News - HDR Analytics: Big 8 Models

2025-26 Big Eight Football Forecast

Henry Riley — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 04:00:00 GMT

🔃 November 2nd, 10:00 PM: Our ratings have been frozen for this year as both Middleton and Verona lost in level two of the playoffs.
Created by Henry Riley
Game probabilities for the current week of the season will be publicly available for free, but probabilities for future weeks will remain paywalled. Rankings will always be free.
Playoff games are treated as normal games in the model, so the further a team goes in the playoffs, the higher their rating can go. (The conventional wisdom here is that the further you make it in the bracket, the better you are anyways)

Memorial (3-5) did not make the playoffs. To earn a spot in the WIAA D1 Playoffs, they needed…

Forecasts for the entire season of conference games are available below for paid subscribers.

Henry Riley — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 01:12:00 GMT

🔃 June 28th, 8:12 PM: Our ratings are no longer updating, as all Big Eight teams are out of the playoffs.
After careful consideration, we’ve decided not to post game forecasts/odds for the following reasons: 1) The baseball schedule is wildly inconsistent and much harder to manually keep track of than football or hockey (thanks rain), and 2) for whatever reason, the WIAA fails to keep their site updated in a timely and accurate with game results, making it much more time-consuming just to update the ratings, much less forecasts. This is obviously half of what makes the model interesting, but the ratings are still somewhat helpful on their own, and except for rare cases where the home field advantage is enough to compensate, the team with the higher rating is favored to win.
Playoff games are treated as normal games in the model, so the further a team goes in the playoffs, the higher their rating can go. (The conventional wisdom here is that the further you make it in the bracket, the better you are anyways)

Henry Riley — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 22:53:00 GMT

🔃 June 13th, 5:53 PM: Our ratings are no longer updating, as all Big Eight teams are out of the playoffs.
After careful consideration, we’ve decided not to post game forecasts/odds for the following reasons: 1) The softball schedule is wildly inconsistent and much harder to manually keep track of than football or hockey (thanks rain), and 2) for whatever reason, the WIAA fails to keep their site updated in a timely and accurate with game results, making it much more time-consuming just to update the ratings, much less forecasts. This is obviously half of what makes the model interesting, but the ratings are still somewhat helpful on their own, and except for rare cases where the home field advantage is enough to compensate, the team with the higher rating is favored to win.
Playoff games are treated as normal games in the model, so the further a team goes in the playoffs, the higher their rating can go. (The conventional wisdom here is that the further you make it in the bracket, the better you are anyways)

Henry Riley — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 04:30:00 GMT

🔃 February 27th, 10:30 PM: All projections and ratings have been updated based on recent games. No Big Eight teams remain in the WIAA playoffs, so the forecast is officially finished for the year.
Created by Henry Riley
Game probabilities for the next week of games will be publicly available for free, but probabilities for future weeks will remain paywalled. Rankings will always be free. (I may add more extra paid features later on)
Playoff games are treated as normal games in the model, so the further a team goes in the playoffs, the higher their rating can go. (The conventional wisdom here is that the further you make it in the bracket, the better you are anyways)

There are no conference matchups to forecast.

Henry Riley — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 14:45:00 GMT

This forecast was frozen after all three Big Eight playoff teams were knocked out of the bracket.

Created by Henry Riley
Game probabilities for the current week of the season will be publicly available for free, but probabilities for future weeks will remain paywalled. Rankings will always be free.
Playoff games are treated as normal games in the model, so the further a team goes in the playoffs, the higher their rating can go. (The conventional wisdom here is that the further you make it in the bracket, the better you are anyways)

Forecasts for the entire season of conference games are available below to paid subscribers.