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 roster or coaching staffs.
Interesting results:
- In a rematch of last season’s Class A - Public championship, Irwin County upended region rival Clinch County 21-3 to take the lead as the highest rated team in that classification. The Indians had also defeated the Panthers 21-7 in last year’s regular season match, only to have Clinch County down them in the title game 21-12. A rematch in the championship game would be interesting. Currently there is an 8.8% the two teams will meet again in the finals, but a 64.1% chance they meet in a semifinal bracket.
- For the third week in a row, Colquitt County down a traditional Southern high school football power by an impressive margin, this time Warner Robins to the tune of 41-14. The 27-point “nail-biter” was the Packers’ closest game this season and pushed their rating upward slightly. Meanwhile Grayson suffered through a lackluster 21-15 defeat of Westlake, causing the computer to question the Rams. The ratings say the Packers are over a touchdown favorite in this weekend’s pairing of the two. This also appears to be the best matchup of the regular season and there’s an 18.0% chance it will serve as a preview of the title game.
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 26.63%.
For the current season, the ratings accurately account for the winner of 764 of 805 total games including 0 tie(s) (94.91%) and accurately reflect approximately 68.3% of all game margins within 13.16 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: 1.83
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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