An upcoming meeting of the Oregon School Activities Association’s rankings committee could alter the way Oregon high school playoff brackets are put together. On Thursday morning, the committee is set to meet and the discussion topic is “Human element in Rankings.” Currently, the OSAA fills out its brackets for football, soccer, volleyball, basketball, baseball and softball based on the final standings in the OSAA rankings at each sport’s freeze date (when the regular season is complete). The OSAA rankings are done mathematically by computers, using a combination of a Ratings Percentage Index score and a Colley Bias Free Rating Method score. These rankings take into account factors like winning percentage, opponents’ win percentage, and home and away win percentage, among other things. While the rankings are often accurate when setting up the final brackets — for example, the Class 6A football open state championship game in 2024 was between No. 1 Lake Oswego and No. 2 West Linn — there are still times where people are left scratching their heads when they see the brackets. Notably, the Clackamas girls basketball team (despite having one of the nation’s top players and consistently coming into the season as a favorite for the Class 6A state title) has never been the No. 1 seed over the past four years. The Cavaliers were the No. 5 seed in 2022, 2023 and 2025. Another notable example was the 2023 Central Catholic football team. The Rams ended the season undefeated and won the Class 6A state championship, but were the No. 4 seed in the state tournament. One big reason why rankings get strange for some teams is due to out-of-state opponents. The RPI ranking includes out-of-state games, so long as teams update that opponent’s record. But the Colley ranking does not count out-of-state games. So in the case of the 2024-25 Clackamas girls basketball team, the Cavaliers played six games against out-of-state opponents in December. While those games included national powerhouses like Archbishop Mitty and Bishop Macnamara, the Cavaliers’ Colley ranking suffered. Clackamas was 18-0 against Oregon opponents — including wins over eventual No. 1 seed Tualatin and No. 2 seed Willamette — but was No. 7 in the Colley ranking when the rankings froze on Feb. 28. Clackamas also plays in the Mt. Hood Conference, which had four teams in the bottom half of the OSAA rankings. Reynolds (3-21) and Sandy (2-22) were ranked 47th and 48th, respectively, out of 48 teams at the freeze date. The rankings committee did have this item on an agenda in March 2024 and no changes were suggested. The next scheduled meeting for the OSAA rankings committee is June 12. The rankings committee is unable to make these changes alone. The committee is only able to make recommendations that are sent to the OSAA’s executive board for potential approval. The OSAA executive board has a meeting scheduled for May 12 and it’s annual summer workshop will be from July 21-23. What do you think? Subscribe to the High School Sports+ newsletter Sign up here to get exclusive news and insights from high school sports editor Nik Streng. -- Nik Streng covers high school sports in Oregon. Reach him at nstreng@oregonian.com or @NikStreng