09/30/19 – Official KHSAA RPI Rankings Unveiled

September 30, 2019 2019-2020 News Releases

Print

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 30, 2019

The first official KHSAA Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) Rankings are now available on the Association’s website (https://khsaa.org/rpi-ratings-percentage-index/) following a thorough development and implementation process. Approved by the Board of Control in January of 2018, the RPI will be incorporated into the football competition rules as a means of seeding Rounds 3, 4, 5. The RPI is simply an informational tool in the other team sports and is provided as a means to increase publicity, interest and promotion.

“It has been an important period the last few weeks experimenting with output formats and screen layouts, while determining what documents were needed to ensure both transparency and replicability. We have continually stressed that as the only official results source, any other data outside of our website should be regarded with skepticism,” said KHSAA Commissioner Julian Tackett. “We are very thankful to our friends with the Colorado High School Athletic Association who have been invaluable in troubleshooting our implementation questions. From the beginning, our goal was to internalize this project and not outsource to third parties in order to avoid creating duplicate reporting for our schools and opportunities for confusion.”

“Our office is uniquely positioned to implement the RPI Rankings in Kentucky high school sports because of our membership requirement to enter schedules and scores on the KHSAA/Riherds.com Scoreboard. The RPI is fully integrated with the Scoreboard, allowing for accurate and updated rankings on an hourly basis,” said KHSAA Communications Director Joe Angolia. “As our programmer and database consultant, Frank Riherd has made literally hundreds of trials and calculations to ensure accuracy in this system and we appreciate his commitment to this endeavor.”

RPI is used to measure a team’s strength relative to other teams, based largely on the strength of their schedules (margin of victory is not a factor). RPI is calculated from the team’s Winning Percentage (WP), the Opponent’s Winning Percentage (OWP) and the Opponents’ Opponents’ Winning Percentage (OOWP). These three components are combined to produce the RPI using the following formula: RPI = (WP * WPVAL) + (OWP * OWPVAL) + (OOWP * OOWPVAL).

The KHSAA has adopted its RPI using the following final calculation:

• WPVAL shall be .35 (or 35 percent)
• OWPVAL shall be .35 (or 35 percent)
• OOWPVAL shall be .30 (or 30 percent)

For football only, a game value factor is included in each WP calculation as described in the football calculation example. The game value factor is based on the class of the team being played for each calculation and is only relevant to instate games. This weighting is based on a 15% difference for the game value as class sizes become larger. Those game value factors are:

• 1A = 1.323
• 2A = 1.521
• 3A = 1.749
• 4A = 2.011
• 5A = 2.313
• 6A = 2.660

Multiple resources have been posted at KHSAA.org to help answer questions and explain the process, including an FAQ document (https://khsaa.org/rpi-faq-and-what-ifs/) and a complete list of the steps involved in calculating the RPI (https://khsaa.org/rpi-calculation-steps/). For those interested in fully examining the process, a detailed breakdown of how each game factors into a team’s RPI is provided at https://khsaa.org/resources/RPI/rpiexample2018fbapb.pdf. The detailed example uses Ashland Blazer’s 2018 football schedule to show how each game, opponent and opponent’s opponent factors into establishing the team’s final RPI Ranking.

“While some coaches may argue about this piece or that piece, this poll or that poll, or whichever system would benefit them more than others, in the end, this project will result in people talking about high school sports which is always good. That discussion will lead to continual fine tuning to make the participation opportunities optimal for all involved,” added Tackett. “It is our hope that by laying out all the calculations and being completely transparent with the results, we provide a good publicity tool for our sports, a means for districts in all team sports to potentially break ties in standings, and of course, address the idea to revise the bracketing in football to peak interest in championship play during the playoffs, which was the original request.”

The RPI standings for all sports will update on an hourly basis during the year and will be considered final on the last day of the regular season.

– KHSAA –

About the Kentucky High School Athletic Association
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association was organized in 1917 and is the agency designated by the Kentucky Department of Education to manage high school athletics in the Commonwealth. The Association is a voluntary nonprofit 501(c)3 organization made up of 280 member schools both public and non-public. The KHSAA awards 215 state championships to 51 teams and 164 individuals in 13 sports and 6 sport-activities, funds catastrophic insurance coverage for its more than 106,000 rostered member school student-athletes, provides coaching education and sports safety programs for more than 12,000 coaches, and licenses and facilitates the distribution of training material for over 4,000 contest officials.

Print