How MIAA football power rankings work (and how the Massachusetts 16 uses them)

Every fall, parents and players stare at the MIAA's power rankings and ask the same question: how is a team with a worse record seeded ahead of us? The answer is a formula, and it is simpler than it looks.

The formula

A team's rating has two parts.

Average margin. Take the point difference in each game, cap it at plus or minus 14, and average across all games. A 49–0 win counts as +14. A 21–14 loss counts as –7. The cap is deliberate: running up the score buys nothing past two touchdowns.

Opponents' rating. Average the overall ratings of every team you played. This is where schedule strength lives.

Rating = average margin + opponents' rating. That is the whole thing.

Why records mislead

Take Division 1 at the end of 2025. Central Catholic went 5-3 with an average margin of just +2.1, but its opponents averaged a rating of 15.98, the highest in the division, so it finished fifth with a rating of 18.10. Lowell went 7-1 with a bigger margin (+8.6) but played a schedule rated at 4.90, and finished tenth at 13.52. Wins matter only through the margin; whom you beat matters through the opponent rating.

Because opponents' ratings depend on their opponents' ratings, the whole state is solved together. A Division 6 team that plays a Division 3 team is rated on the same scale as both. That is what makes a statewide comparison honest.

Who qualifies

In the current eight-division format, the top 16 teams in each division qualify for the tournament, provided they have played at least seven games and won at least three. The unranked rows at the bottom of a division table are teams that did not meet those requirements. From 2027 the cut moves to the top eight per division and the three-win minimum disappears.

When the numbers come out

The MIAA publishes power rankings roughly three to four weeks into the regular season, then every Tuesday and Friday until the final release with the brackets on November 1. Ratings are built from scores entered by member schools into Arbiter, so a missing result on a Monday can move a team on Tuesday.

What the Massachusetts 16 adds

Nothing you have to take on faith. We take all eight division tables, put every program on that single statewide scale, and list the top 16. No votes, no eye test, no private-school bonus. When a team moves, the reason is in the table: its margin changed, or its opponents' ratings did. The full method is on the rankings page.