What is Tradition Never Graduates (TNG)?
Our aim is to provide a unique and objective, data-driven look at the best Texas high school football teams, games, and programs in the state’s top classification primarily based on the widely utilized Elo rating system. Although initially developed to rate chess players, Elo has been used extensively in football at the NFL and college levels such as in Nate Silver’s fivethirtheight.com NFL rankings and in Jeff Sagarin’s model which was one of the original rankings systems featured in the BCS. The beauty of Elo is that it provides a way to rate opponents relative to one another taking into account many factors including, but not limited to, strength of schedule, the probability of victory, and margin of victory and constantly adjusts those ratings based on game outcomes. We’ve tailored the Elo system, incorporating metrics that we derived ourselves, using the last 15 seasons worth of game data and have developed a model that we’re excited to test in real time with the 2022 6A football season. Read more about our methodology, here, in our TNG Ratings Origin and Methodology.
What will we post?
Preseason: District Playoff Picks, D1/D2 playoff projections, State Top 50, Regional Top 10s, Best Rated Districts, Toughest Schedules, Featured Games, and more
In-Season (Weekly): Games of the Week, game by game picks and spreads, updated district and playoff projections, prior week recaps, model performance updates, trending teams, and more
Historical Lookbacks: Best teams since 08, Best Programs, Best Games, Biggest Upsets, and more
Who are we?
Three brothers that love football. Creators of the former 5ATexasFootball.com. Former players and huge fans of the game
The three of us work in jobs heavily rooted in data analysis, so doing this gives us a chance to apply some of those work skills to a passion project
Disclaimers
Our projected game spreads are just for fun and an attempt to quantify one team’s theoretical strength relative to their opponent. They are truly for entertainment/discussion purposes only. Plus, they give us additional points of comparison for our model. With projected game spreads, we can test how our model stacks up against proven outlets like Pigskin Prep, Calpreps, other experts that we respect and follow. Keep in mind that spreads are notoriously difficult to project accurately (Even Vegas struggles…and we ain’t Vegas)
Don’t get too hung up on starting values, our model will correct itself quickly as results come in. If your team is an underdog in our model and wins, it will climb rapidly. Teams that are rated too high to start will be dropped as their results and the math dictates. We attempt to dial in the start values as much as possible since it leads to a more accurate model as the season progresses (Read that TNG Primer for more!)
What we present on this site amounts to nothing more than talking points and banter. Regardless of what our model projects, the games are won by the tireless work of the incredible coaching staffs across the state and the blood, sweat, and tears of the phenomenal student athletes who give their all each week to represent their communities, supported by their families, friends, bands & color guards, drill teams, cheerleaders, administrators, and volunteers. There is nothing quite like Texas high school football and we’re happy to do our part to promote and support it.
Why subscribe?
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Never miss an update.
Stay up-to-date
You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.
Join the crew
Be part of a community of people who share your interests.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
