About

About the site

This website was developed to answer the question that comes up every October in Mississippi high school football: “What does our playoff picture look like?”

This website sets out to answer that question by providing scenarios for every way each region race can finish based on the MHSAA’s tiebreaker rules. This allows us to determine each team’s odds of finishing in each place and therefore in each playoff slot. From there, we look at the playoff bracket and give an outlook for each playoff game, including which teams are likely to play in which slot and which teams are most likely to play at home.

How it works

• When there are 5 or fewer games remaining in a given region, our logic builds the final standings for each possible combination of outcomes, breaks any ties, and counts how often each team lands in each seed. From there, it produces odds for each team and easy-to-read scenarios for every possible outcome.
• When there are 6 to 10 remaining games in a given region, we still build out each possible outcome, but only display scenario insights for key games, since the full scenario list is generally very long at this stage. From this point on, a tie that comes down to point differential is worked out as if each remaining game were won by 7 points, so the odds in those races are close but not exact. A team is only called clinched or eliminated when that holds whatever the margins, and the key-game insights are still checked against every possible margin.
• When there are 11 to 15 remaining games in a region, we still build out each possible outcome, but do not display any scenarios, as there will be too many to reasonably display.
• When there are more than 15 remaining games in a region, it becomes impractical to build out each possible outcome. In these cases, we simulate the rest of the schedule 50,000 times, using each team’s Elo rating to set its chance of winning each game. Toss-up odds get their own 50,000 runs with every game a coin flip. These simulated numbers are used to display each team’s odds of finishing as each seed. A simulation can’t prove that something will or won’t happen, so at this stage no team is called clinched or eliminated, and no chance reads as 0% or 100%.

How the site applies MHSAA tiebreaker rules

When teams finish with the same region record, they’re separated in this order, following the region tiebreaker procedure in the 2026–27 MHSAA Handbook:

1. Head-to-head results among the tied teams.
2. Results against the highest-finishing teams in the region, working down.
3. Point differential in region games among the tied teams, capped at 12 points per game.
4. Point differential, capped at 12, in region games against the highest-finishing teams, working down.
5. Fewest points allowed in all region games.
6. A coin flip.

Because steps 3, 4 and 5 depend on the score, not just who won, some races turn on margin of victory or points allowed.

Margin of victory. Once five or fewer region games remain, we work through every possible winning margin, which is why a scenario can read “Raleigh beats Magee by 8–10.” Odds account for this based on historical scoring margins. With more than five games left, the odds treat every remaining game as won by 7 points, so a tie that comes down to point differential is close but not exact.

Points allowed. When a tie comes down to fewest points allowed and a tied team still has a game to play, the odds try the remaining games at many different scores drawn from historical games, so each way the tie could break gets its share.

Coin flips. Once region play is over, teams in a tie that can only be settled by a coin flip are marked with a coin.

What the scenarios mean

Once five or fewer region games remain, each team’s possible outcomes are listed with exactly what has to happen. Conditions joined by AND must all happen together. When there’s more than one way to get there, the alternatives are separated by OR, and any one of them is enough. When every alternative shares some conditions, those come first, and the alternatives follow in a box headed AND ONE OF.

The Scenarios section lists every way the region can finish, one box each, with its chance in the odds mode you’ve picked.

With six to ten games left, we show only results that settle a spot outright, no matter how every other game turns out, checked against every possible winning margin.

Projected and toss-up odds

Odds can be calculated two ways, and you can switch between them at the top of each page.

Projected weights each outcome by how likely it is. Every team carries an Elo rating built from its results, factoring in margin of victory and a carryover from last season. Those ratings, plus home-field advantage, set each team’s chance of winning each remaining game.

Toss-up treats every remaining game as a coin flip, so each outcome counts the same. It describes the shape of the race rather than who’s better: how many of the possible endings put a team in, regardless of how likely any one game is.

Clinched and eliminated mean the same thing in both odds modes. A team that’s in no matter what is 100% either way.

How the Elo ratings work

Each team’s Elo rating is a single number built from its game results. Beating a team raises a rating and losing lowers it, by more when the result is a surprise and, with diminishing returns, by more for a bigger margin. Region games move ratings a little more than other games.

Ratings start from a class baseline, at 1000 in 1A rising by 50 per class to 1300 in 7A; teams that played the previous season start halfway between that baseline and where they finished it.

