to lay claim as the best team in Class A, which will include the three teams from the methods mentioned above plus Lincoln County, the only undefeated Class A Public team outside these three.

In the AJC poll, the top four public teams are:

Their rankings in the GHSA Class A power ratings are (note Commerce is actually #4 and Marion County is #5):

And finally, their order in the Extended Standings is:

Let's consider for a moment to what degree each individual ranking is defensible.  Lincoln County is perhaps the easiest since they are ranked #3 in each method and have not defeated any teams ranked ahead of them.

Next, Marion County's ranking is fairly easy to defend from anywhere #1 to #4.  They are undefeated except for dropping a 21-14 decision to Columbus, a 5-1 Class AAAAA team.

Now note the Class A power ratings place Charlton County at #1, just ahead of Turner County at #2, whereas both the AJC and the Extended Standings have Turner County ranked ahead of Charlton County.  For anyone not already familiar with Class A, the problem with the GHSA's Class A power ratings, which are officially used to seed teams for the playoffs, is that Turner County defeated Charlton County back in Week 6 . . . by a score of 44-0.

However, if the playoffs were to start today, Charlton County would enjoy the easiest bracket and the home advantage all the way through the state finals if not for those games being played in the Georgia Dome.  But by design these privileges are reserved for the best team in the playoffs.

Again, Lincoln County or Marion County might have a defensible claim as the best team, but at this point even the most ardent Charlton County fan could not reasonably believe his team is deserving of the #1 seed from among all public schools, especially over Turner County.

This is not to make a case for that no team can be ranked behind a team it beat.  I don't personally believe that since we all know upsets happen and we're concerned with finding the most deserving teams.

However, the danger in using the Class A power ratings is not of ranking a specific team ahead of a team they lost to, since that can happen using in any method.  Instead the true danger of the Class A power ratings is that they give the façade of mathematical rigor because the calculations are tedious, but they do so in a manner that lacks true mathematical rigor based on sound mathematical principles, such as using a method that employs maximum likelihood.

Any system using maximum likelihood, such as the Extended Standings, would either have Turner County ahead of Charlton County or could point to some other credible evidence that Charlton County is still superior in spite of the result of their matchup.

Games I'm Tracking:

I'm retiring this section since I feel like I'm at risk of rehashing the same points each week by focusing on the same handful of games.  Instead, I'll be using the comments section to explore the season more in depth, just as with above.

However, if you've found some interesting results by exploring the spreadsheet on your own, post them in the comments section for discussion. Or if you have any other games you’d like me to look at, by all means let me know!

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 7.  Games 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: 753.028587546

Solution converged in 1,265 iterations