How to use the Rating Search


Begin by selecting the fields you would like to have returned with your results by checking the boxes next to the field names. The available fields (as they appear on the search page) are as follows:

Team Name (School) Rating
Conference Number Classification Number
Conference Name Classification Name
Rank Report Card

Notice that the Team Name and Rating boxes are checked and grayed out. That is because they are both returned with every search because they are the focus of the Born Power Index.

You can select as many or few fields you want returned. A note of caution: if you have 800x600 resolution or less and you select all of the fields, the results could become cramped and it could be difficult to read the results.

Here is an example of what you would check if you wanted the Rank and the most recent Report Card entry for the teams returned.
Team Name (School) Rating
Conference Number Classification Number
Conference Name Classification Name
Rank Report Card

Moving down the form, you will see two option boxes that have numbers (and NL for No Limit) for the highest and lowest rating to match. They look like this:
Minimum value:   Maximum value:  

You are to select the high and low cutoffs for the ratings to be returned. Let's imagine that your team 'The Best' has a rating of 53.2 an you want to see how many teams in the state (or in the country for College) have a higher rating than your team. You would select 50 for the minimum and NL for the maximum so the boxes would look like:
Minimum value:   Maximum value:  

For another example (still using 'The Best' with a rating of 53.2), lets pretend that you have a big game coming up this weekend and you want to see if you may move up in the ratings. You figure that you can potentially overtake any team that is within 10 rating points (its a BIG game :) ). You would want to select the range of 50 - 65, so the option boxes would look like:
Minimum value:   Maximum value:  

Right below that is an ALTERNATIVE way to search. You can EITHER search for a range OR search for the top or bottom xx percent.

This option, by default, looks like:
Top:        Bottom: Percent

To use this option you must specify top or bottom AND specify a percentage. The percentage has to be an integer (no decimal places) greater than zero, and less than or equal to 100, and you are not to include the percent sign.

For example, if you want to see if 'The Best' (your school) is in the top 25 percent of the state, you click the checkbox next to 'Top' and you would put 25 in the percent field, so the entire field would look like:
Top: Bottom: Percent

This would return the top 25 percent of the teams in that state for that sport, with the top rated team displayed first.

Alternatively, you think that your arch-rivals, 'Almost the Best,' are in the bottom 10 percent, and you want to be sure before you start talking trash. You would check the box next to 'Bottom' and put 10 in the percent field, like:
Top: Bottom: Percent

That would return the bottom 10 percent of schools, with the lowest rated team listed first.

A note on ambiguity in the search: If you intend to search by percentage, and you leave the fields in either of the following ways:
Top: Bottom: Percent
OR
Top: Bottom: Percent

the search program will not have sufficient information to search by percentage and it will search for the range that is specified by the high and low cutoffs in the two boxes for the other search option!

 This is intentional in case you change your mind after filling out the percentage information and decide that you want to search for a range of values. In that case, all you would have to do is delete what you have in the 'Percent' field, and it will run the search for the specified range.

Below that is a button that looks like:

This button sends the information that you have filled out in the form to a program on the server to search the database. The results are then returned in the same window.