The Maxwell Ratings will rank the Georgia High School Association's 418 teams throughout the 2017 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:
- Rome is the latest team to lead the state in the ratings. The Wolves dominated Buford, the previously highest rated team, by a score of 45-7 in the Class AAAAA semifinals. If Rome finishes on top they will be the first team not from the highest classification other than Buford to top the ratings since 2006 when Northside of Warner Robins did it. Buford finished on top in 2007, 2010, and 2013.
- Lowndes and Cartersville still lead their classifications in the ratings, although neither is certain to remain the top team after the state championship games. At this point, the only leaders that are probably safe are Rome and Eagle's Landing Christian, both of which have significant leads over the next highest rated team. If either are upset in the finals, the computer will view those results as just that -- an upset.
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 0.08%.
For the current season, the ratings accurately account for the winner of 2,084 of 2,262 total games including 0 tie(s) (92.13%) and accurately reflect approximately 68.3% of all game margins within 12.89 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: 1.01
By Class
All-Class
Classification rankings are shown in [brackets]. Each team links to its page at the Georgia High School Football Historians Association.
†-Plays non-region schedule
Regions
Each region is shown with its “Competitive Rating”, which 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.
