No, but that doesn't mean they are harmless.  I can cite at least one example of a team cancelling a Week 11 game last year and replacing with a stronger team in an attempt to improve its SOS.  Should teams run up the score, not knowing if/how much margin of victory impacts their rating?  Wouldn't it be better if the factors and weighting of those factors going into the rating was known and transparent, so that teams could plan their schedule accordingly?  Does it matter that the ratings cannot be verified for accuracy? (since no one ever makes an error when thousands of bits of data are input into a system).  Or wouldn't it just be better if we had large districts and playoff qualification was based on head-to-head, round-robin competition, like numerous other southern states? 

Problem is that with the formula being unknown we don't know for sure that any factors are even in play  For all we know the FHSAA hand picks every team based on something completely random  It's not like we could check the formula and be sure of it so we will continue to have a system that lacks transparency and that will make it impossible for us to actually judge what is being used to determine the postseason  Basically seems the key to making the playoffs is buy easy wins and luck out with a crappy district and you can go to the playoffs easily every year 

So your saying teams should wait until AFTER they get screwed out of a playoff spot to speak up on a system that we 1) have no idea what goes into the formula and 2) have no way to double check the results to make sure the FHSAA didn't screw up inputting the correct information 

Except there are numerous examples of team with a weaker SOS being ranked above a team with the same record.  Which makes even less sense, so clearly there are some other factors involved.  Of course we will never know what these factors are since the formula is more closely guarded than the secret recipe for the original Kentucky Fried Chicken.  The defenders of these rankings can say what they want, but agree with you on your assessment of this system.

Legit question:   do these rankings mean anything (anything at all) until the final rankings come out after the games are played the final week of the season?