Help me understand new FL classifications and playoffs please.

[Rattlin Steele]

Like I'm a 5 year old.  Just haven't had time to keep up with it.  

I understand the current classifications with big change being Metro and Suburban and champs awarded for each.  The population thing throws me, because comparing a 3M to a 3S for instance, you know the 3M has a much bigger population. 

I assume they're still using some rating system for playoff seedings?  Wouldn't it need to account for that?   

[Perspective]

Here's a short answer:

Metro has four classifications (1-4).  Suburban also has four classifications.  Because, by definition, Metro contains all the high [density] population counties, the schools are, for the most part, going to be larger.  But, it doesn't matter.  At the end of year, come playoff time, the teams in the Metro classifications will only play other teams in their Metro classification and teams in the Suburban classifications will only play other teams in their Suburban classification.   Or, to put it another way, unless a Metro team from any classification plays a team from any Suburban classification during the regular season, they won't be playing them.  So, you don't have to worry about a 3M team playing a 3S in the playoffs -- that ain't going to happen. 

At the end of the year, there will be 9 state champions:  the four from Metro, the four from Suburban and the one Rural.  And all the fans and board posters from the four Metro champs will claim that they are the true state champ because they could whip any of the four Suburban champs.  And Jesse will still claim that Madison could beat all of them. 

As far as who makes the playoffs, within each classification, there are four regions.  Each region contains four districts.  The four district champs make the playoffs and then the four teams within the region, regardless of district, with the highest MaxPreps power ranking also make the playoffs.  District champs host the first game; after that, the host is the team with the highest power ranking as of the end of the regular season (I think) all the way until the Championship Game.

Hope this helps.     

[PinellasFB]

I was totally against this because I thought it would unfairly put the strong private schools almost exclusively in the metro classifications (which it did) and totally screw the overwhelming majority of have-not teams within the metro districts.  However, after seeing some of the new districts, it doesnt look too bad.  There are a few teams that got royally screwed in their district assignments but you can say that happened before too.  I guess I will have to see how the playoffs play out before I make my final opinion on this. 

One change I did like was the replacing the RPI with the maxpreps ranking for RPI bids.   I dont know the formula for the maxpreps rankings but they seem much more in tune with the actual teams than RPI formula, which I was familiar with and hated as a mathematician.  There's no perfect formula of course but there are really bad ones and RPI was as basic a model as you could ever come up with. 

[Dr. D]

If you're wondering how the MaxPreps football rankings work, here is their explanation.  It will be a little different since Florida has supposedly factored out the margin of victory.  I'm hoping someone with a mathematics background can explain it to the rest of us.

How the MaxPreps football rankings work - MaxPreps

[DisabledAccount]

3 hours ago, PinellasFB said:

I was totally against this because I thought it would unfairly put the strong private schools almost exclusively in the metro classifications (which it did) and totally screw the overwhelming majority of have-not teams within the metro districts.  However, after seeing some of the new districts, it doesnt look too bad.  There are a few teams that got royally screwed in their district assignments but you can say that happened before too.  I guess I will have to see how the playoffs play out before I make my final opinion on this. 

One change I did like was the replacing the RPI with the maxpreps ranking for RPI bids.   I dont know the formula for the maxpreps rankings but they seem much more in tune with the actual teams than RPI formula, which I was familiar with and hated as a mathematician.  There's no perfect formula of course but there are really bad ones and RPI was as basic a model as you could ever come up with. 

My concern with the MaxPreps rankings is that teams who start low are already at a disadvantage when it comes to seeding based on rankings that are a dumpster fire in the preseason

 

At least the RPI was entirely based on the field during the season and isn't influencing the seeding based on a preseason ranking 

[Perspective]

1 hour ago, ColumbiaHighFan2017class said:

My concern with the MaxPreps rankings is that teams who start low are already at a disadvantage when it comes to seeding based on rankings that are a dumpster fire in the preseason

 

At least the RPI was entirely based on the field during the season and isn't influencing the seeding based on a preseason ranking 

Kind of like pre-season rankings.  

At least with the power ratings, the process should sort itself out by the final week of the season.  

[DisabledAccount]

7 minutes ago, Perspective said:

Kind of like pre-season rankings.  

At least with the power ratings, the process should sort itself out by the final week of the season.  

But we see this with the college football rankings

 

Teams who start high are given an advantage with no results to back the decision up 

 

It's all opinion and an "opinion" in June shouldn't have any impact on seeding or playoff positioning in November

[PinellasFB]

4 hours ago, Dr. D said:

If you're wondering how the MaxPreps football rankings work, here is their explanation.  It will be a little different since Florida has supposedly factored out the margin of victory.  I'm hoping someone with a mathematics background can explain it to the rest of us.

