QRF rankings explained

Posted 1/18/23

The brave and wise Inigo Montoya once said, “QRF? You keep using that acronym, but I do not think it means what you think it means…” Seriously, what is QRF and why is it a big deal? QRF stands …

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QRF rankings explained

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The brave and wise Inigo Montoya once said, “QRF? You keep using that acronym, but I do not think it means what you think it means…” Seriously, what is QRF and why is it a big deal?

QRF stands for Quality Ranking Formula and it was created in conjunction with the owners of the website Minnesota-scores.net and the Minnesota State High School League. Minnesota-scores.net was created in 2002 to try and make sense of the scores published in the wonderful newspapers around the state. The intention of QRF was to be a formula that was as unbiased as possible. There is no human input related to the formula, no polls, no way to rig the system or have coaches help their buddies out with votes.

QRF ranking is supposed to be used by the section committees to assign the seeding at the start of each playoff season. It is also a helpful tool to see where a team is ranked compared to other teams in the state. It is about as fair of a comparison as one can make given the craziness in the class designations for different sized schools.

Yes, some sports only have Class A and AA, while a sport like football has Class A, AA, AAA, AAAA, AAAAA and so on. A class A team in football is tiny in student population, while a class AAAAA might be a Minnetonka-sized monster school, so how do you compare the two schools to rank them in the state? QRF.

One important thing is the formula is NOT public. Why? Because the creator and the MSHSL felt it is 1. Proprietary information, meaning it is protected intellectual property. 2. If the formula is not in the public, coaches cannot do things to skew the results and instead would need to focus on coaching the students. 3. If it is not public, the various section committees that think they know better could not claim it to be wrong even though it is simply a different way to look at ranking high school teams.

According to the websites FAQ, this is the basics of the formula.

If you win: X points for winning the game based on opponent Class Y points times number of opponent wins based on opponent s opponents Class If you lose: Y/3 points times number of opponent wins based on opponent s opponents Class The margin of victory/defeat is NOT part of the equation.

This calculation happens for every game, then averaged out to the QRF number you see online.

Once the average QRF is determined, it is compared to the average QRF of every other team in the State, and put into ranking order.

The bottom line of QRF is the formula takes into consideration a variety of things and assigns point values to them. The best example that can be given: the Hastings team is ranked 60 out of 120 in the state for QRF. They play and beat the number one QRF team and they play the 20th QRF ranked team and win. The Hastings QRF will go up based on both wins, but the victory over the number one team is worth more points than the victory over the number 20 team.

Yes, this is a little on the vague side and may still seem confusing. You can learn more details from www.minnesotascores. net. Hopefully, for most readers, this helps you understand why QRF is talked about when it comes to season rankings as each sports season approaches their tournaments.