Footballking16

For every IHSAA member school. Show me another postseason format in any sport at any level where your regular season record doesn’t determine your seed/draw/opponent come postseason. A team in Indiana could theoretically not play a single regular season game and still compete in the postseason. It’s madness, make it make sense.

Blind draw, all-in, regular season doesn’t mattter? Might want to double check that as they seed districts 1-8.

A qualifying and seeded playoff format rewards regular season success which isn't the case, at all, under the current format. The regular season is essentially meaningless in the current climate. If you get blown out as a 16 seed, at least you've earned that right to be there, that's something half your peers couldn't lay claim too. A qualifying and seeded playoff format also protects teams who achieve regular season success. Gone will be the days where the top 2 teams in each class play in the first round. Imagine Duke and Kentucky playing in the first round of the NCAAT while Alcorn State and IUPUI. You'd laugh. It's no different with the all-in. I can't accept a postseason format that a) renders the regular season meaningless and b) doesn't reward regular season success. You won't find another postseason format in any sport at any level where this is the case outside postseason tournaments that the IHSAA put on.

You are correct, it's not likely to happen. But playing to actually earn a coveted postseason spot beats the hell out of the "entitled" 70-0 drubbing in a postseason game that shouldn't ever happen in the first place.

How much better is it as college football fan of say a school like Kansas right now? Historically awful program that up until last week was undefeated and ranked in the top 25? Think how cool it would be for an historically awful football program in the state of Indiana to play in actual meaningful regular season games that were building blocks to qualifying for a coveted playoff spot? Imagine a team that regularly starts 0-4, 0-5 starting off 3-0 or 4-0 with a light at the end of the tunnel. And not just for the players and coaches, but for the students, the fans, and the whole community?

Ok double that then for hypothetical sake, although I know that number isn’t near as high as I have been tracking it since 2015. 62 sectional winners out of 1680 sectionals is still 3%. It’s a statistical anomaly. This idea that a 1-8, 2-7 team is going to somehow turn it on in week 10 because they’ve been given new life is a literal fallacy. Sure, there have been a few teams like Cathedral or Luers or Roncalli who play above their class/competition during the regular season who go on runs but those teams are entirely better than their record suggest. Bottom half Sagarin teams beating top half Sagarin teams come tournament time are extremely rare to begin with and bottom half teams making it out of sectionals are even rarer, unless it’s aided by playing a bunch of other bottom half Sagarin rated teams.

I read it. The 31 sectional champions don’t represent a fraction of all the sectional champions. Think about. There’s 48 sectional champions a year. We’ve played 35 state tournaments since 1985. Out of a possible 1,680 sectional champions, 31 have been bottom ranked Sagarin rated teams. That comes out to 1%. TWO have made it passes regionals. Like I said Monday, Cinderella in high school football is a myth. It doesn’t exist. Keep Trying.

Still waiting for that Luers team that won state despite being a bottom half Sagarin rated team? Been 3 days now. And the fact that you have to go back 26 years to find the one team to go on a Cinderella run as a justification for the all-in (and it was Luers of all teams) just goes to show you have no leg to stand on.

I’ve never said a team rated outside the top half of Sagarin hasn’t won a sectional. I said it’s extremely rare. Finding a couple one off examples from tournaments that have nearly 50 sectionals from 25-35 years ago furthers that point. It doesn’t justify keeping an archaic playoff format. If one guy going 100 mph survives a car crash it doesn’t justify raising the speed limit to 100 mph. I will gladly track the W-L record of this years postseason between top half Sagarin rated teams vs bottom half Sagarin teams and if history holds you won’t need a full set fingers to count the number of “upsets” that occur. And you might not even need a single finger to count the number of bottom half Sagarin rated sectional winners other than the the teams who advance by virtue of not playing a top half rated Sagarin team. There are unfortunately a few sectionals this year that feature schools who are all ranked outside the top half. Somebody has to advance in that scenario.

