I know it’s based on district records, but no teams with overall 3-5 or 2-6 records should be in the playoffs. Embarrassing.
Eh. It's hard either way. There's multiple issues at play here.
Surface level, while they've gone back to 32 for smaller classes after the controversial first time they started it back in 2008, it does give more teams the opportunity to play in the postseason, even if they're gonna get waxed by the higher seeds.
I also think there was enough disagreement either from the Association's side or possibly even from the coaches' side about making it 24 teams and giving 1 seeds a BYE.
I understand the traditional argument is that it should be 16 teams despite all the consternation that format has wrought over the years, however there's also something else that needs to be kept in mind.
And that's the Association and Union foolishly continuing to tinker with the overall sports calendar, which affects all sports, particularly in regards to start dates and numbers of games they can cram into a season.
Right now, from 8-man to 2A, they only play EIGHT regular season games, which honestly is kind of ridiculous when you compare it to other states around the country.
I think 2A gets the short end of the stick in that regard, because those schools are in a good-enough place roster-wise that they don't need to be shortchanged a game, and you could even argue that they could go back down to 16 teams for their postseason.
But for 8M through 1A, and particularly Class A and 8-Man, there's growing issues with roster sizes and schools basically having to outright cancel or forfeit their seasons, which not only affects those schools but any other schools that were paired with those teams in a district.
For some schools, they're playing 3 or even 4 non-district games, as they picked up an extra game or two to make up for the forfeited district game.
The other thing the 32 team playoff does is that the 1st Rd effectively acts as that "9th game" for teams (at least that would be the Association's argument). And there's also still the rule that teams that didn't make the playoffs can schedule a 9th game against one another, even though it is rather difficult to do with short notice.
It's also worth noting that after 3A-5A finish their 9th regular season game next week, and begin the postseason the following week, every Class will be onto their Round of 16.
Now, if you wanna talk about real issues to complain about, I'd want more transparency on how exactly the Association goes about pairing the teams in the tournament (at least in the smaller classes).
Yes, they have a copy and paste detailed explanation for how the district finish is decided, with a heavy emphasis on the 17 pt tiebreaker differential. But they are only vague on how all of that will be used to pair teams up in the 1st Rd and going forward.
I get that they do this intentionally so that teams can't get an idea of where they might be heading so they can scout early (which is honestly kind of stupid, but both the Association and Union clearly disagree), but there doesn't seem to be much discernible rhyme or reason to their pairings outside of pairing based on district finish with tiebreakers used to determine host sites if necessary.
The big complaint for years used to be geography being a primary factor in postseason football pairings, and I think it's safe to say that the State has mostly done away with that in football, when many matchups are taking place with teams traveling well over 2 hours and some even traveling over 3 hours.
There also didn't seem to be much adherence to the 17 pt differential, at least in the 8 man pairings, outside of, if you had a higher positive number (+11 vs +7), you would host a game (against who, well that's for the State to decide at their whim, apparently).
Heck there's even a team with 2 district losses hosting a game, while a team with 1 district loss is on the road, even though their layout stated that teams with the fewest district losses would have the chance to host a 1st Rd game...............and I can't really tell you it was because of geography because the traveling team has to go a little over 2 hours to face their opponent.
That would be my complaint. No more secrecy when it comes to how you pair these teams up, Association..........
