At 7-0, North Hall High has proven itself to be a good football team. Loren Maxwell thinks the Trojans (7-0) are the state’s best.
The founder of the Georgia High School Football Historians Association releases an all-classification computer power ranking that has Class AAA’s North Hall ahead of Class AAAAA’s No. 1-ranked North Gwinnett, who have a spot at No. 8 in Maxwell’s ranking, Class AAAA’s top-ranked Northside-Warner Robins (No. 3), Class AAA’s No. 1 Carver-Columbus (No. 5) and AA’s No. 1 Buford (No. 12).
"It’s very flattering to be ranked at No. 1," North Hall coach Bob Christmas said. "But I really don’t pay a lot of attention to the polls, the only thing that matters is how you finish."
The Maxwell rankings’ two principles for ranking schools are ranking accuracy and spread error. It spits out an expected margin of victory based on the numbers for each individual opponent and compares it with the actual margin of victory.
According to the poll, North Hall has a power ranking of 98.69. Carver-Columbus has a 90.69 power ranking. That means if these two teams met, the Trojans would be an eight-point favorite, according to Maxwell.
The computers used for the Maxwell Ratings predict the winner for each game. Of the 1,303 games played in Georgia this season it has correctly picked 1,212 games (ties are not included in that stat.)
Once all the numbers are crunched in the computer for North Hall it says that the Trojans should win each game by an average margin of victory of 36.6 points per game.
North Hall’s actual margin of victory is 39.57 points through seven regular season games. The computers also take into account giving points for each game for home field advantage and a spread error.
Of course, these computer rankings aren’t always the most accurate. According to Maxwell, the Trojans should have won by 15 against Flowery Branch. In real life, North Hall won 41-14.
"Rankings are mainly guess work," Christmas added.
The rest of the top 10 includes Harrison (No. 2), North Cobb (No. 4), Lowndes (No. 6), Westside-Macon (No. 7), Brookwood (No. 9) and Baldwin (No. 10).
Flowery Branch also garnered a spot in the Maxwell rankings at No. 13.