How We Rank

What the Previously 100 is

Our own national prospect rankings for high school football and basketball — boys and girls — by graduating class. The order is Previously editorial judgment. Every fact under an entry — school, position, measurables, destination, honors — must carry a public evidence basis before it publishes.

Evidence, strongest first

Primary documents: official event rosters (the McDonald's All-American Games), official award releases (Gatorade Player of the Year), school and association announcements. Cross-checked reporting: a signing or commitment carried by two or more independent outlets. Single-source reporting: one credible outlet, named on the entry — enough for the tracker and First Look lists, not for a top-10 slot on its own.

Never evidence: recruiting-service databases (247Sports, Rivals, On3, MaxPreps). We report on their honors as news, with attribution. We never import their rankings, ratings or lists as our data.

How the national order is built

Names with national anchors come first — a national Player of the Year, an All-America roster selection. Below the anchors, the list is ordered by strength of public evidence, in published tiers: Gatorade State Players of the Year, then All-America game selections, then cross-checked signing outcomes and all-state honors. A name does not need a full profile to hold a slot — it needs facts we can prove.

State lists

Every state gets a list per desk, target depth 25. The Gatorade State Player of the Year anchors each list; nationally ranked names, All-America selections and reported signings follow by evidence strength. States publish at their honest depth: a state where 25 names verify shows 25; a state where 9 verify shows 9 and says so on the page. We never pad a state list and never borrow another state's names.

The living update

An automated weekly cycle re-verifies the section every Monday: commitment and flip checks, evidence audits, a fresh photo hunt for profiles still missing one, highlight playability checks, and a rebuild — with fail-closed guards, so a partial refresh never replaces good pages and a list can never silently shrink. Every list carries the as-of date of the run that built it, and each run publishes a delta: what changed and why.

Fail closed

No evidence on file, no entry. An unverifiable field is omitted, never filled in. Conflicting sources are resolved in favor of the primary document or the dedicated reporting, and the resolution is logged. Photos publish only when a verified image of the actual player exists — no placeholders, ever.