Debut of new playoff standings revealed with additional info, but could still use more

Since the shutdown of Gridiron New Jersey this June, high school coaches have been talking and wondering what the new layout would look like when NJ.com took it over.

Wonder no more.

The first UPR standings of the season were revealed, section by section, beginning Monday morning on NJ.com, and by later in the afternoon all ten public supersections and the two non-public groups were posted online.

Our feeling? Well, done, but we could still use a few tweaks. Granted, our needs may be a bit more demanding that the average coach, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

What do the tables show?

The NJ.com UPR standings, which can be found by clicking here, show much of the same data Gridiron’s standings did. Obviously, there’s the team’s overall rank, record, power point average, OSI average and UPR. They’ve also added two other columns Gridiron did not have: power point rank and OSI rank.

These numbers are very important, because this is how the UPR is figured. Since power points are 40 percent of the equation, and OSI is 60 percent, we multiply power point rank by 0.4 and OSI rank by 0.6 to get the UPR number. This may actually help clarify that procedure for some people, so we like this addition. (To learn the rank in Gridiron, you’d have to sort the table by power point or OSI rank, something NJ.com does not do. So, this takes out an extra step.)

We think there’s one thing missing, though.

The calculations…

Gridiron New Jersey had a link on each team’s homepage to their power point calculations, always a helpful tool. When the Born Power Index was introduced in 2018, the formula wasn’t revealed. Gridiron founder and owner Jon Fass, was provided the numbers each week from Bill Born, but wasn’t privy to the calculations, so while his site showed power point calculations, it didn’t show the Born Index.

The next year, SI came into play, but the calculations were not shown. You’d have to go to Team A’s schedule, and click on each opponent to get their Strength Index number, then grab a calculator and do the math.

Not so with NJ.com. Sort of.

When you click on a team in the UPR standings (or on Power Points from a team’s home page) you’ll see their opponents, along with their record and SI value. However, we think this needs one more column, maybe two.

While we like the addition of an “SI Change” column (this shows how much your team went up or down in SI based on that result) we think a column should be added to show what the end value of that game is, since you get 100 percent for a win, 75 percent for a tie, 50 percent for a loss, and 70, 75 or 80 percent for losses to certain non-public multipliers. This will show the true math, just like how quality points and residuals are shown for power point totals.

Strength Index… where is it?

Gridiron New Jersey put a team’s Strength Index value on its home page. NJ.com is almost there.

The Strength Index value on NJ.com is shown on a team’s power point calculation page. But that’s an extra click, and we think it would be better if it were on the team’s actual home page with their record and schedule. There, you could tell in one place, how many power points a team is worth (by knowing their record) and how many SI points they are worth.

Another option would be to add it – not necessarily in place of the other locations; after all, records show on a team’s home page, in their calculations, and the standings – to the UPR standings. Why not? That would at least help coaches looking in their section, where many of the teams they play are.

A third option? And again, you can still do this and all of the above.

Publish a list each week of the entire state, sorted alphabetically. Kind of like we do.

In fact, here are all the Strength Index values for this week, including games played on Week 2.

One glitch…

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. And it probably won’t affect too many contenders, but…

One of the fun quirks of the NJ UPR playoff system is the “floor” the NJSIAA set in terms of SI value for low-rated teams. The minimum SI value available to a team from an opponent is 20.

There are two teams in the state with a Strength Index value below 20. West Windsor-Plainsboro is at 19.35 and Gloucester Catholic at 17.99. But any team that beat them should be getting 20 for a win (or 10 for a loss) due to the NJSIAA rule.

That is not currently reflected in the NJ.com OSI calculation; they are using the sub-20 number. Who will that affect?

So far, JP Stevens in the Big Central, Clearview and Middle Township, as well as West Windsor-Plainsboro itself since they played Gloucester Catholic this past weekend – and won, 18-14! (It’ll also affect the Rams, but their playoff seeding is determined by committee.)

But in the future, it will affect more teams:

• West Windsor-Plainsboro: Pemberton, Mastery HS of Camden, Lindenwold, Atlantic Tech, Holy Cross, Deptford
• Gloucester Catholic: Palmyra, Wildwood, Pitman, Florence, Haddon Twp., Lindenwold

That will be something for NJ.com to work on in the coming days.