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CalPreps to cease operations

Big news as this is a valuable resource to many who follow HS football and to sections that use the MaxPreps computer rankings for their playoffs

As far as I know MaxPreps rating are contracted CalPreps ratings. There’s no way to rank teams effectively without this for equity based playoffs.
 
For those who don't want to click the link, here ya go:

As many fans of our site know, we are contracted to provide data (national schedules/scores/ratings/projections/league+division alignments) to MaxPreps. Recently, for the eighth time since aquiring MaxPreps in 2007, CBS went back into breach and is willfully refusing for some unknown reason to act in a legal fashion and honor their legal/contractual obligations in terms of paying money owed to calpreps. We are out of funds at this point and have been forced to cease operations.

As you'd expect, we are in the process of suing CBS to recover owed monies plus damages, but that will no doubt not be resolved until many months or years after the conclusion of the 2024 playoffs, so we encourage any section/state associations who were relying on our ratings in order to run your playoffs this season to apply any pressure you may have the pull to apply to the rogue CBS accounting department, to attempt to presuade them to finally start to act in accordance with federal contract law. Thank you and we're sorry it's come to this, but frankly it was destined to never work with a company owned by CBS. We hope to partner with a non-CBS owned company in future seasons, but it's presumably not reasonable to expect that a deal could be struck with another company during the 2024 season, but if you are such a company and have interest, are ears are certainly open.
 
So... CBS owns MaxPreps, which depends on CalPreps, and MaxPreps at least partly uses CalPreps' data, but Maxpreps won't pay Calpreps... Quite the soap opera developing here.
 
Calpreps has been a great source of information, (and entertainment ie weekly pick) for years. it was a great source of recen( 2001?) historical data on many teams, leagues and sections.
So sorry it came to this.
 
Big news as this is a valuable resource to many who follow HS football and to sections that use the MaxPreps computer rankings for their playoffs

Glad I'm no longer doing the weekly
👃👈 Pic'Ems. Cal Preps was my last minute "Cliff Notes" fallbackfixer, Friday afternoon, cramping, calculator. If I had ever pulled off a winning Streaker I would have mentioned Cal Preps as part of my research team. But alas never a bride but always a bridesmaid in waiting in that activity. Hope you find a generous partner/ sponsor. Concrete 17
 
Well, here's the obvious problem: if this isn't resolved, there will be issues determining at-large qualifiers and then seeding the brackets. CalPreps.com is identified by name as the source for rankings.



E: 3. In divisions I‐VI, 12 schools from each column will be selected for playoff competition.

a. All automatic qualifiers will be selected first.

b. The remaining qualifiers will be selected based on their calpreps.com ranking.


I can almost guarantee that whatever band-aid is slapped onto this problem, it will make many people seriously unhappy. Hopefully, CalPreps will be back up and running, soon.
 
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This sucks big time. Even if things are resolved, sounds like Calpreps won't be back up until 2025. How do the logistics of Calprep work? Do coaches log into a website and enter team scores? If so, do Coaches still have access to the website? It would seem that even though ratings won't be posted that some type of data collection would be ongoing so that if (when) Calpreps is active again a massive amount of backfilling of information isn't required. Hopefully, some of you experts can shed some light here.
 
Ok, Calpreps has nothing on their site now except for the explanation of what's happening. Maxpreps still has all the rankings on their site, no change that I can see. If they are getting their rankings from Calpreps how come they still have them and Calpreps doesn't? Do they have separate algorithms from CalPreps? And if these ratings continue through the year why can't the sections just use them? Do the coaches and other providers log into Maxpreps to update? Could someone explain?
 
Ok, Calpreps has nothing on their site now except for the explanation of what's happening. Maxpreps still has all the rankings on their site, no change that I can see. If they are getting their rankings from Calpreps how come they still have them and Calpreps doesn't? Do they have separate algorithms from CalPreps? And if these ratings continue through the year why can't the sections just use them? Do the coaches and other providers log into Maxpreps to update? Could someone explain?
Calpreps was working this weekend, so maybe the Maxpreps rankings are just the last ones they downloaded before the site shut down. We'll see when new games get played.
 
