Miami Carol City jumped 35 spots after a loss. Florida deserves an explanation.

The October 1 listing had Carol City at #41 in Florida. The October 4 statewide update shows #6 with a +35 movement. That deserves a specific explanation.

A loss and a rise in the rankings can happen in the same week without proving that the loss caused the entire rise. Other teams played. Earlier opponents produced new results. The whole picture can change. But pointing to those possibilities does not tell anyone which of them actually explains this movement.

Did the system reassess earlier games? Was information corrected? How much came from the new result, and how much came from everything around it? Those are questions MaxPreps should be able to answer using this specific example.

A general explanation of how rankings work only gets us so far. When a team makes a move this dramatic into the projected championship field, the explanation should be just as specific as the result.

The record and the forfeit belong in this discussion

Carol City has two losses in games decided on the field, to Lee County and Grayson. Its win over Mainland was subsequently forfeited following an FHSAA eligibility ruling. That makes the distinction important: the Chiefs went 4–2 in the games as played, but their official record is 3–3.

Reporting on the Carol City forfeit

The forfeit is an official action by the organization running Florida’s championship. It should have a meaningful place in deciding who has earned an Open Division spot.

MaxPreps’ published methodology says forfeited games are excluded from both teams’ ratings, strength-of-schedule calculations and quality-win credit. That policy creates an obvious question when those ratings are used for postseason selection: where does the state-imposed loss count? If it is handled somewhere else in the process, FHSAA should show coaches and fans exactly where and how.

Under that stated policy, the original Mainland result should not remain as credit for a win. The point is that Florida needs to explain the selection consequence of the official result.

Strength of schedule matters and so does earning a spot

I understand why a close game against a strong opponent can say more about a team’s ability than a comfortable win over weak competition. I also think Grayson is a very good football team. Neither point settles whether Carol City has earned one of Florida’s eight places.

A rating can measure how competitive a team is likely to be. A championship selection also has to answer what that team has accomplished. Florida should explain how its process balances those two judgments, especially when the official record includes a forfeit.

For this eight-team Open Division field, my position is that two losses should require an exceptional case. Three losses should put a team outside it. That is my view of what earning one of eight places should require, not an existing FHSAA eligibility rule or a blanket rule for national rankings.

The opponents matter. The margins matter. But the losses cannot become incidental to the discussion just because a team still rates highly.

There are important games left. They will give us more evidence when they are played. They cannot explain why one team sits above another today. The current order should be defensible using the results already on the board.

The concerns started before this weekend

Jenks was the example in my February article: 10–2 in Oklahoma’s highest classification, with losses to Bixby and Owasso, yet #11 in the state. It raised a question about how the full schedule was being weighed.

That example and Carol City’s jump do not, by themselves, prove a formula is broken. They do show why an explanation of the actual calculation matters more than asking everyone to accept the order because a computer produced it.

Some of my February description also needs to be more precise. MaxPreps’ football system includes opponent-rating-based strength of schedule, out-of-state games and capped margin. It starts with preseason editorial input that fades away as current-season results take over. It is not simply sorting clean records above teams that played difficult schedules.

MaxPreps football methodology

Recognizing that makes the questions sharper. How are those ingredients weighted? What accounts for an unusually large change? And is the resulting order appropriate for the job Florida has given it?

Florida should make the standard clear before selection

FHSAA approved using MaxPreps to rank and seed football championships in February and announced the Open Division’s eight-team selection format in June. Schools deserve to understand that process before the final field is set.

FHSAA Open Division announcement

Publish the model details. Explain how official forfeits affect selection. Show the before-and-after calculation behind a movement like Carol City’s, and give schools a clear way to challenge incorrect information before the field is set.

Florida may end up with eight outstanding teams. The process still needs to make sense to the teams trying to get there. A 35-spot jump after a loss is a fair place to start explaining it.

Related T25PS coverage

The Week 7 Atlantic preview featuring Carol City at Grayson

The T25PS Week 7 national public-school Top 100