RATINGS FIXES   (Season Scaling)


The easiest change to explain, the purpose of this fix was simply to get all seasons on the same scale to allow for comparisons across-years.  As many of our site visitors had noticed and voiced displeasure about, a bit of "grade inflation" had happened in recent years.  We've now corrected the issue and made the change retroactively, so all seasons are now on a single scale.  This will allow you to know, for example, that a team rated a 47.2 in 2005 and a team rated a 47.2 in 2013 were equally "good", in terms of how they compared to the rest of the country.

One thing to bear in mind is that you will still see some pretty crazy looking pre-season ratings every year, but those will get under control once games start being played.   It has to do with the consolidation of top prospects nationally.  Long gone are the days when the 5-star kids always attended a high school in their area.  The top national prospects are now seemingly all being snatched up by a very small number of football-factory type schools, regardless of how many thousands of miles away they may be.  For the record, we're not on our soap box about this.  We're not complaining-- just explaining why the pre-season power ratings for these all-star type teams are so high.  It is as simple as that the top prospects are transfering to a small handful of schools.  Star-studded lineups don't always translate to on-the-field chemistry and success (though of course, they do more often than not), so once games start being played, those absurd numbers tend to come down a bit, but our system will have wild-looking pre-season ratings for the super-teams as long as they're doing what they're doing.