How The Lineup Is scores every game
On a busy Saturday there are two hundred games. Most of them are not worth your evening. The hard part isn't finding a game to watch — it's finding the right one before you've spent three hours on a blowout.
The Lineup Is scores every game from 0 to 100 on a single question: how much does this deserve your attention? The score isn't a gut call or an editor's pick. It's an 11-factor model, and every game shows you the factors that moved its number. Here's what goes into it.
The 11 factors
1. Rankings
Are these two good teams, or two bad ones? A top-five matchup starts from a higher floor than a pair of also-rans. We weigh each side's quality and how evenly they're matched — a great team stomping a weak one is worth less than two great teams colliding.
2. Playoff stakes
A game in March means more than the same matchup in November. As the season tightens, games that decide seeding, clinch a berth, or knock a team out gain weight. Late-season stakes are where watchability compounds.
3. Rivalry
Some matchups carry history the standings can't capture. Rivalry games are tighter, meaner, and more watchable than their records suggest, so they get a real boost.
4. Closeness
The single best predictor of a good watch is a close game. We weigh how tight the matchup projects to be — spreads, form, and matchup quality — because a coin-flip finish beats a foregone conclusion every time.
5. Star power
Some players are appointment viewing on their own. When the game features stars worth tuning in for regardless of the score, that counts.
6. Championship implications
Finals, title deciders, and games with a trophy on the line sit at the top of the scale. These are the games people remember.
7. Elimination
Win or go home changes everything. Single-elimination pressure — a Game 7, a knockout tie, a do-or-die — sharpens every possession and earns a significant boost.
8. Momentum
A team on a heater, a streak on the line, a chance to make history — momentum stories give a game a reason to matter beyond the standings.
9. History
Records within reach, milestones, rematches of famous games. When a game is playing out against a bigger backdrop, that context adds weight.
10. National broadcast
The league's own scheduling is a signal. When a game is picked for national television, the people who make those calls have already decided it's worth watching — we factor that in, without letting it dominate.
11. Matchup quality
The connective tissue: how the specific styles, forms, and stakes combine into something greater — or lesser — than the sum of the parts. Two mediocre teams playing a game that means everything to both can outscore a marquee name playing out the string.
How the factors combine
The factors aren't simply added up. Boosts are multiplicative — a rivalry lifts a big game far more than it rescues a dull one, because the thing it's multiplying is already high. That's deliberate. A close game between two great teams with a playoff berth on the line should tower over a blowout, not edge it by a few points.
Every score is shown with its factors. Open any game and you'll see which signals moved it and by how much. No black box, no "trust us."
You set the bar
The score is only half the job. Casual, Balanced, and Hardcore presets set how high a game has to score before it makes your lineup — or you can tune the algorithm league by league. Some nights that leaves ten games. Some nights two. Some nights zero, and that's the point: not every night is worth your time, and we'd rather tell you than pad the list.
Then it explains itself
Every game gets a short narrative, written from the actual state of the season — the standings, the stakes, the storyline. Not "tune in tonight." Real context, so you know why a game matters before you commit an evening to it.
Get The Lineup Is on iOS — free — and see tonight's slate scored and ranked. Or browse tonight's best games on the web.