Why am I a Rookie? Or an Emerging Star?

i?Old answer/i? The titles come from the star-player-points-table in the rulebook, so: Rookie < Exp. < Vet. < Emerg. Star < Star < Super Star < Legend.

While the exact formula isn't published anywhere (a deliberate choice on Christer's part), it can be summarized as follows (no specifics given here):

• Legendary is the top X active coaches for the given group
• The rest of the categories are simply percentages of (non-legendary) active coaches.
• Rookie and Experienced are forced for low number of games played.
• There's hysteresis in place to keep you from flipping back and forth between the bands.
• There are periodic updates that recalculate the limits and re-categorizes people into their current band.
• The groups don't "fade", even if coaches become inactive, meaning you can have more than the X number of legendary rank players for a given category.

 - Source: gleaned from a forum conversation in August 2017.

Updated 14 October 2017 modification.

• The Rookie bracket is strictly for rankings where the coach has fewer than 10 matches. Prior to this change, Rookie was shared between coaches with the lowest CRs together with the fewer than 10 coaches. This caused some complexities and confusion.
• The starting bracket for new coaches is now 'Emerging Star'. This should coincide with the 150 ranking. Prior to the change, new coaches were in the 'Rookie' Bracket and artificially were considered below average.