This will go unnoticed by many people, especially @Komets2727 @scarab527 There are pockets of sectionals littered across the state where many and/or all the teams will be ranked outside the top half by Sagarin. Because games are played, someone eventually HAS to win. That’s the flaw with the all-in blind draw. Those teams shouldn’t be in the postseason and winning a sectional with a bunch of other teams who also shouldn’t be in the postseason isn’t justification for keeping an archaic postseason format.

Link? Luers has never won a state championship in which they were outside the top 32 of their respective class at the conclusion of the regular season. Not once.

8 weeks in and still forget CG isn't in the MIC?!?!?! Just messing with ya. Agree it's a coin flip game but I think it's a higher scoring outcome.

Then why play the regular season?

How does that enhance Indiana high school football? Two teams who are a combined 1-17 playing each other while two teams who are undefeated playing in the same round doesn't sit right with me nor should it with anybody else. It's silly. It doesn't happen anywhere but Indiana.

The 2020 Luers team that went 3-6 in the regular season would have made any playoff format that effectively cut 2A in half from 64 to 32 teams at the conclusion of the regular season. Acting like a 3-6 Luers team wasn't a top 32 2A Sagarin team shows your ignorance on how these ratings work. Next.

What percentage of Texas teams qualify for the postseason? I don't see a scenario where a 6-4 or 7-3 team is left out of the playoffs in Indiana under a format that cuts the field in half unless it's a 5A or 6A school playing in a largely dominated small class conference.

If you can use Sagarin for Indiana teams you can certainly use CalPreps or Massey. In fact, they are already out there. https://masseyratings.com/hsf/in/ratings http://calpreps.com/2022/ratings/Indiana_all.htm

I don't think Sagarin would ever be used for an Indiana qualifying format because it doesn't include Out of State opponents. But there are rating systems very similar to Sagarin; Massey, Calpreps, Harbin, etc.....that all factor out of state competition.

That is true. Sagarin is different each and every year. For point of reference this year, 1-7 Avon who has played the toughest schedule in the state sits just outside the top 16 at 18. Have an outside chance of playing their way in Friday.

Unfortunately don't have my old Mac Book where I could readily pull the bracket from 2019 and not sure GID has the archive like they used too. But I posted what a hypothetical playoff format would look like for that year on here and CG was comfortably in.

There will be several 0-9 teams who will be participating in the postseason spanning all 6 classes. I agree, it's very dumb.

CG finished the regular season 9th in Sagarin that year I believe. They had a killer schedule.

I've only been tracking what a playoff qualifying format using Sagarin would look like since 2015 so I do not have the end of regular season Sagarin ratings for that year, just the final results that Sagarin has archived. Understanding how Sagarin works, beating 255 West Noble and 154 Heritage for Luers first and second wins in the postseason likely wouldn't have been enough to propel Luers from outside the top 32 all the way up to #23. In fact, it probably hurt Luers overall Sagarin ranking if anything. Although I can't say with 100% conviction, I'm 99.9% positive that 0-9 Luers finished in the top half of Sagarin. Now, since I've been tracking this since 2015, I can say with 100% certainty that Luers has made the field every year in a hypothetical format that effectively cuts the field in half and that includes the 2019 team that finished 2-7 and lost in the sectional semi-finals and the 2020 team that finished 3-6 and lost in the state finals.

For reference, the 2013 Luers team who finished the regular season 0-9 and ended 2-10 finished 23rd in Sagarin 3A and that was before Carroll and Homestead were annual additions to the schedule. A Luers team who goes 2-7 or 3-6 playing the schedule they currently do will always finish in the top 32 of class 2A or 3A. http://indianahsfootball.homestead.com/pastfb/2013sagarin.htm#loaded Fact

Oh really? Show me a 2-7 or 3-6 Luers team that finished outside the top half of Sagarin in their respective class. I’ll save you the time, it hasn’t happened. 4-4 Luers is currently ranked 10th in Sagarin.