Say goodbye to the Ratings Performance Index ranking system. This is the last season Colorado will use it to configure playoff seeding.

The Colorado High School Activities Association’s board of directors on Wednesday voted unanimously to move from the current CHSAA Seeding Index and will rely solely on MaxPreps’ rankings. The change will start next season for the 2026-28 cycle.

In August 2015, CHSAA’s board of directors required all committees to use RPI to determine postseason seeding. RPI used winning percentage, opponents’ winning percentage and opponents’ opponents winning percentage as a metric to determine placement in the poll.

Now, a slew of sports will begin using MaxPreps rankings:

Fall: field hockey, flag football, tackle football, boys soccer, softball, girls volleyball.

Winter: boys basketball, girls basketball, ice hockey.

Spring: baseball, boys lacrosse, girls lacrosse, girls soccer, boys volleyball.

Some sports, including wrestling, tennis, cross country and track and field will not use MaxPreps’ rankings as they use different criteria to determine state qualifiers.  

“After much discussion with our districts, leagues and membership as a whole, the board believes that this move is the best decision for each of our sports and postseason play moving forward,” CHSAA Board of Directors President Joe Brown said. “As proven by the data we’ve looked at, this move will provide the most accurate representation of teams in the postseason.”

The move followed CHSAA’s August retreat where the BOD “dove into a data analysis” and learned that MaxPreps’ rankings were “more accurate at predicting match and game outcomes in the postseason when compared to the RPI.”

MaxPreps’ rankings use different criteria to place teams and, per a 2023 article on MaxPreps’ website: “MaxPreps does not poll coaches, sportswriters or fans. Nor does our staff make any judgments on the merits of any individual team. Prior season history, school size and comments on message boards are not considered in the MaxPreps Computer Rankings. The system utilizes the huge number of game results stored in the MaxPreps database. Generally, the more a team wins, the higher the ranking. However, the system takes into account quality wins (against other highly ranked opponents) and strength of schedule.”

CHSAA’s board will maintain authority over postseason ranking systems.