Today’s interviewee is Loren Maxwell, founder of the Georgia High School Football Historians Association and creator of the computer Maxwell Ratings. Maxwell discusses big offseason news at the GHSFHA and his preseason projections that have run each day this week in GHSF Daily.
Loren Maxwell, founder of GHSFHA and creator of the Maxwell Ratings
1. The GHSFHA now has scores from Tennessee and South Carolina. How did that come about? “It started last December with a discussion with David Parker of the Alabama High School Football Historical Society, who had already researched Mississippi and had added the Tennessee data from the work of Josh Easter at the Tennessee Prep Football Database. The possibility of a merger came up, and we agreed to work toward that goal with incorporating the Tennessee data into the GHSFHA site prior to the season and looking at the Alabama and Mississippi data after the season. Once that was successful, I reached out to Dave Pickren of the South Carolina high school football history site and asked if he also wanted to join, and fortunately he was already looking to do something with his website, and so everything just fell into place.” [So when a Georgia school such as Calhoun plays McCallie of Chattanooga, a simple click on McCallie shows that program’s scores and history.]
2. What’s GHSFHA’s long-term realistic goal regarding other states? “For now the goal is just to incorporate David Parker’s Alabama and Mississippi data, which would give the site five states. However, I’m open to including other states if there is an existing site with large amounts of data, a person with a large amount of data looking to put it online or a group of researchers willing to research a particular state. Given that all the current states are in the Southeast, it would make the most sense to expand next to North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky, etc., although I’d be open to working with anyone who can help put another state on the site. But if we just settle with five and make the site the best source for those five states, then we’ve already far surpassed any expectation of what the GHSFHA would one day become.”
3. Anything else new on the GHSFHA site completed this offseason? “I usually try to improve the site in various ways each offseason. Aside from some backend changes, the site now has a new URL structure and a new menu and search system, which hopefully make it easier to navigate and to link to as well as improve the search results.”
4. GHSF Daily is running your preseason rankings this week and next. Teams that had surprisingly good seasons last year, like River Ridge and Collins Hill, are not in the preseason top 10, which probably surprises fans not familiar with the methodology. How do you find the right balance between last year’s results and previous years in the preseason? “The preseason ratings are essentially a weighted average of each team’s historical ratings with more recent seasons carrying more weight and also with more typical seasons carrying more weight. So while the system does consider that River Ridge and Collins Hill recently had a good season, it is also considering their recent season is not their norm, and so overall it expects them to return more to their typical level. If one of those schools has a series of highly rated seasons, then the ratings would start to expect them to be able to maintain that level for future seasons and it would reflect in their preseason ratings. Fortunately, the preseason ratings taper off after a few games, and if either of those schools is able to maintain their performance from last year the ratings will quickly reflect that as well.”
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