How To Maximize Your Team's Ranking

Ned Freeman has parlayed his love for high school sports into a system... (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)

The MaxPreps Freeman Rankings

MaxPreps National and State Freeman Ratings are the result of our collection of enormous amounts of information from teams throughout the country and the application of a computer model developed by Maxpreps associate Ned Freeman. The most important thing to understand about how the ratings system works is that it is 100% objective.

The size of the schools, their division, the league they're in, how good the school or league are historically, their geographic location, how well liked the school is, how good the league is in other sports do not matter and therefore, none of these factors are programmed into the system. Those subjective factors inevitably bias humans saddled with the daunting task of trying to figure out who the best teams in the nation, in a state, or a region really are?

Instead, Ned's system just takes into account the facts. Cold, hard, and unfeeling fact - but as accurate, objective and fair as possible.

How It Works!
(A brief explanation of the factors that affect the MaxPreps Rankings system...)

MaxPreps uses a computer program to determine team rank. We do not poll coaches, sportswriters, or fans. Nor does Maxpreps staff make any judgments on the merits of any individual team. Prior season history, school size, and comments on message boards are not considered in the MaxPreps

The system utilizes the huge number of game results stored in the MaxPreps database. Generally, the more a team wins the higher the ranking, but the system takes into account quality wins (against other highly ranked opponents) and strength of schedule.

For example, a team's ranking is hurt more by losing to a team that is ranked below them versus a team ranked ahead.

Other factors that will affect the rankings are times when MaxPreps has incomplete or inaccurate information. Maxpreps will correct errors when they are reported to us. If Maxpreps is  missing a score, report it to them on the team's MaxPreps page. If they are missing a game on the schedule, send Maxpreps a correction request.

Generally, the more games that are played the more accurate the rankings, so if a team that you perceive as being very strong has played substantially fewer games than other ranked teams it may reflect the fact that Maxpreps has less data to work with.

Playoff games are weighed 2.1 times what a regular season game is.

Movement indicates the up or down movement within the rankings when compared to Maxprep's previously published rankings.

MaxPreps football rankings are updated once a week, other sports will be updated three times a week during the sport season.