by John Franklin
THERE’S GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY
Back in June, I wrote about the change coming to North Carolina high school athletics with the addition of a 5A class. As the fall state playoff brackets have just been released by the NCHSAA, they are still a bloated mess. Hopefully in the fall of 2022, the engorged state tournaments will be a thing of the past. But until then, every team has to make do. As a matter of curiosity, why can’t we combine the way things used to be but update the process? I’m curious of what the various playoffs would look like without the split-level song and dance in football, and return to the old-school, 48-team tournament in all sports (32 in football).
In this edition of The Franklin Mint, I will make hypothetical playoff brackets for volleyball & football based upon the explanation below. In the winter, I will return to this issue and hypothesize the brackets for men’s and women’s basketball. Come spring, I will do the same for baseball and softball.
I. The Selection of Teams
1. Current Way: Conferences are guaranteed a number of playoff berths due to the size of a conference. Conferences with one to four teams receive one automatic qualifier, conferences with five to eight teams receive two, and conferences with nine or more teams are given three. Conference champions and the highest placed team from a split conference (per classification), automatically qualify.
UPDATE: Teams winning their respective conferences, whether by regular-season (without a tournament) or by tournament All teams not winning their conference championship will be designated as at-large teams. However, that team must be the #1 team in the conference, either outright, by tie-breaker, or by winning the conference tournament (if applicable). If you’re a team in a split-class conference, you have to be the #1 team of the entire conference to claim its’ championship status and automatic bid.
Just like the NCAA, the NCHSAA needs to allow for the only automatic qualifiers from the conference champions, and everyone else grouped from non-champions.
A team’s complete body of work goes far beyond what is accomplished in conference play alone. If a team has a great non-conference slate, and relents in conference play by a game or two, they could be tremendously punished by the Association all because of one segment of their season. At the inverse, those who have a strong conference showing, but struggled in non-conference play, their season can be improved and rewarded. Teams would stand a much more fair opportunity should they be evaluated by the entire season.
In 2017, South Caldwell – a 4A member of the Northwestern Conference along with McDowell, was the top 4A team in their conference due to their head-to head win over McDowell. As a result, South Caldwell automatically qualified for the state playoffs. The only problem with South Caldwell’s win, it was their only win of the season (1-10). Never mind the fact that South Caldwell and McDowell were the two worst teams in the entire Northwestern Conference in 2017.
Not only did they qualify for the playoffs, but they also somehow acquired the #2 seed in the 4A West Playoffs. As per seeding rules, all conference champions or top teams in a split class conference for a particular classification, were tiered above all other at-large teams for the top seeds. South Caldwell received a bye in the first round, and a home game in the second round. Subsequently, their 1-10 record showed how bad they were as they were trounced in the next round.
If you’re the conference champion, the best in your conference, you should definitely qualify. But if you’re not the top team, you should only get in as an at-large team.
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2. Current Way: There are no pre-set number of wins that would qualify you as a playoff participant. Over the past twenty years, teams with abysmal, sub-500 records were qualifying as a result of how they finished in a conference.
UPDATE: Qualifying teams must have a record that is above .500. Any team with a .500 record or worse will be disqualified, unless that team is the conference champion.
For years, I have argued that every college football team playing in a bowl game should have a record of .500 or better. This would mean a team with a 7-5 record or better would qualify, while the 6-6 teams should go home and focus on basketball. This is no different for high school football. With one less game than their college counterparts, all teams should be striving for the minimum of a 6-5 record if they play an endowment game, a 6-4 record without one. This will also be true of other sports. To qualify for an at-larger berth, a team must be above .500, unless that team were to win their conference’s championship.
Last season, as a result of Hurricane Florence, football teams faced cancelation of games. This was also true during snow events in the winter. Should teams have games canceled due to no fault of their own, teams still must maintain an above .500 record in order to qualify. Teams with a .500 record will provisionally qualify, provided there are vacancies in the brackets.
The NCHSAA needs to stop rewarding teams with mediocre and inferior records. As I’ve mentioned before with the bifurcated football playoff system and the 64-team tournaments, the Association is needing as many teams possible to fill all of its playoff spots. More teams equals more games, and more games equals more money.
II. The Designation of Teams per Region
Current Way: All playoffs are divided by east and west regions – per each tournament. Schools are then pre-assigned to a specific region. Instead, the NCHSAA determines which schools will go to which regions after the qualifiers are determined.
The NCHSAA uses the actual longitude for a school to determine regions. Based on the longitudinal location of all schools that qualify for the state playoffs in a given classification (and / or subdivision in football), the western-most half will go to the West region, while the eastern-most half will go the East region.
