Welcome back to another year of high school football. We are only a few days away from a new season kicking off, so I wanted to update those of you who care about the new changes to RPI this year, and how it will affect your teams.
RPI Updates
Before we begin, all of this information can be found on the UHSAA site, but I will try and break it down into a more understandable format.
The first tweak is to the RPI calculation itself. Previously, the equation/weight was MWP*0.4 + OWP*0.4 + OOWP*0.2, and then new equation is MWP*0.45 + OWP*0.45 + OOWP*0.1. So now your results and your opponent's results matter a little more, and your opponent's opponent's results matter half as much as they used to.
To think about it another way, let's think that the RPI is worth 100 points (it's really worth 1, but I don't like thinking in decimals). Your season results are worth a possible 45 (if you go undefeated) out of a possible 100 points. I say 100 points because 45+45+10 is 100, but in reality, the two best teams last year had an RPI of about .750, so realistically, your schedule is worth 45 out of 70-75 points.
One of the main reasons the best teams didn't have an RPI of 100 is because of OWP and OOWP. Unless you go undefeated, and every team you play goes undefeated (except for their game against you), you will not earn 45 points from OWP. The only way that could happen is if you were an independent team, and you only played/beat 1 team per region, and then that team went undefeated.
Sorry for the tangent, I just wanted to explain why the top teams don't automatically have a perfect RPI score, and that seemed like the simplest example I could come up with.
The second tweak is much bigger and helps or hurts a lot depending on who you are, and what classification you are in. But first, some background on how RPI used to work. For football in Utah, there are 5 classifications. RPI has a built-in system to account for playing across classifications. This was the breakdown last year.
| Classification | Game Value |
|
|
| 2A | 1.150000 |
| 3A | 1.322500 |
| |
| 4A | 1.520875 |
| Out of State Opponents | 1.550748 |
| |
| 5A | 1.749006 |
| |
| 6A | 2.011357 |
The best way to think about this is that if a 2A beats a 2A team, it is worth a normal win (1.15/1.15 = 1), but if a 2A team beat a 6A team, the calculation to determine the win would be 2.011357/1.15, which equals 1.749.
The modification worked in reverse as well. An upper classification team was allowed to play down once, and not take a penalty. So if a 6A team beat a 2A team, it would count as a normal win (2.011357/2.011357=1). If a 6A team scheduled two 2A teams in a season (and won both), their first game would count as normal, but the second win would have a calculation of 1.15/2.011357, which would be a win value of 0.572.
The old system was a negative for 6A teams that wanted to play two or more lower classification teams, or out of state opponents.
The new breakdown looks like this
| Classification | Game Value |
| 2A | 1 |
| 3A | 1 |
| Out of State | 1.25 |
| 4A | 1.5 |
| 5A | 1.5 |
| 6A | 1.5 |
So now, a 6A team can play as many 4A or 5A teams as they want with no penalty, while 4A has no chance to earn any bonus points for playing an upper classification team, and playing an out of state opponent is now a negative for them, whereas it was a small net gain last year. 3A is in a good spot because they can earn bonus points for playing an upper classification, or out of state opponent, or can play as many 2A teams as they want without taking a penalty. To summarize, this is a positive for 6A, 5A, and 3A, and a negative for 4A and 2A.
Schedule Analysis
I decided to look at every team's schedule to see how this new change affected them. Here is a
link to the spreadsheet I made where I try to determine if each team has a positive, neutral, or negative schedule. I tried to note each team's exact situation, and then group them into groups. I got to 27 groups (I was in the middle of 4A) before I realized that it was getting too messy. So instead I grouped those 27 scenarios into the 3 groups mentioned above, and then I highlighted the teams. I left the original scenarios below the 3 groups, so you could see what I was trying to look at.
To better understand what my notes mean, if I say 'up' or 'down', the single quotes are to signify that a 6A team is playing 'down' to a 5A team. They are playing down in real life, but not down for RPI purposes. If you see down without single quotes, that is to signify that someone is playing down (likely a 4A to a 3A team) and it counts as a down game in RPI. OoS is short for Out of State in the notes/key.
There are a lot of reasons to have a negative or suboptimal schedule. For example, Desert Hills plays three higher classification opponents, but they get no bonus for it. They are playing tougher opponents, but get no RPI benefit for it, which is suboptimal for RPI. Ben Lomond has a negative/suboptimal schedule because they play down 3 times. Assuming they win some of those, those wins will be penalized. The opposite of Desert Hills is Providence Hall -- they play several higher classification teams and are able to earn bonus points if they win those games, which is a positive/optimal schedule for RPI. The opposite of Ben Lomond is about half of the 6A teams. 6A teams are able to play multiple 5A and 4A teams, and not take any penalty -- they are playing an easier schedule (obviously some 4A and 5A teams can beat 6A teams, but they are the exception, not the rule), and not being penalized for it.
As a Dixie fan, I don't like the new breakdown because it hurts Dixie, but I can't fault the 6A teams for taking advantage of this scenario. I think it will be interesting to see come playoff time if the green 6A teams are the ones who get upset earlier in the tournament, or if the orange 5A teams are able to pull some upsets over the green/white teams. I could see something changing next year to make it closer to last year where each classification has their own value, but instead of making them 15% apart, maybe they are closer to 5-10% apart, but we'll see. The major issue is with out of state opponents -- teams like Bishop Gorman are great matchups as they are a national powerhouse, but in RPI they were worth the same as a 4A school (instead of a 6A school), and now they are worth less than a 4A team. The other major issue is that Virgin Valley has the same base value as Bishop Gorman, even though they are two classifications lower in Nevada, and obviously not as good. I know the UHSAA isn't in the business of assigning values to 3A and 5A Nevada teams, but if they could, it would definitely help balance the desire to schedule out of state opponents while trying to help your RPI.
One last note on schedule advantages and disadvantages -- the teams with larger regions have the potential to be punished more. They have fewer games to get quality non-region opponents on their schedule. Looking at regions 1, 9, and 10 specifically -- most of the region will have a very similar OWP as they share a majority of their opponents. They will not be able to easily differentiate themselves with their OWP because they only have 2-3 non-region games they can schedule. However, region 7 has a small region -- over half of their games are non-region games, which gives them the potential to have a stronger OWP.
Best of luck to all the kids and teams kicking off this week!
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