Litkenhous Ratings "Out of business for the forseeable future"

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

I've been looking around on the Courier Journal's website and on Jason Frakes' social media accounts wondering if I was the only missing where the Lit Ratings had been coming out, and in the process of some Twitter searching I found a tweet from CJ contributor Nate Bryan saying something about "Litkenhous (RIP)".

 

A little deeper digging a few days ago brought me across a Twitter reply from Frakes last December where he said that "Litkenhous is out of business for the forseeable future". There was also a brief mention in a January CJ write-up about the girls Louisville Invitational Tournament about the fact that the LIT used the Cantrall Ratings to select the Louisville-area teams because the CJ's Litkenhous ratings are no longer being published.

 

I was texting an acquaintance of mine this morning who works in sports reporting for a local news station, and he told me that the word around the water cooler on his end of things was that there was a hard drive crash at the Courier Journal that wiped out decades worth of the Litkenhouse data and updates. Lots of the word "allegedly" involved in my text exchange, which I found to be interesting. Has anyone else heard anything about this? Litkenhous has been around for over 80 years at this point. Surely a computer crash didn't wipe out all of that information, right? Is there no way of finding the formula they have used anywhere?

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

[CincySportsFan]

Surely a computer crash didn't wipe out all of that, right?

 

I'd like to think that somebody somewhere would've made a backup (or two!). Now, maybe it wasn't backed up after every day, so there might be some data that'd have to be re-entered. But, the whole kit and caboodle being gone? That does sound strange to me.

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

I'd like to think that somebody somewhere would've made a backup (or two!). Now, maybe it wasn't backed up after every day, so there might be some data that'd have to be re-entered. But, the whole kit and caboodle being gone? That does sound strange to me.

 

Right???

[CincySportsFan]

Maybe they saved it on one of these, and just can't find a computer to read it. :lol2:

 

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

83 years straight. I'm just surprised it didn't get more of a formal farewell. It's just really surprising to me that the Courier Journal is so quiet about it all. Litkenhous has been the sole justification behind "mythical" state championships for high school teams in KY, OH and IN. It's been used to back up college football rankings. I think the KHSAA has used it for seeding or home game determination in playoffs in the past. The Lit Ratings have been part of the Courier Journal's brand for the better part of a century.

 

Would McDonald's ever consider just quietly removing the Big Mac from their menu and not really even mentioning it to anyone?

[ATLCat]

 

 

+

 

 

 

 

= LITKENHOUSE RATINGS

[ATLCat]

I joke but it is sad to see them go by the wayside without any fanfare. Though the logarithm certainly had ran it's course, the Lit Ratings were a Kentucky Prep Sport institution.

[theguru]

83 years straight. I'm just surprised it didn't get more of a formal farewell. It's just really surprising to me that the Courier Journal is so quiet about it all. Litkenhous has been the sole justification behind "mythical" state championships for high school teams in KY, OH and IN. It's been used to back up college football rankings. I think the KHSAA has used it for seeding or home game determination in playoffs in the past. The Lit Ratings have been part of the Courier Journal's brand for the better part of a century.

 

Would McDonald's ever consider just quietly removing the Big Mac from their menu and not really even mentioning it to anyone?

 

[video=youtube;7qnd-hdmgfk]

[theguru]

I joke but it is sad to see them go by the wayside without any fanfare. Though the logarithm certainly had ran it's course, the Lit Ratings were a Kentucky Prep Sport institution.

 

Exactly ATL.

 

I joke about the LIT Ratings too but I loved seeing them and they were an institution.

 

Another one bites the dust...

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

I joke but it is sad to see them go by the wayside without any fanfare. Though the logarithm certainly had ran it's course, the Lit Ratings were a Kentucky Prep Sport institution.

 

I heard about the Litkenhous ratings earlier in the year. I did a little reading back out of my own interest, and apparently Litkenhous was a UofL Speed School grad who was on the Cards baseball and track teams back in the 1920s. He got a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota, and I believe I read that he taught at Vandy. He came up with his formula in the late 1920s. The Courier-Journal started featuring his predictions in 1934, and then bought the rights to his formula as a weekly feature in 1936, calling them the Dr. E.E. Litkenhous "Difference By Score" ratings. I don't know exactly how long it covered high school sports, but it was initially created for college football, and including the first two years where Dr. Litkenhous conducted everything himself, it ran from 1934-1984. The Kentucky high school football ratings ran up through the end of the 2018 football season.

 

I heard the same story about losing everything in a computer crash. If I'm not mistaken, there was a straight formula that everything was based on, using final scores from all games versus simply using a wins/losses formula. Then my understanding is there's apparently a "magic number" that is put in as a multiplier for each team...and that's the big issue at hand. I've no idea what the magic number is based on, but apparently it has some not-so-quantifiable elements to it, and it may or may not also build itself off of historic data. It was losing all of that "magic number" information that would be the major loss if it was lost in a computer crash. I'm sure they would have had to have the rest of the formula written down somewhere.

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

I heard about the Litkenhous ratings earlier in the year. I did a little reading back out of my own interest, and apparently Litkenhous was a UofL Speed School grad who was on the Cards baseball and track teams back in the 1920s. He got a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota, and I believe I read that he taught at Vandy. He came up with his formula in the late 1920s. The Courier-Journal started featuring his predictions in 1934, and then bought the rights to his formula as a weekly feature in 1936, calling them the Dr. E.E. Litkenhous "Difference By Score" ratings. I don't know exactly how long it covered high school sports, but it was initially created for college football, and including the first two years where Dr. Litkenhous conducted everything himself, it ran from 1934-1984. The Kentucky high school football ratings ran up through the end of the 2018 football season.

 

I heard the same story about losing everything in a computer crash. If I'm not mistaken, there was a straight formula that everything was based on, using final scores from all games versus simply using a wins/losses formula. Then my understanding is there's apparently a "magic number" that is put in as a multiplier for each team...and that's the big issue at hand. I've no idea what the magic number is based on, but apparently it has some not-so-quantifiable elements to it, and it may or may not also build itself off of historic data. It was losing all of that "magic number" information that would be the major loss if it was lost in a computer crash. I'm sure they would have had to have the rest of the formula written down somewhere.

 

I love it that in the 1920's it took a PhD in chemical engineering to determine that that was the better way to assess where teams stood in terms of ratings. :lol2:

[theguru]

I know I poked a little fun with the last video, but this one also comes to mind and it is a very high compliment.

 

 

From Youtube:

 

In the song, Jones sings of the irreplacibility of country music legends including Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty, Roy Acuff, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, Hank Williams, Marty Robbins, Lefty Frizzell and Patsy Cline. After remarking about each of these singers' impacts on country music, he wonders who will replace these singers when they're gone -- hence, the title line -- and thus become legends in their own right.

[bruin66]

I thought the Lit ratings were fairly accurate by the end of the regular season.

[theguru]

I thought the Lit ratings were fairly accurate by the end of the regular season.

 

Right, they always got better with time because there was less magic number and more real data.