Here's a preview of the data that will be used to determine football's playoff fields - Colorado High School Activities Association

The state football playoff brackets are due out Sunday.

So this week we are posting a preview of the data that will be used to select and seed the brackets. That data can be found in full on this page.

This data, which we call the CHSAA Seeding Index, was first used to seed the 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A and 5A state football playoffs last season. It combines data from the RPI, CHSAANow coaches poll, MaxPreps Rankings, and Packard Rankings, giving each equal weight.

This season, it is being used across all classes. (During its committee meeting following the 2019 season, 6-man and 8-man voted to also also use the CHSAA Seeding Index.)

“After moving to the four data points in the 2019 season, we are excited to use the same process in 2020,” said CHSAA assistant commissioner Adam Bright. “We wanted to get this information out early, as we know some teams have potential postseason travel they need to prepare for, and other schools will want to work ahead on scheduling a potential non-playoff game in Week 7 if they don’t make the field. This allows our schools an extra week to prepared.”

Each ranking system is translated to a percentage in order to combine them.

To do this:

Teams have their total points in the coaches poll divided by the total possible points. For example, if a poll has 20 voters, there are 200 possible points as a first-place vote is worth 10 points.
The RPI, Packard and MaxPreps rankings determine their percentage by comparing every team to the maximum value in that classification. For example, if the maximum RPI value in a class is .700, every other team in that classification is compared to that value.
To account for some negative values in the MaxPreps and Packard ratings, the minimum value is added to every value in the classification to ensure the lowest possible rating is 0, and not negative. This only occurs if the minimum value in a classification is negative.
These percentages are then added together and divided by four, so that each accounts for 25% of the final formula.

The CHSAA Seeding Index data will next be updated on Sunday, and released with the playoff brackets.