Research & Reports

Every rated program in the state on one interactive map, sized and colored by rating. Jump to a metro, search your school, click through to any team page.

A history, not a stat sheet: the land, the war that split it, and how the demographics got made: the Memphis, Austin-East, and Gatlinburg stories checked against our own enrollment data.

The soccer companion: cross-regional head-to-head history of the grand divisions (East, Middle, West) when they actually meet on the field.

Tracking Knoxville vs. Tri-Cities vs. Chattanooga metrics to find which corner of East Tennessee runs the region.

Weighting urban Davidson County against affluent Williamson County: money versus density in Middle Tennessee.

Measuring the massive ELO gap between Memphis and Jackson, and who carries the west.

The core correlation between neighborhood wealth and ELO: the report that started the whole socioeconomic series.

The founding waves, the public-private split, and the voucher era: how Tennessee built its private schools, and why the 1970s produced more than any decade before or since.

Tuition, faculty credentials, and size against ELO: and why money predicts the girls' game far more than the boys'.

Can the smaller private division, D2-A, hang with D2-AA? The 72-28 head-to-head, the exceptions who break it, and why a perfect D2-A season can out-rate a battle-tested D2-AA power.

Do wealthy areas just build bigger schools? Size out-predicts wealth for boys and survives controlling for it: more students, more raw material.

Does a school's graduation rate predict ELO better than wealth? It doesn't, but it's nearly independent of wealth and holds its own signal, steady for the girls across eight cohorts.

529 schools started a soccer program in the last decade. Most plateau below average by year three; the ones that didn't opened with rosters that had played somewhere else. The sprint, the surge, and the Grace Christian long build.

Dynasties, history, and the public/private split: including the Brentwood Academy Supreme Court cases.

The 2015–2026 gridiron landscape: modern powers, state champions, regionality, and recruiting-driven talent.

Applying the affluence test to the gridiron: where the line is far flatter than it is in soccer.

Recruiting, college, and NFL production: the talent funnel from blue-chip recruit to Sunday.

The cross-sport analysis: money, size, private schools, and talent, run on both sports side by side.

Published every Monday through the season: which ratings moved and why, the week's results and form, one number worth knowing, and where the playoff picture stands.

Strength of schedule for all 9,925 team-seasons since 2008. Champions play 90th-percentile schedules, the soft-schedule watch list, and an honest correction on Grace Christian.

Grow your own or bring them in? Freshman retention, player transfers, and the surprising truth that poaching is more about new suburban schools than private tuition.

Twelve years of sideline turnover: who stays longest, who wins most, who jumps programs, and whether coaching continuity actually shows up in the results.

Do senior-heavy rosters win more? Barely. The experience that actually predicts winning sits on the sideline: coaching continuity, not the roster.

82,043 matches since 2008. Most games are decided by one goal and the average margin is nearly four, both at once. The mercy rule leaves a visible fingerprint in the data, blowouts have roughly doubled while scoring barely moved, and a handful of programs stay hard to beat badly even in defeat.

Live ELO ratings, recent form, and strength of schedule, side by side: the top programs in the state today, boys and girls, with the movers and the chase behind each #1.

Twelve marquee matchups (programs that play each other constantly and are both consistently strong) with the full head-to-head history of each.

Does the bigger school actually win? A class baseline, then the most improbable results in the database: all-time, last season, and the Cinderellas who crashed the state tournament.

How Tennessee teams fare against out-of-state opponents: the overall record, the border states we play most, and the Memphis and Chattanooga privates who own the out-of-state circuit.

Do long road trips hurt? Across 73,000 games the away penalty is flat: it is the road, not the miles. A cross-town trip costs the same as a cross-state one.

Tennessee ejected players 954 times last year and boys' soccer led every sport, football included. Fifteen seasons of the TSSAA's own disciplinary data: who, where, when in the game, and what it costs.

An offseason of research goes back into the engine: smarter starting ratings, seasonal regression that reads each roster, and why the exact constants now live behind an official curtain.

82,043 games, each predicted before it was played. Does a rating gap mean the same thing in every class, region, and era? The backtest, the calibrated read-out, and the measured edges.

Validation, Part II: the scoreline of every 2025-26 game predicted in advance, boys and girls. What actually moves a prediction (head-to-head and home field), what doesn't (roster age, coach tenure), and the weight changes it earns.

The final rankings from the original engine, frozen when v2 took over in July 2026. A museum piece, kept on purpose.

A statewide community poll agrees with our boys order at 0.94, and MaxPreps shares 22 of its top 25 with ours. The reassurance, and the handful of names where the model and the room split.