Missouri High School football playoffs 2012 and beyond: Everybody's In!

Regarding Texas again, I like the system it has because the results on the field dictate who makes the playoffs. And the playoff bracket for all sports is predetermined. Yeah, it's been watered down and will probably be further watered-down in the future, but the best teams always rise to the top over the course of a six-game tournament.

 

I doubt the economic benefit would be that great. If there is an economic benefit to seeding, it would not come from fans, players and coaches of eliminated teams. The numbers of those attending would be incredibly small.

Any economic benefit would come from getting teams with more excited, larger fan bases in the sectional championship. The reason I don't think gate sales would increase significantly with seeding is because when an unheralded team makes an unexpected run to the sectional title, people generally turn out for it.

And as someone who played four years in the all-comers, unseeded Indiana tournament, I never saw a huge problem with it. A couple years we got more difficult draws than other teams, but we always had the chance to win it on the field.

 

Yeah, I think Mississippi patterned their system after Texas, though on a smaller scale. The bracket is determined in advance, and teams fill the slots based on how they finish. Then it's higher seeds hosting in the first round, so there is a reward for finishing higher in the region.

The only problem I have with our system here is that the top four teams from each region make the playoffs, and most of the regions in the middle classes (4A, 3A and 2A) only have six teams and a few only have five, so you can conceivably win one key game and make the playoffs. We've had that happen, where a 1-10 team made the playoffs.

 

13 points in 11-man football, 21 in 8-man football. I think it still stands that this team is the only 8-1 team since two teams started advancing from districts to miss the playoffs.

I've always regarded (and explained it in this way for people who just starting to follow high school football) that districts were like a 3 or 4 team round-robin playoff. Then the best two teams go on to the next round. Now, do the best 16 or 32 teams (depending on the class) always make it in? No. But if you couldn't beat the other three teams in your district, one of which might have been 0-6 entering it, you weren't one of the best in your class, anyway.

 

As noted, in Indiana, we have had an all-in tournament since 1985.

It has been pretty popular -- attendance is good and it's a tourney everyone can follow because their school is in it.

The argument that the regular season is meaningless doesn't really hold water. Conference races are pretty important, and those games hold a lot of prestige in local communities. Is it possible to have a losing record and win a state title? It's happened more than once. But it doesn't penalize teams for playing in a bad conference (as a points system does) or penalize them for playing in an extremely strong one (as a system largely based on record -- much like Illinois' -- does). There aren't any arguments.

The biggest issue a lot of people have is the blind draw for each sectional (the first 3 rounds of each 64-team tournament, 8 teams in each). Given Indiana can use the Sagarin Ratings and a lot of sectional fields feature common opponents, it should be pretty easy to seed -- or at least seed the top 2-4 teams in each sectional and blind-draw the rest.

 

Ohio has around 720 football schools and uses six divisions. The divisions are divided as evenly as possible, based on male student population (student counts taking place every other year so teams are locked into their divisions for two-year periods) -- Division I for the large schools down to Division VI for the small schools.

The regular season has 10 games and playoff spots are determined through earning computer points -- the higher the division of your opponent, the more points they have.

Each division is divided into four regions, with the top eight teams in each division qualifying for the playoffs. That's 32 teams from each division making the playoffs, or 192 of the 720 teams in the state -- a little more than 25 percent of the football schools in the state.

 

South Carolina has about 200 public teams playing football. Forty-eight schools are in most of the classes. Next year, however, they are playing for seven (yes, seven) public school championships. They just expanded to separate the 2A classes into two championships.

Now, in 2A, every team will make the playoffs. I am a new poster, but I did stats for a 4A HS in SC for two years. The first year they were 3-8, and the next year they were 4-9. The 2nd year ('09), not only did they make the playoffs, they won a game. They were the 14th seed in their division.

Both of them will be played at Benedict College in Columbia.

Here is a article from a local website about it:

http://www2.scnow.com/sports/2011/apr/28/south-carolina-playoffs-crown-two-2a-champions-ar-1775768/

 

We part ways, my friend, on how meaningful the regular season is in Indiana. I think it's totally meaningless aside from preparing you, in either a good way or a bad way, for the playoffs.

As you know, two of the public schools in my area get their asses handed to them on an annual basis by the massive Indy metro schools. I don't think either of them has managed a winning season in my seven seasons here.

Yet, they're a threat come playoff time in their sectional because they're battle-tested and they're not playing Indy competition.

The opposite is true for one of our 4A schools. Since they're bitches (my nephew played for them and even he agrees!), they play in a conference primarily consisting of 3A and 2A schools. They run up the score on these shitty western Indiana schools that aren't football-focused to start with, get some gaudy 7-1 regular season record, then they go play "real" teams in SW Indiana (and in an earlier alignment, schools south of Indy). Few things pleasure me more than to watch this school get its butt kicked come sectional time by the likes of Jasper, Evansville Reitz, etc.

My point is that it all renders the regular season games meaningless. And in an odd way, I think putting kids at physical risk for eight meaningless games is a giant waste of time, especially when Indiana starts in the dead of the heat in August so they can get done by Thanksgiving.

The blind draw, as you mentioned, makes it about 1,000 times more stupid. Yes, lets have two 8-0 teams play one another in the first round! Or two 0-8 teams! Why? Tradition!

Here's how I'd do it. Scrap conference altogether. Conferences in Indiana mean less than nothing, other than setting up your schedule. Do it like Kentucky does it ... make your sectional your conference.

You play every team in your sectional and the top four make the playoffs. To make up revenue lost for the teams that don't make the playoffs and to maintain the current schedule, you add a game to the regular season.

There would be a nine-game regular season schedule. In most cases, they'd play seven "conference/sectional" games and two "nonconference" games of their choosing. This would keep alive the vast majority of local rivalry games that don't fit into the context of the sectional formats.

I think basketball should adopt something similar. The postseason itself should still be all-comers, but make teams play home-and-home's with the other teams in their sectional and seed the sectional based on the results. Ten "conference/sectional" games, ten games of your choosing ... for most teams.

Problem solved!

Of course, it'll never happen. The I in IHSAA never has and never will stand for innovation, even though the body has sorely needed it for 30 years.