When evaluating the odds of a team winning a matchup, the home team gets a 65-point boost. A 100-point edge in Elo rating on a neutral field works out to about a 64% chance to win; a 200-point edge gives a team about a 76% chance to win.

A rating is a number, not a ranking: it says how strong the results suggest a team is, and it’s only used here to set the chances of individual games for Projected odds. You can see a team’s rating by opening its row in the standings.

What “clinched” and “eliminated” mean

Clinched means a team makes the playoffs, or locks in a specific seed, in every possible outcome of the remaining games.

Eliminated means it misses the playoffs in every one. We show 0% and 100% only for those certainties; anything short of that reads as less than 1% or more than 99%.

How the bracket works

The bracket page follows the MHSAA’s playoff bracket for each class. Every first-round spot belongs to a region seed (Region 3 #1 Seed, for example), and every later game is fed by the winners of two earlier ones. A team’s chance to play in a game is its chance of finishing in a seed that feeds that game combined with its chance of winning every game on the way there. Once a playoff game is played, its winner is fixed.

In Toss-up odds mode, every playoff game is a coin flip. In Projected odds mode, a playoff game’s chances come from Elo ratings. For each spot, that includes the ratings of the teams that could finish there, weighted by how likely each one is to get it.

A matchup’s chance is the chance of that exact game happening. A matchup never pairs teams in seeds the standings can’t give them at the same time. Pairings under 0.5% in both odds modes aren’t listed; each game says how many it leaves out.

Who hosts follows the MHSAA’s home team rules.

• When two teams from the same region meet, the higher seed always hosts.
• The higher seed always hosts in the first round (and the second round, in 1A–4A).
• In the quarterfinals, the team that has played fewer home playoff games hosts, then the higher seed.
• In the semifinals (the North and South championships), the higher seed always hosts.
• Equal seeds from different regions go to the lower-numbered region in odd years and the higher-numbered region in even years. The state championship is played at a neutral site.

Rules, not AI

The scenarios, headlines, and numbers on this website all come from rules-based logic and math applied to completed games, the MHSAA’s tiebreaker and playoff rules, and each team’s Elo rating. No generative AI models are used to produce any metrics you see on this website.

Even the sentence at the top of each region is assembled from proven facts by a template, not written by a language model.

Given the same games, the rules give the same answer every time. That includes the early-season simulation: it’s seeded from the games themselves, so the same games always produce the same simulated runs and the same odds, and the numbers only change when a result does.

AI coding tools were used to build the website and its code, but they play no part in calculating the results.

Information and Disclaimers

Where scores come from

Schedules and scores come from AHSFHS, the source of truth this site relies on for Mississippi high school football results. When a score is wrong at the source, it’s wrong here until it’s corrected there or reported to us and approved.

Region and classification assignments come from the MHSAA.

When it updates

Every morning at 9:00 AM Central, the latest scores are pulled. As soon as that finishes, the standings, odds, scenarios, and playoff brackets are recalculated, which can take from a few minutes to about an hour. Results from a Friday night show up Saturday morning.

The line under each region’s headline says which week the numbers cover, and the bottom of each page says when they were calculated.

What we don’t do

We don’t publish point spreads, predicted scores, or betting lines, and we don’t pick winners.

Every percentage on this site is the chance of something in the standings or the bracket: a seed, a finish, a playoff spot, a home game, a matchup, or a round reached. Seeds aren’t official until the MHSAA announces them.

What the numbers can’t see

The odds know only the schedule, the scores, and the rules. They don’t account for:

• Injuries, suspensions, or other changes to who’s playing.
• Weather, travel, or anything else that happens on game day.
• Forfeits, score corrections, or schedule changes until they’re recorded at the source or reported to us and approved.
• How strong out-of-state and MAIS opponents are: playing one affects a team’s Elo rating about the same way playing an average 1A team would.

Early in the season, ratings rest on a class baseline, last year’s results, and only a few games, so Projected odds are often less accurate in September than they are in late October. High school seasons are short, and a single game can swing a race.

A 70% chance of finishing first means the team finishes first in 70% of the ways the season can play out, counted the way the odds mode describes. It is very much not a guarantee.

Gambling disclaimer

The odds on this site are statistical estimates for information and entertainment only. They’re meant to help fans understand how a playoff race might unfold. Do not use them to place bets or wagers of any kind.

