USA Rank
USA Rank provides teams all over the country with a ranking system that is fair, un-biased and lets teams game results do the talking.
We do not award any special 'points' to teams for participating in a SincSports event and let teams enter in results from any tournament
that is not run from within the SincSports system. While we'd love it if every tournament used our software, we know that isn't
possible and don't want to penalize any team because of the tools used by any events.
Where do these rating come from?
Our ratings are completely objective. They are based solely on team results in league and tournament play.
We currently have over 1,000,000 games in our database and recalculate the rankings every morning, since new games
are added every day and old games drop off.
We "seed" the rankings with the State, Regional and National tournament results and then run through all of the
games at least a dozen times to establish the base for each team. Team A can beat B, B can beat C, and then C can
beat A to make a simple calculation impossible. We don't use simple tournament outcome which can have so many variables
depending on which teams participate and we don't use "experts" which can be biased and not give the proper credit to
teams in smaller clubs.
You are assigned a rating based on the rating of your opponents and the results of the games. Your ranking may change
at any time, even if we don't add new results for you, since your competitors rating may change based on new results for
them or their competition. So just beating a team once won't necessarily put you ahead of them since all of your results
and theirs go into the national placement. Only games against ranked teams which are the same age/gender that occurred
within the past year are included in the calculaion. Recent results are weighed higher than older results.
Of course, the more results we have for your team, the more realistic your rating is. If you have results from the past year
that don't show up on your page, just click "Add A Game" on your team page.
If you are a team coach or manager you can add your latest results and make sure your team gets placed where it belongs!
Simply Log In to the website for your sport (Soccer - soccerincollege.com, Baseball - baseballincollege.com, ect) to add your team
and/or get your login information!
What if people lie about their results?
We have been impressed with the accuracy of the data entered by teams and the
honesty of those entering the data. (Stop being so cynical!) Certainly the system is self-policing
since data entered is available to all members to see and immediately appears on the opponent's page.
We have a policy that if a team enters results they must enter the results of ALL of their games at that event.
If they don't we will either complete or delete partial results. And, of course, we can revoke any team's
ability to enter their own data if they don't follow the rules!
Some of these rankings still make no sense to me????
Our system is completely objective and based on results against opponents in any game, tournament or league.
We do not award quantity of games as it is not a valid factor in ranking. In order to make the system work,
it must be seeded. At the older ages, we are able to use the USYS and US CLUB National Championship series
to define the top teams. Then teams are rated by their play against them and then by games against teams that
played teams that played them, etc.
The National Championship series is not an option for the younger ages so we must use the top brackets at some
regionally competitive events to seed the rankings. A few of the events that are currently being used are the
Jefferson Cup, WAGS and the Atlanta Cup. A younger team doesn't need to play in one of those events to receive
a top rating, but it must play one of the teams that did or a team that played one of those teams. As there isn't
as much travel at the younger ages, it takes longer for the rankings to spread across all teams.
The ranking system is fluid and interdependent. If a team is ranked too low, it will bring down the rankings of
its opponents. Therefore, teams can not be ranked arbitrarily.
We also don't count games against other ages since they are outside the "pool" of teams being ranked. Here is a
good analogy:
Think of it as lining the third graders up by height. If Billy is taller than Jimmy but shorter that Tommy
we put him in between them in line. If I told you that George was taller than Albert in the fourth grade...
Would that help you decide where to put George in the third grade line?
Lets take a team that is playing all of its games up an age. That is like Albert, a 3rd grader that was double
promoted to the fourth grade. If I tell you that Albert is ranked fourth in height in the fourth grade would
that tell you where to put him in the 3rd grade line? It would make more sense to rank that team among the older
teams and then bring them back down when they move back to their own age group (for State Cup, for instance).
Sometimes you might see a team whose best game was a win over the 30th ranked team and yet they are ranked #4.
You will probably see that they won by 3 or more goals and they have no losses against higher ranked teams.
That's like saying the Billy is MUCH taller than Jimmy, but having no additional information. It is difficult to
know just where to place them until we have more information. The system make the best mathematical decision it
can but there is no "right" answer. Placing them too low would also be unfair to every other team they have played
since it would negatively affect them without any valid reason to do so.
Generally, the system works those out since any other teams that defeated teams that might be ranked too high are
anxious to enter those game to get the "bump" that game will give them.
We have over a million games in the system, but the answer is still....MORE DATA