Not all conferences and schedules are created equally. Therefore, using just wins and losses to rank teams has been proven an ineffective and quite frankly an outdated method.
Football fans in Louisiana are used to these power rankings. They are used to determine playoff seeds in Louisiana. Meanwhile, Arkansas still uses conference win percentage and tiebreaker points like they have since the old days. But...Math is hard, right?
Wins still matter A LOT. Wins are worth 10 points each no matter who you beat. They are the #1 factor, as they should be.
Playing tougher competition should be encouraged. These power rankings reward teams who schedule other teams that win. To calculate these points, you simply multiply your opponent's win percentage by 10. WARNING: Math ahead!
Ex. 1) An opponent that is 4-1 would have a win percentage of .8. So, the points rewarded would be 8 because 4/5 = .8, .8 x 10 = 8.0.
Ex. 2) If your opponent had been 1-4 instead, that would have only been worth 2 points because 1/5 = .2, .2 x 10 = 2.0.
So, scheduling tough opponents that like to win is rewarded, as it should be.
These power rankings also reward teams that play against teams from higer classifications. Each classification up is worth 2 points.
Ex. 1) A 2A team that plays a 5A team, would receive 6 bonus points no matter the outcome because (5 - 2) = 3, 3 x 2 = 6.
Ex. 1) A 3A team that plays a 4A team, would receive 2 bonus points no matter the outcome because (4 - 3) = 1, 1 x 2 = 2.
Note: Playing down does not punish a team. They just miss out on these potential bonus points.
Each game has an associated power ranking (PR). That PR is simply the sum of the three calculations above.
The final PR for a team is the average of that number per game. So, add the PRs from each game for your team, and then divide that number by the total number of games you played. Boom! That's it!
But, Math is hard remember. So, if you want, just let the computers handle the math side and you come back here to check the power rankings to see how your team is doing and to make sure we didn't make a mistake somewhere.
Note: The SF column is Strength Factor, but we will save that conversation for another day. It basically represents a team's strength of schedule and is used as a tiebreaker when head to head matchups do not exist.