St. Paul football gaining national recognition

At this point, the St. Paul football program is used to the public recognition that yearly gets bestowed upon it.

However, the Flyers continued dominating success has caught the eye of a website dedicated to high school football across the nation that uses a “science” or formula if you will to rank teams across the entire country.

As we progress deeper into the second half of the season, the good folks over at ‘Sports Power’ and their formula not only says the Flyers very good, but it says with a month left in the season that St. Paul (6-0) is the third best small school team…in the United States.

The formula they use is very intruiging and interesting in itself.  Active Power Ratings (ARP) are calculated using a proprietary formula by the Power Ratings Engine (PRE). Using a comprehensive database of schedules and scores, ratings are produced and then used to rank different groups of teams. All teams start even at the beginning of the season and past season performance has no influence on the ratings. The program is unbiased because it has no knowledge of favorites or underdogs. A minimum of five or six game results per team are required in order for the PRE to evaluate the strength of the teams.

For example, based on past game scores, if two teams played each other on a neutral field the margin of victory or loss will, on average, be equal to the difference in power rating between these two teams. Power ratings are based on 'trends' in the data where past performance is used to predict future performance. Power ratings are meant to serve as a baseline for ranking teams when only game results are the criteria.

Due to limited data, early season ratings are less meaningful than end of season ratings. The more data you have to analyze the more accurate are the results. It can take more than 10,000 iterations before determining the final ratings. Once the ratings are calculated, derived quantities are computed based on the power ratings. As an example, strength of schedule is computed based on the average Power Ratings of opponents. Other derived quantities including Rating Percentage Index (RPI), Quality Wins, etc. are also computed based on Active Power Ratings.

There are four categories that teams across the states are broken down into: Mid Division, Large Division, Mega Division and Small Division. With an enrollment of less than 100 boys, St. Paul is obviously slotted into the smallest division possible.

To check out where the Flyers stand or any other local teams, you can visit Sports Power's website at http://www.fp.tv/