When adopted in 2026, GHSA’s ranking system will create its own problems

It also slotted the teams into the brackets solely by region finish rather than seed them 1-32. That often has meant that top-10 teams met in the second round, or that de facto state championship games were played in the quarterfinals.

But, in October, the association’s Executive Committee voted nearly unanimously to change the system with the intent of ensuring that the playoffs not only are comprised of the most deserving teams in the state, but also that they’re seeded 1-32.

Region champions will earn automatic berths. After that, the 24 highest-ranked non-champions, as judged by the GHSA’s Post Season Rankings (PSR) score, will complete the bracket, no matter where they finish in their region. All regular-season games — not just region games — will factor equally. The smaller classifications already use PSR to a degree to seed and select their teams.

Here’s the problem. PSR comes with obvious flaws.

The primary one is that its only components are a team’s winning percentage, its opponents’ winning percentage, the opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage, and where games are played (home/road/neutral).

In PSR, if a Class 6A team and a Class A team have the same winning percentage and opponents’ winning percentage, the scoring benefit of beating either is the same. Margin of victory or head-to-head results also are not factors.

Class 6A Lowndes illustrates this shortcoming well. If PSR were being used this year, the Vikings would be the No. 2 seed with a 9-1 record. Teams behind them would include Grayson, which is 10-0 against a schedule arguably more rigorous than Lowndes’, and Valdosta, which finished 9-1 with the same region record as Lowndes and also beat the Vikings head to head.

Lowndes is No. 2 in no small part because of two home wins over teams from smaller classifications — Class 4A Kell and Class 3A Jenkins — that are a combined 17-3. They’re both exceptional, but as teams with significantly smaller enrollments, they played the Vikings at marked disadvantages and the one-sided losses were not a surprise.

In no small part because of those non-region home wins over smaller-classification schools that went on to have excellent seasons, Lowndes had a high winning percentage score and also the classification’s third-highest opponents’ winning percentage score, two of the three major components of the PSR formula. For that matter, Lowndes could have played a Class A team and enjoyed the same boost, so long as that team had a high winning percentage.

Compare that with another non-region game played by a different Class 6A power, Douglas County. The Tigers played at 6A powerhouse Buford and lost by eight points, a notable accomplishment given that the Wolves went 10-0 in the regular season and won their games by an average margin of 38.8 points.

It’s an easy argument to make that a one-possession road loss to a juggernaut in the largest classification is a more impressive result than one-sided wins over opponents from lower classifications.

But by PSR, it’s the opposite. Losing to mighty Buford — even by a close margin — was comparatively detrimental for Douglas County.

You don’t have to be a supporter of Douglas County to agree that the incoming system is flawed.

When it becomes the rule next year, situations like Lowndes’ seem destined to happen. (This is no slight whatsoever to Lowndes, which under the present system gained no seeding benefit from playing Kell or Jenkins.) It will continue to include less deserving teams and seed teams improperly.

Teams and athletes that work months for a shot at state championships deserve the best feasible system, one that at least that takes into account factors such as margin of victory and does a better job of determining an opponent’s strength.

The PSR system almost certainly will create additional problems, such as schools trying to game the system by playing lower-classification schools that a) they’re likely to beat; b) are strong enough within their classes that they can give them a PSR boost.

No system is perfect. But some are better than others. It would have behooved the GHSA’s Executive Committee, or the reclassification committee which proposed the measure, to choose a rankings formula that takes more into consideration than winning percentage and game location.

One such formula is recommended by Loren Maxwell, founder of the Georgia High School Football Historians Association. Full disclosure: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution uses his Maxwell Ratings system in our high school sports coverage.

Maxwell contends that his Extended Standings model is more accurate in identifying the most deserving teams. It incorporates all results into a network that helps provide a more nuanced ranking. In that model, the significance of who a team beats or loses to is defined by much more than what that team’s winning percentage (and its opponents’ winning percentage) is.

It surely has its own shortcomings. It’s not easily understood in the way that PSR is, for instance. But it would be an improvement. And for the objective of providing the most even playing field possible for the state’s playoff teams, that’s an easy call.