Both regions will have an equal number of teams assigned to them.
UPDATE: The NCHSAA will go back to a pre-determined list of schools for each region, for the year, and not by each set of playoffs. Over the last 20 years, teams have flip-flopped between the regions causing undue amount of travel to extremely far locations. With a pre-set list of the regions, schools can plan for travel within their region and budget the necessary funds to pay for travel costs.
For the sake of time, I am only organizing the 3A classification as it relates to Orange and Cedar Ridge. As of this year, there are 109 schools in 3A. The boundaries for this year lies between Northeast Guilford and Eastern Guilford. Northeast Guilford is the eastern most West Region team, while Eastern Guilford is the western most East Region team. Despite an uneven number of teams, I flipped a coin to see who would get the extra team, which was won by the West.
III. The Seeding of Teams
Once the qualifiers are determined and the regions are assigned, the NCHSAA will seed the state playoff brackets. Unlike the NCAA Tournament, seeding for NCHSAA playoffs is not done by a subjective committee. Instead, the Association uses a strict and simple formula to determine the seeds.
Current Way: All regular season conference champions (and top teams from split conferences) are seeded first. All second-place automatic qualifiers are seeded next, and then any third-place automatic qualifiers. Once all automatic qualifiers have been seeded, the at-large teams are seeded behind them. All tiers are seeded by their Adjusted MaxPreps Ranking or AMPR.
UPDATE: Instead of having a tiered system that seems to punish schools who might have a decent season, but lost a game or two in conference play, seed the teams by a point system. This will allow of playoff teams to be seeded by their entire season of work instead of by conference finish. The final AMPR (prior to the start of the playoffs) would be utilized as an aid to seeding. No preference is given to conference champions as the champions might have had an inferior record than others. This will equate the playing field. Ties will be broken utilizing the AMPR.
The playoffs are seeded by a point system. Three points are given for a regulation win, two points are given for an overtime win, one point for an overtime loss, and zero points for a regulation loss. This system would give additional benefit for teams who go into overtime (likewise of a 5th set in volleyball or criteria in wrestling), but fall short of a win. The point system is designed to seed teams on the basis of the most points accrued for the highest seeding.
One caveat to the point system is if a team plays more games, but under modified rules. For example – volleyball. If a team plays in a tournament where games are a best of three instead of the best of five, the games played under the best of three rules will be not be included in their overall record for seeding purposes. If the NCHSAA allows a game in any sport to be played under modified rules, those games will not be included in the season record.
As I previously mentioned of South Caldwell, the tiered seeding system benefited them. Because of their win over McDowell, they struck the gold mine. Under my modifications, South Caldwell would have not even come close to playoff qualification as they were the second-to-last team in the Northwestern Conference with an atrocious, 1-10 record.
IV. The Layout of the Brackets
Current Way: All dual team sports with the exception of football, lacrosse, and wrestling will field a 48-team tournament in 1A and 4A, and a 64-team tournament in 2A and 3A. Football is subdivided into A and AA based on average daily membership, and each subdivision has a 24-team tournament in 1A & 4A, a 32-team tournament for 2A & 3A. Women’s lacrosse is a 40-team, open class tournament; while the men have a 32-team tournament for a combined 1A/2A/3A class, and a 32-team tournament for 4A. Dual Team Wrestling is also a 32-team tournament in all classes.
UPDATE: The 64-team tournaments in 2A and 3A will be scaled down to 48-team tournaments. This is performed to allow the best teams in each region to be rewarded with a bye in the first round of the sectionals. All other tournaments will remain the same.
Again, no subdivision will take place in football, while all football tournaments will be a 32-team tournament in all classes.
IV. Local Results
In football, Cedar Ridge (1-10) & Orange (5-6) did not have winning records, and therefore, did not qualify.
In volleyball, Cedar Ridge would have received the #10 seed and a home game to face the #23 seed, Southern Lee, in the first round. This was an improvement from their actual #20 seed and first round road game. A win would have advanced the Red Wolves into the second round at #7 Cleveland. Orange improved four spots to #15 (actually seeded #19), and would have had a home game against #18 seed, C.B. Aycock. A win would have set up a second round date at #2 Union Pines.
V. Conclusion
Sometimes, the present can be simplified by the past while modernizing the operation. It feels that as time progressed, the entire process of the playoffs has been complicated. With the changes coming in a few years, perhaps the simplification of high school athletics will return. As of now, it’s a mess and there has to be a better way to determine the state’s playoff system.