The Maxwell Ratings will rank Georgia's 417 teams throughout the 2015 season. The ratings are based entirely on historical performance and on field results and do not consider personnel changes on the roster or coaching staffs.

Interesting results from this past week:

- Relatively little movement in the ratings this week.  Clinch County jumped from tenth to fourth in Class A with a 30-16 win over previously undefeated Turner County and in Class AAAAA Jones County's 24-17 defeat of previously undefeated Houston County boosted them from fifteenth to eighth while Northgate rose to fifth after improving to 7-0 for only the second time in the school's history.

- Using the matchup ratings for each game (see the bottom of the post for the top matchups of the regular season), it's possible to determine which teams offer the best regular seasons to their fans.  The matchup ratings favor games with highly rated and closely matched opponents and so is a combination of each team's rating and their schedule strength. By this method, Lowndes comes in as the best team to follow.  Not only do their fans get to watch the Class AAAAAA #9 Viking week in and week out, but their opponents include all Region 1-AAAAAA teams (#1 Colquitt County, #6 Camden County, and #14 Lee County) as well as probable region 5-AAAAAA and 2-AAAAAA champions #3 Roswell and #13 Newton.

Below are the top regular seasons for each class.

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 4.61%.

For the current season, the ratings accurately account for the winner of 1,378 of 1,480 total games including 1 tie(s) (93.14%) and accurately reflect approximately 68.3% of all game margins within 12.62 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.

Visit the Maxwell Ratings for more ratings and information, including Maxwell's Georgia High School Football Archive.

Home Advantage: 2.19

By Class

All-Class

Classification rankings are shown in [brackets]. Each team links to its page at the Georgia High School Football Historians Association. Please submit errors or omissions through their forums.

Regions

Each region is shown with its “Competitive Rating”, which is the rating required to win 80% of all games against the region’s teams in an infinite round robin competition, and its “Average Rating”, which 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.