How the MaxPreps football rankings work - MaxPreps

Hmm that wasnt exactly clear.  I didnt expect them to give out their proprietary formula but they didnt exactly clarify a couple of things, one of which is how do all the teams start with a rating in their state rankings when they all supposedly start at 0.0?  I was confused by that and maybe need to read it again.  One concerning thing to me is FL forcing them to remove the margin of victory from their formula.  Doing this has always broken any statistical relative strength power rankings algorithm because MOV has always been an important factor, if not THE most important measure in determining a team's relative strength.  Administrators fear this encourages running up the score against weak opponents but you get no bonus for beating a weakling by more points than taking a knee or running out the clock in a blowout due to diminishing returns against weaker opponents.  Instead, you are much more greatly rewarded for beating a great team by 10 than a weakling by 50 or even 7 points. 

Maxpreps is now forced to use the Elo Chess version of their model and it will not be as accurate without MOV but it still should be orders of magnitude better than RPI.

[DisabledAccount]

52 minutes ago, PinellasFB said:

Hmm that wasnt exactly clear.  I didnt expect them to give out their proprietary formula but they didnt exactly clarify a couple of things, one of which is how do all the teams start with a rating in their state rankings when they all supposedly start at 0.0?  I was confused by that and maybe need to read it again.  One concerning thing to me is FL forcing them to remove the margin of victory from their formula.  Doing this has always broken any statistical relative strength power rankings algorithm because MOV has always been an important factor, if not THE most important measure in determining a team's relative strength.  Administrators fear this encourages running up the score against weak opponents but you get no bonus for beating a weakling by more points than taking a knee or running out the clock in a blowout due to diminishing returns against weaker opponents.  Instead, you are much more greatly rewarded for beating a great team by 10 than a weakling by 50 or even 7 points. 

Maxpreps is now forced to use the Elo Chess version of their model and it will not be as accurate without MOV but it still should be orders of magnitude better than RPI.

That's the thing 

 

They don't, it's gonna be like the CFB rankings where teams who start higher will have an advantage

 

Say Columbia and Pine Forest both go undefeated in the regular season with Columbia having a slightly better SOS but because pine Forest started significantly higher they will finish higher and host the region 1 playoffs because some computer ranking didn't rank Columbia correctly in preseason

 

At least in the RPI the teams are treated as equals at the state and are judged based on that season, they aren't handing out a boost to teams because MaxPreps computer rankings relying on last year results make a bad assumption on a team 

 

That alone makes this WORSE than the RPI 

[PinellasFB]

22 minutes ago, ColumbiaHighFan2017class said:

That's the thing 

 

They don't, it's gonna be like the CFB rankings where teams who start higher will have an advantage

 

Say Columbia and Pine Forest both go undefeated in the regular season with Columbia having a slightly better SOS but because pine Forest started significantly higher they will finish higher and host the region 1 playoffs because some computer ranking didn't rank Columbia correctly in preseason

 

At least in the RPI the teams are treated as equals at the state and are judged based on that season, they aren't handing out a boost to teams because MaxPreps computer rankings relying on last year results make a bad assumption on a team 

 

That alone makes this WORSE than the RPI 

In most statistical models, the initial ratings are just starting weights (seeds if you will) to get the model going that diminish in weight each week until enough teams play each other over the course of the season to give true relevance and the starting seedings are no longer needed.  The final rankings will then be completely based upon this year's results and will have no benefit or detriment based upon where you were initially seeded.  I assume the maxpreps model is this way and they just didnt mention that detail where the initial ranking will not have any effect on the final ranking.

[DisabledAccount]

3 hours ago, PinellasFB said:

In most statistical models, the initial ratings are just starting weights (seeds if you will) to get the model going that diminish in weight each week until enough teams play each other over the course of the season to give true relevance and the starting seedings are no longer needed.  The final rankings will then be completely based upon this year's results and will have no benefit or detriment based upon where you were initially seeded.  I assume the maxpreps model is this way and they just didnt mention that detail where the initial ranking will not have any effect on the final ranking.

I hope your right but if it's the true MaxPreps formula I've seen plenty of examples of teams finish lower than a team they beat head to head because one team was ranked significantly higher at the start 

 

We won't see until it's in practice though so maybe it works itself out but I would have preferred a system that doesn't give a team a set advantage at the beginning because of a wonky preseason ranking

[PinellasFB]

1 hour ago, ColumbiaHighFan2017class said:

I hope your right but if it's the true MaxPreps formula I've seen plenty of examples of teams finish lower than a team they beat head to head because one team was ranked significantly higher at the start 

 

We won't see until it's in practice though so maybe it works itself out but I would have preferred a system that doesn't give a team a set advantage at the beginning because of a wonky preseason ranking

All statistical models can present power values lesser for a team that beat another team.  It's actually why a stat model is better than human judgement because humans over value things like head to head results, which sounds counter intuitive in relating two teams against each other, but a power ranking is truly a full body of work and not just head to head results.  Sometimes one team might be a match up nightmare for a more powerful team, for example, but in general the head-to-head loser is actually more powerful.  A perfect example is the Bucs vs Saints.  The Saints are just the worst possible matchup for the Bucs and sweep them annually but the Bucs are an overall more powerful team that advances further in the playoffs (under Tom Brady).