High school athletes playing in team sports strive to do well enough in their seasons to make state playoffs. In Colorado, the Colorado High School Activities Association, otherwise known as CHSAA, sanctioned playoffs are determined by the CHSAA seeding index. This index incorporates the rating performance index or RPI and “MaxPreps” rankings from the regular season. This system, however, undermines in-season victories and allows teams to manipulate their opponent pools for better playoff seeding.
CHSAA has decided that they are pulling RPI from the deciding factor of teams rankings. As of the 2026-2027 season, a full agreement of the board members will produce the sole reliance of “MaxPreps” rankings for the CHSAA index. This change will be in place for all fall, winter and spring team sports starting the next school year seasons, not including individual sports such as wrestling, tennis, cross country and track and field.
The Rating Performance Index or RPI is calculated based on the percentage of wins a team has during a season or win percentage (WP), the team’s opponents winning percentage (OWP) and who the opponent of the team plays or Opponent’s Opponent’s Winning Percentage (OOWP). What this index is lacking, is the margin of victory (MOV), calculating the score differential to decide by how much a team wins or loses against certain teams therefore produces an accurate picture of the dominance of a team.
This index is shared in 50/50 calculation to the ranking of “MaxPreps” which combines a number of factors including strength of a teams schedule which is, in majority, directly related to RPI. “MaxPreps” also takes into account the win and loss record of a team, matchups of teams, a program’s history, the quality of wins and losses and score differentials.
The inclusion of a strength of schedule already in the rankings of “MaxPreps” makes this quality feel over weighted by counting the statistics in multiple ways. While the system does give additional credit for beating “good teams,” the OOWP is completely out of the original team’s control because the opponents victories or losses can negatively rank the original team, even with a win.
For example, if an opponent’s opponent has a very low RPI and the opponent loses to that team, if the original team beats the opponent the win will count for less because in theory the opponent was not good enough to beat the low RPI team. Beating the opponent then means less even if the opponent was a strong team contrary to the statistics.
RPI has a high consideration for manipulation where a team can control their potential RPI by scheduling teams they know they can beat to grow their RPI and get them higher ranking in and after the season. In more extreme cases, teams can potentially cancel games against harder opponents that, with a loss, would negatively impact their RPI actively unfairly keeping up their ranking.
Reconsidering the margin of victory, the system includes that all wins are ranked the same and all losses are ranked the same. A high point victory against a bad team is ranked the same as a low point win against a good team and same with losses. This system does not reward dominant wins, a statistic that can be a very strong indicator of a team’s strength of play.
The CHSAA decision to remove RPI will even the system in sports rankings for the index to be based upon strength of performance of a team, not strength of their opponents or how a team builds their schedule.