This site, its operators, and its developers accept no responsibility, legal or otherwise, for any losses arising from the use of these numbers for gambling, sports betting, or wagering of any kind, legal or illegal.

Use for betting is entirely at your own risk; nothing here is gambling advice, a betting service, or a prediction market. Sports betting is heavily regulated in Mississippi, and wagering on high school athletic events is illegal under state law.

Using these numbers

Using these numbers in a story? Please credit mshsfootball.com and link the region page!

Use the feedback form or email HailStateUnis@gmail.com to get in touch with us regarding any questions or concerns.

What visitor metrics we capture

We count visits to learn what’s useful and how people find the site. We use PostHog to do it, with no cookies and nothing stored in your browser, and we never record your name, email, or anything you type.

When you view a page, we record the page’s address and title; the site or link that sent you here, including any campaign tag on the link (like utm_source=facebook), as well as your browser, operating system, device type, screen and window size, language, and time zone.

We also count when someone switches between Projected and Toss-up, picks or searches for a team, opens a bracket game or switches bracket halves, opens a folded group of scenarios, changes the week or season, follows a link on the front page, or opens or sends the feedback form (only that it happened, never what it says). Ad-click codes that other sites add to links, like Facebook’s fbclid, are removed before anything is sent.

To count each day’s visitors without cookies, PostHog combines your IP address and browser into a code that changes every day and can’t be reversed. We’ve set PostHog to not keep IP addresses.

Helmet images, for teams that have one, load from Cloudinary, and the feedback form’s spam check is Cloudflare Turnstile; like any website, both receive your IP address and browser when they load.

What’s next

This 2026 version of the site is the first piece of a bigger one we’re building for 2027. Below is a list of items that we plan to add in the future and another list of items that we’re considering adding in the future! Use the feedback form to let us know a feature you’d like to see that isn’t listed here.

Coming in 2027

• Simulate Mode: pick the winners of upcoming games and see how the standings, odds, scenarios, and bracket change.
• Team Pages: one page for each team, with its schedule, results, odds, and playoff path.
• Real Helmet Artwork for every team, in place of the generic helmets in team colors.
• Enhanced Home Page with every class’s races at a glance.
• A Report Card for the Odds: how often the chances we published actually came true.

In Consideration

• Faster / Live Scores: We’re looking into ways to get scores faster, and potentially even as games are happening. Ways we’re considering doing this include reading score updates posted to social media during games or subscribing to a faster score feed.
• A Scoreboard and a page for every game.
• Elo Ratings displayed rankings-style statewide and in each class.
• A Map of each team’s season, with travel distances and how far it is to the championship venue.
• Helmet History for every team, with a form for users to upload new or historical designs.
• Historical Seasons: Currently, we only show the 2025 and 2026 seasons, but we’d like to expand that further back, showing previous championship venues, classifications, and playoff formats.
• Team History on team pages, including previous regions, classifications, and consolidation history, like recognizing that Leake County and Leake Central merged into Leake.
• User Accounts, so you can follow your favorite teams.
• Email Updates: a weekly newsletter along with alerts for the teams you pick.
• MAIS Coverage: the same standings, odds, and scenarios for MAIS schools.
• A “For Media” Page: each region’s standings, odds, and scenarios in a form that’s easy to cite and reuse.

About the author

I have a long history with, and love for, Mississippi high school sports; my dad played football for Raleigh in the late 1980s, and I covered Taylorsville for the Smith County Reformer from 2011 to 2015, while playing baseball for the Tartars from 2013 to 2016.

This website has been an idea I’ve had as a side project for years, as figuring out the playoff races and scenarios has always been a source of headaches and confusion. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t always a fun logic problem to think out all of the different scenarios. So I decided to utilize my skills as a Software Engineer to tackle this problem and help others visualize all the ways that a season can play out!

Two special shoutouts:

• My friend Tyler Smith, a huge Raleigh Lions fan, with whom I’ve spent many nights over the years discussing different region scenarios and playoff game locations.
• Brandon Shields, THE guy in Mississippi high school sports reporting, who has painstakingly put together these scenarios for years. Though I do not know Brandon personally, when I was first developing a lot of the scenario logic during fall 2025, his scenario articles were crucial in helping me double check my logic and untangle the web of complex scenarios. You can find his work at mississippigridiron.com!