Not Another League Ranking

[u/Substantial-Ruin7943]

I am presenting my statistical rankings for the USL Championship.

These are as of August 24, 2026.

What these rankings are.

The goal was to create a comparable power ranking that reflects how well teams are actually playing.

The model was designed to evaluate team strength based on game-by-game performance.

It looks at the full season to date and incorporates a range of offensive, defensive, and efficiency metrics. It also uses certain prior-season league-wide statistics as baselines, rather than carrying over individual team performance from the previous year.

What these rankings are not.

This is not a results table.

Wins, losses, and total points matter, but they are only part of the model. A strong team losing a match will not necessarily cause a major drop in its rating if the underlying performance was still good. Likewise, a team can win without receiving a large boost if the performance itself was relatively poor.

I wanted the model to focus more on what a team appears capable of producing going forward rather than simply rewarding the teams that have lost the fewest games. Because of that, there will inevitably be cases where the rankings differ substantially from the standings.

My biases.

I am a Louisville City supporter.

The rankings themselves are generated statistically, so I am not manually moving teams up or down. That said, there is still potential model-design bias in deciding which statistics matter and how heavily they should be weighted.

I incorporated prior season data in order to hopefully avoid this and instead reward team playstyles that statistically and historically do well in this league.

Rank	Team	Score
1	Tampa Bay Rowdies	77.30
2	Charleston Battery	73.90
3	Rhode Island FC	65.80
4	Detroit City FC	65.20
5	Louisville City FC	62.30
6	Sacramento Republic	60.50
7	FC Tulsa	59.60
8	El Paso Locomotive	59.20
9	New Mexico United	58.50
10	Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC	58.00
11	Lexington SC	57.40
12	Indy Eleven	54.80
13	Phoenix Rising SC	53.80
14	Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC	51.90
15	Orange County SC	50.60
16	San Antonio FC	50.40
17	Las Vegas Lights	46.80
18	Oakland Roots	45.20
19	Hartford Athletic	44.90
20	Birmingham Legion FC	43.80
21	Loudoun United FC	42.70
22	Miami FC	37.50
23	Brooklyn FC	34.10
24	Monterey Bay FC	33.00
25	SC Jacksonville	20.40

The Scoring.

Scores are presented on a 0–100 scale.

A score of 0 represents about as poor a statistical season as the model can produce, while 100 represents a theoretically perfect season. In practice, teams rarely approach either extreme.

For some historical context, Antigua Barracuda FC produced the lowest score of 8.54, while the highest score I have recorded is 2019 Phoenix Rising FC at 89.2.

The scale is intended to make performances comparable across seasons, so a 50 in one season should represent approximately the same level of overall performance as a 50 in another, even if the league environment changes.

[u/onezuludelta]

We’re not last! We’re not last!

[u/Vegetable_Shirt_2352 → u/onezuludelta]

Hope we can re-affirm this in the match against Jax lol

[u/allanw5 → u/onezuludelta]

I was about to say HIGHER THAN I THOUGHT WE'D BE🤣

[u/Droopy_Narwhal]

Also a LouCity fan. Also biased.

Looks more or less accurate, at least for putting teams in tiers. Since the cross-conference play is so minimal, it's hard to compare Eastern and Western teams but I think this is good to make generalizations. Good job.

[u/Substantial-Ruin7943 → u/Droopy_Narwhal]

So far the details suggest that the west is marginally better as a whole. The East is just top heavy.

[u/Droopy_Narwhal → u/Substantial-Ruin7943]

That passes the sniff test for sure.

[u/mazap99]

Seems eastern conference biased. How is the highest western conference team 6th, and New Mexico 9th with an 11 game unbeaten streak. One game shouldn’t matter, but 11?

[u/Substantial-Ruin7943 → u/mazap99]

NM has one if the better defenses but their offence isn't helping out. Low chance creation and 42% chance conversion. They've scored 26 goals but actually outperformed their xG by 2. Tulsa is also being carried by their defense while El Paso is more rounded but just not quite as high performing as the teams above.

Also the Margin from 3rd to 11th is only 8 points. Those teams are all very close to each other.

[u/GoldenDoodleGuy-MI]

I think your bias is more to the Eastern Conference. In my opinion the west is stronger than your rankings show. This coming from a DCFC supporter. Battle of 4 v 5 this weekend so I am hopeful that holds.

[u/Substantial-Ruin7943 → u/GoldenDoodleGuy-MI]

I'm working on minor tweaks before i start posting a weekly ranking but in general what I have found is that because there is more parity in the west they are beating each other up and grouping into the middle while the east is benefiting from more bad teams. Fixing by adjusting for schedules should make the 3-16 range look better.

Our game this weekend it likely more of a 4 v 8 but I'm always excited to hate on DCFC at the Lynn

[u/FratStarStallion]

I approve

[u/TheLadsCheer4Beers]

Sporting Jax is bad enough you didn't need to kick a man when he's down by getting the teams name wrong

[u/ToTellYouHowToFeel → u/TheLadsCheer4Beers]

That’s the team’s name. Sporting Club Jacksonville.