Watered down playoffs

And you think the bowl scenario is oversaturated?
Louisiana's high school athletic association announced its boys' basketball playoff pairings today.
I am sure it's this way with every other state, but I always get amused at some of the teams that "crawl" into the postseason picture.
One of the teams in our coverage area has an opponent which will enter the playoffs on an eight-game losing streak, finished in last place for its district with a 1-7 mark and is 16-22 overall.
Last week, when the state girls' playoffs were announced, another school that went up against one of the teams in our coverage area with a 4-22 record, 0-8 record in league play and a five-game losing streak.
Okay, I realize they gotta fill out the brackets some way, but isn't this ridiculous?
I mean, what's next? A winless team making it into the playoffs?
How many out there have similar situations with their state prep playoffs?

 

Is this the state tournament? How many teams per bracket?

 

Both states I've worked in have all teams make the postseason.

 

So do the runner-ups make the playoffs in all districts I'm guessing?

We had that situation for a few years where the runner-up in a three-team district always made it. They were crap and got killed in the first round. I've since moved to a different state, but last I heard the state association made changes so that only runner-ups from certain districts made the playoffs.

Still, more team, more games, more tickets, more $!

What the hell? You mean the district tournaments or the state playoffs? If it's the state playoffs, please tell me you live in Antartica or something where you only have 1-2 teams.

 

The district tournaments. Did the OP mean 1-17 teams making it to state?

 

We have 16 districts, and varying numbers of Classes dependings on sport. Some sports have two or three, Football has eight.

District champion and runner-up get in. Football is determined by regular season district play, everything else has a district tournament where if you win the district semifinal, you're in.

Three regional rounds, then off to the final four. Works great, even if there are some smaller class districts with only three or four schools.

 

Every basketball team in Ohio makes the playoffs.

 

How many classes, and how many schools per class?

 

Every team in Michigan makes the playoffs.

You start with your district with a few teams, by the end of districts half the schools in the state are gone and so are most of the bad teams. Easy as that.

 

In the largest classification of our state's private school association, 16 of the 17 boys teams and 16 of the 18 girls teams made the "state tournament." Ridiculous.

 

Like I said before, down here we cut down to 32 per class after district tournaments and the official beginning of the state tournament. How many make the state tournament there?

 

In Mississippi, they still have slow-pitch softball. More and more teams drop it each year, but it's going kicking and screaming to the grave.
Anyway, Class 5A (the largest) only has 32 schools that are broken into eight four-team divisions. The last couple years, one of our locals was placed into a division with two schools that had dropped their programs. So just by fielding a team, they made the playoffs. And by beating the other team in the division, who sucked, they got a top seed and a home playoff game in the first round.

The 5A baseball playoffs are also screwy. They've tried various formats, but now they seem to have settled on eight three-team regionals for the first round. So 24 of the 32 teams make the playoffs. In some divisions that have three good teams, like the one our locals were in a couple years ago, that's a nice thing. There was one division, though, where three of the four teams were inner-city schools that would routinely get run-ruled. The fourth was a B+ team at best that might finish second in most divisions. Even so, three of the four made the playoffs.