During the Iowa High School football season, new rankings come out every week to show people who the best teams in the state are. How is the decision made for who the best team is? The answer may be more complex than you first thought.

MaxPreps is the official ranking for high schools all around America and they take in a lot of considerations when deciding who will be ranked ahead of whom. The first consideration they take in is the team’s record. The more wins and fewer losses a team has for the season, the higher they will be ranked. A team with five wins and zero losses will be ranked higher than a team with zero wins and five losses.

But who the teams played also matters. A team with wins against good teams will be a higher rank than a team that plays teams that aren’t very good, which is a term called strength of schedule. Put simply, a team will be ranked higher if the teams they play are also ranked high. While the strength of a team’s wins is looked at for deciding how they will be ranked, the strength of their losses will be too. If a team loses to someone who is ranked a lot lower than them, the team ranking will likely drop by a lot, whereas it wouldn’t drop by as much if they lost to a team that was ranked higher than them.

The final way a team is ranked is based on their performance in the year before. This is a lot less influential for a team as the year goes on, but it is very important for the beginning of each season. If a team ended the previous season ranked in the top 10, there is a good chance they will start the season ranked in the top 10 as well. It’s never a guarantee, as teams can lose a coach or a lot of players that would hurt their standings, but a team generally starts the season ranked at a similar spot they ended last season.