Ok, Calpreps has nothing on their site now except for the explanation of what's happening. Maxpreps still has all the rankings on their site, no change that I can see. If they are getting their rankings from Calpreps how come they still have them and Calpreps doesn't? Do they have separate algorithms from CalPreps? And if these ratings continue through the year why can't the sections just use them? Do the coaches and other providers log into Maxpreps to update? Could someone explain?
Calpreps technically never went away. Only the front page did. If you had a tab open for a league or rankings, they still work.
 
From CalPreps: We have reached a quick resolution with MaxPreps, and the full site information will return in time for this weekend
This is what I was hoping for. They were showing MaxPreps what the void would look like. The point seems to have been made.
 
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I really like CalPreps' rating system, which appears to be at least slightly different from MaxPreps' system, though most team ratings are quite close.

I'm glad the site didn't die after all... If there was a site with this much detail for local basketball, I'd be ECSTATIC. (There are great sites like this for hoops in a number of other states, hint, hint...)
 
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I really like CalPreps' rating system, which appears to be at least slightly different from MaxPreps' system, though most team ratings are quite close.

I'm glad the site didn't die after all... If there was a site with this much detail for local basketball, I'd be ECSTATIC. (There are great sites like this for hoops in a number of other states, hint, hint...)
I thought MaxPreps=Calpreps from a ratings perspective is this not right?
 
no, they don't always match, though they are usually pretty close, and especially more so late in the season.
 
no, they don't always match, though they are usually pretty close, and especially more so late in the season.
They are one and the same. The only difference may be when you look at them. Calpreps typically finalizes the weekly ratings in on Tuesday, so if you’re looking at them before then, that’s why there may be a discrepancy. Maxpreps does not generate computer ratings on their own… at all. They only have a human poll.
 
I really like CalPreps' rating system, which appears to be at least slightly different from MaxPreps' system, though most team ratings are quite close.

I'm glad the site didn't die after all... If there was a site with this much detail for local basketball, I'd be ECSTATIC. (There are great sites like this for hoops in a number of other states, hint, hint...)
I could swear they used to do these ratings for hoops. Not sure it was exactly the same, but it was a lot of good hoops info.
 
Calpreps technically never went away. Only the front page did. If you had a tab open for a league or rankings, they still work.
Thanks for the tip. I went back through my search history and found the SJS rankings link from last week. It is still working and has been updated to reflect the most recent scores:

 
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CBS and its parent company and Paramont Global and the convoluted entities that makeup the entertainment conglomerate are undergoing restructuring and layoffs for some time. Cost cutting happening in order to package the company to merge with another company. This has been going on for some time. I would expect all core businesses were cutting. Unfortunately they should honor their contracts. Hopefully Calpreps will be able to cut a deal with someone.
 
The good news is
"We have reached a quick resolution with MaxPreps, and the full site information will return in time for this weekend"

Looks like Maxpreps is coming through and will save them at least for a while. Coming back this weekend.
 
I've heard of Freeman ratings for football, but not for hoops.
calpreps.com's Freeman Ratings is a one-of-a-kind service designed to relieve high school sections and states of the difficult, costly, and time consuming task of selecting and seeding teams for post-season sectional/state tournaments*. We do power ratings for every sport in existence. Best of all, the cost is negligible-- as low as ONE DOLLAR per school! *Note: We also do youth and college sports.

The author of the ratings system, Ned Freeman, has been doing computer power ratings for numerous sports for over 45 years and has won prediction contests as well (Sports Watch and The Sports Monitor). The computer system that we use has been honed to perfection over time.
 
I saw that on the site. I don't see any sort of link to basketball, which is what I asked for.
 
👍 CP projections really help for cliff notes, especially when picks are due 2 hours earlier than normal. Well, except last week … lol.
 
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They are one and the same. The only difference may be when you look at them. Calpreps typically finalizes the weekly ratings in on Tuesday, so if you’re looking at them before then, that’s why there may be a discrepancy. Maxpreps does not generate computer ratings on their own… at all. They only have a human poll.
I'm looking at them now side by side and they aren't the same:
Maxpreps: https://www.maxpreps.com/ca/football/rankings/1/

Looks like both are up to date when looking at records, and both did change this week. Any idea why they are different?
 
Ok I see now, scratch my last question. I see I was looking at predictive not the current rankings.
 
Ok I see now, scratch my last question. I see I was looking at predictive not the current rankings.
If you want to have an idea of what Calpreps really thinks about the teams, pay closer attention to the predictive list over the regular.
 
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