Tennessee Soccer Stats
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Data Analytics Hub

Research & Reports

The central hub for everything I've dug into with the Tennessee Soccer Stats data: the geography of the state, the role money plays, what football tells us about soccer, and the team-level analytics underneath the rankings. Published pieces are live; pending ones are in the works.

Geography

01
The Atlas
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.
Open the map →
The Three States of Tennessee
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.
Read the history →
Three Tennessees, on the Pitch
The soccer companion: cross-regional head-to-head history of the grand divisions (East, Middle, West) when they actually meet on the field.
Read report →
East TN's Inner Divide
Tracking Knoxville vs. Tri-Cities vs. Chattanooga metrics to find which corner of East Tennessee runs the region.
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Nashville & Its Suburbs
Weighting urban Davidson County against affluent Williamson County: money versus density in Middle Tennessee.
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West Tennessee
Measuring the massive ELO gap between Memphis and Jackson, and who carries the west.
Read report →

Socioeconomics

02
The Zip Code Effect
The core correlation between neighborhood wealth and ELO: the report that started the whole socioeconomic series.
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Two Eras of Tennessee Private Schools
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.
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Does Money Buy Private-School Soccer?
Tuition, faculty credentials, and size against ELO: and why money predicts the girls' game far more than the boys'.
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The Private Ceiling
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.
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The Enrollment Effect
Do wealthy areas just build bigger schools? Size out-predicts wealth for boys and survives controlling for it: more students, more raw material.
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Graduation Rates
Does this positive-outcome proxy predict ELO better than SEI? A more human-readable measure than raw wealth.
In development
New Program Development
Ramp-up speed versus per-pupil spending for brand-new programs: how fast does money turn into a competitive team?
In development

Cross-Sport Findings

03
Football Runs Tennessee
Dynasties, history, and the public/private split: including the Brentwood Academy Supreme Court cases.
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The Modern Game
The 2015–2026 gridiron landscape: modern powers, state champions, regionality, and recruiting-driven talent.
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Does Money Buy Football?
Applying the affluence test to the gridiron: where the line is far flatter than it is in soccer.
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The Pipeline
Recruiting, college, and NFL production: the talent funnel from blue-chip recruit to Sunday.
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Does Football Predict Soccer?
The cross-sport analysis: money, size, private schools, and talent, run on both sports side by side.
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Results & Team Analytics

04
The Gauntlet
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.
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The Freshman Report
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.
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The Coaching Carousel
Twelve years of sideline turnover: who stays longest, who wins most, who jumps programs, and whether coaching continuity actually shows up in the results.
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The Experience Report
Do senior-heavy rosters win more? Barely. The experience that actually predicts winning sits on the sideline: coaching continuity, not the roster.
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Who is the Best Right Now?
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.
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The Great Rivalries
Twelve marquee matchups (programs that play each other constantly and are both consistently strong) with the full head-to-head history of each.
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Biggest Upsets
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.
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Crossing the State Line
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.
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The Travel Factor
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.
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Sent Off
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.
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The Engine Room

05
Newsletter 2026: The First ELO Change
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.
Read the newsletter →
The Validation Report
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.
Read the report →
ELO v1 Archive
The final rankings from the original engine, frozen when v2 took over in July 2026. A museum piece, kept on purpose.
Browse the archive →
Us vs the Rest
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.
Read the report →
Open Data

Want the numbers behind the reports?

The datasets these reports are built on (schedules, results, ELO ratings, coaching records, and team-level roster aggregates) are shared openly under CC BY 4.0. Individual player names are left out by design, since these are high-school minors.

Browse the dataset →
Published reports are live and update as new results come in. Pending reports are in active development; several are waiting on outside data (TDOE enrollment and graduation rates, roster history). Tennessee Soccer Stats is a personal, non-commercial project and isn't affiliated with the TSSAA or any school.