Click here to learn how my forecasts work Elo Rating - The rating assigned to a team, which changes every week based on if they win or lose, as well as by the quality of the opponent.  Percentile - The percent of teams within their classification that this team is ranked above.  1 week change - How much the teams Elo rating changed as a result of the last game.  Record - The most likely record that the team will end the regular season with, based on thousands of simulations.  Point diff. - The average of the difference in points scored and points allowed in the regular season, based on thousands of simulations. Make Playoffs - The chance the team will make playoffs, based on thousands of simulations of the remainder of the season. These are rounded, so the totals may not add up to 400%. 

 Lone Star Football's game and playoff forecasts are the main focus of my page, and are my main tool for combining sports with data journalism to create compelling stories with numbers.  The system I use is called the Elo Rating System, named after Arpad Elo, who made the system. It was originally made for chess, but has been used for a wide variety of different games and activities. The system starts by assigning ratings to teams, and uses those ratings to create game forecasts, which are used to update the ratings after the game.  I don't want to take credit for coming up with all of this data and functions, because I adapted them from FiveThirtyEights NFL Forecasts to fit Texas high school football. For my system, I use data going back to the 2018-19 season to make these ratings. So at the start of the 2018 season is when all teams ratings start. While that is a very limited amount of data, its all the data I've been able to find en masse. Maybe in the future I'll t...

Click here to learn how my forecasts work Elo Rating - The rating assigned to a team, which changes every week based on if they win or lose, as well as by the quality of the opponent.  Percentile - The percent of teams within their classification that this team is ranked above.  1 week change - How much the teams Elo rating changed as a result of the last game.  Record - The most likely record that the team will end the regular season with, based on thousands of simulations.  Point diff. - The average of the difference in points scored and points allowed in the regular season, based on thousands of simulations. Make Playoffs - The chance the team will make playoffs, based on thousands of simulations of the remainder of the season. These are rounded, so the totals may not add up to 400%. 

Click here to learn how my forecasts work Elo Rating - The rating assigned to a team, which changes every week based on if they win or lose, as well as by the quality of the opponent.  Percentile - The percent of teams within their classification that this team is ranked above.  1 week change - How much the teams Elo rating changed as a result of the last game.  Record - The most likely record that the team will end the regular season with, based on thousands of simulations.  Point diff. - The average of the difference in points scored and points allowed in the regular season, based on thousands of simulations. Make Playoffs - The chance the team will make playoffs, based on thousands of simulations of the remainder of the season. These are rounded, so the totals may not add up to 400%. 

Click here to learn how my forecasts work Elo Rating - The rating assigned to a team, which changes every week based on if they win or lose, as well as by the quality of the opponent.  Percentile - The percent of teams within their classification that this team is ranked above.  1 week change - How much the teams Elo rating changed as a result of the last game.  Record - The most likely record that the team will end the regular season with, based on thousands of simulations.  Point diff. - The average of the difference in points scored and points allowed in the regular season, based on thousands of simulations. Make Playoffs - The chance the team will make playoffs, based on thousands of simulations of the remainder of the season. These are rounded, so the totals may not add up to 400%. 

Click here to learn how my forecasts work Elo Rating - The rating assigned to a team, which changes every week based on if they win or lose, as well as by the quality of the opponent.  Percentile - The percent of teams within their classification that this team is ranked above.  1 week change - How much the teams Elo rating changed as a result of the last game.  Record - The most likely record that the team will end the regular season with, based on thousands of simulations.  Point diff. - The average of the difference in points scored and points allowed in the regular season, based on thousands of simulations. Make Playoffs - The chance the team will make playoffs, based on thousands of simulations of the remainder of the season. These are rounded, so the totals may not add up to 400%. 

Click here to learn how my forecasts work Elo Rating - The rating assigned to a team, which changes every week based on if they win or lose, as well as by the quality of the opponent.  Percentile - The percent of teams within their classification that this team is ranked above.  1 week change - How much the teams Elo rating changed as a result of the last game.  Record - The most likely record that the team will end the regular season with, based on thousands of simulations.  Point diff. - The average of the difference in points scored and points allowed in the regular season, based on thousands of simulations. Make Playoffs - The chance the team will make playoffs, based on thousands of simulations of the remainder of the season. These are rounded, so the totals may not add up to 400%. 

Click here to learn how my forecasts work Elo Rating - The rating assigned to a team, which changes every week based on if they win or lose, as well as by the quality of the opponent.  Percentile - The percent of teams within their classification that this team is ranked above.  1 week change - How much the teams Elo rating changed as a result of the last game.  Record - The most likely record that the team will end the regular season with, based on thousands of simulations.  Point diff. - The average of the difference in points scored and points allowed in the regular season, based on thousands of simulations. Make Playoffs - The chance the team will make playoffs, based on thousands of simulations of the remainder of the season. These are rounded, so the totals may not add up to 400%. 

 Welcome to Lone Star Texas Football      Thank you for checking out my blog! I want to use this post as an introduction to what I do and my work. I'm a recent high school graduate who during my senior year found a love for high school football. I never played football though, so my understanding of the strategy and team dynamics is limited at best. Instead, I found an interest in the data that can be used to explain the interactions between the teams and their skill levels.       My main set of data I use is whats called the Elo Rating System, named after Arpad Elo, who made the system. The system assigns ratings to teams to try and turn their skill level into a number, which can then be used to compare to other teams, and thus make win percentages based on the difference in those ratings. I publish those percentages to try and give an average football fan who might not understand the dynamics of the teams and the players so that they have a gras...

    During last years 6A playoffs, 30% of first round games were won by lower seeded teams. Compare that to the NFL, where four of the six wild card round games were won by teams with lower seeds. Of course there are differences between UIL Football and NFL Football, but what exactly are those differences doing to impact the differences between skill and luck in their respective leagues.  Michael Mauboussin wrote the book The Success Equation , which studied the difference between skill and luck in different sports leagues. I won't go into detail about how he did that, there will be another post for that, but I will try to explain it as basic as I can; By measuring the variance in win/loss records in a league, and by measuring the variance if the league was 100% luck based, you could use those numbers  to find out how much skill the league is based on. He studied the four big American sports leagues plus the premier league, and found that the NHL had the highest amou...