How's your high school football season going?

Good grief. I thought only Oregon was that bad.

 

One year in Alabama, probably 20 years ago, an 0-10 team made the playoffs. They competed in a 3-team area with the top 2 seeds going to playoffs. If I remember correctly, the second-place team was declared ineligible during the season and 0-10 school went instead.

 

I'm sure the question will be asked, so I'll answer it. How does a 1-10 team make the playoffs? It's actually pretty easy. Six teams in the region, top four make the playoffs. Bottom three all beat each other, leading to a three-way tie at 1-4 in the region. It comes down to point-differential, with 12 points being the max. 1-10 team's only win is a blowout over one of the other teams in the three-way tie, and the game against the other team is a close loss. Voila! They're in as the four-seed.

 

Thanks. When that's the case, they are taking too many teams.

I remember one year a team covered went 8-3 and lost out of a spot on tiebreakers while a 5-5 team from another conference got in. There were a lot of people who were understandably livid over that.

 

The amount of playoff teams getting in and some of the records is getting a bit absurd. I'm not sure how it will pan out, but there was a possibility a defending state champion, who has been ranked all year this year as well will open the playoffs against a team with just 1 or 2 wins. HEY! Congrats on making the playoffs, here's your reward!
I'd like to think Texas is just planning ahead for the continual growth, but they aren't. I thought the extra teams would make the playoff scenarios easier to figure out, but they aren't, especially where I am where we have schools in every classification spread over about a dozen districts. Each district has it's own three-way or more team tie-breakers. Head to head is generally first, but after that, District A may use positive point system (award points based on margin of victory 45-40 win would be +4 for team A, nothing for team B) capped at 17 points per game, district B may use point differential capped at 19 (43-40 win would be +4 for team A and -4 for team B).
The state lets each district make its own. It would be easier if the state set the district tiebreaker procedure.
It would also be easier if all the schools used MaxPreps now that the state signed a deal with them.
Some use HSGamecenter and other sites. Some don't use anything.
But all in all this season has gone well.

 

Some states (including Alabama, I believe) use overall record as the second tiebreaker after head-to-head. So that cuts down on the number of losing teams that get into the playoffs.

The one problem there is that it discourages playing tough non-region games.

As for cutting the number of playoff teams, that will never happen. The state athletic associations get a huge cut of the gate from playoff games, and more games equals more money.

 

But if they say one damn word about how they're trying to make the game safer for kids, they can't be taken seriously. More games equals more hits and more hits equals more injuries.

 

Our state finally moved kickoffs to 7 p.m. for the entire season this year. Previously, they had kicked off at 7:30 p.m. until Sept. 30, and then 7 p.m. thereafter.

Whenever I raised the issue with state officials, they always hid behind safety/heat. My counter-argument was "if it's a safety thing, why is the season-opener creeping further into mid-August every year?"

Eventually, logic won out.

 

Arkansas has a playoff system that allows winless teams in the playoffs.

It is confusing but the largest class splits into two classes for the playoffs and one sends every team regardless of record.

They do the same thing for basketball and several winless teams have made the state tournament.

 

Missouri plays its second round games in everything but Class 6 (the big, big schools) and 8-man on Wednesday. We have a handful of teams left and most will likely be done Wednesday.
Luckily this is the last year of this playoff format since someone actually looked at a calendar and figured out you could play all post-season games on Fridays and Saturdays if you start practice the first week of August instead of the second week.

 

Oklahoma sends the top four teams from each district to the playoffs. For most classes, it means a 16-team bracket, but for a couple, it's a 32-team bracket, because there are eight districts and far more schools than other classes.

New Mexico has been doing 12-team brackets for its larger classes but probably needs to go back to eight, given how thin those classes have gotten. The smallest classes get either four or six playoff teams.

 

I was just doing a little math in my head, and I think in Texas from Class 5A down to six-man a total of 672 teams make the playoffs. That doesn't include the private school leagues. My head hurts just thinking about that.