How rankings work
No secret formula, no opinions. Just game scores and a lot of math, in four steps.
Step 1: We start with scores
Every final score in the league, every week. Nothing else: no polls, no guessing.
Step 2: Who you played matters
Beating a strong team counts for more than beating a team that’s still building.
Step 3: We replay games thousands of times
A computer plays a matchup out over and over. That’s where our likely scores come from.
Step 4: New numbers every week
After each week’s games are in, everything updates. Every page shows when and where the scores came from.
Say a team has a 68% win chance
Play that game 3 times and the team wins about 2. It’s not a promise. Upsets happen, and that’s what makes Saturdays fun.
Tough schedules and the range
A tough schedule counts
Two teams with the same record can be a long way apart. A team that has played strong opponents is rated higher than one that has played weaker ones, so we look at who the wins came against, not just how many.
We show a range, not one number
Early in a season, a few games can’t pin a team to one spot. So instead of a single rank, Pro shows how high or low a team could really be, like “could be anywhere from 41st to 55th.” The range narrows as more games are played.
How often we get games right
We’ll show here how often we pick the winner, league by league, once those numbers are published. Until then we’d rather leave the figure out than guess at it.
Projected brackets
For high school, UHSAA seeds teams with a published formula called RPI. Until UHSAA posts its bracket, we show our projection with dashed lines. When the official one arrives, we show how close we got, and keep our projection so you can compare.
Youth leagues (UC, WFFL) post their own brackets, so those are always official.