Footballking16

A qualifying format that cuts the field in half at the conclusion of the regular season would have included both the 1979 and 1980 SB St Joe’s team.

You said every team makes the NCAAT. You are 100% wrong in that regard. The teams that qualify for the NCAAT do so in part due to regular season success. The all-in format doesn’t reward regular season success, let alone recognize it. You’re completely contradicting yourself and furthering my point. You look foolish in the process as well. Keep trying. So it’s Cluster system or all-in? There’s no in-between? 50% inclusion is a compromise of both two terrible postseason formats. Solid analogy. Again, keep trying.

I never said anything about wrestling team state, you did. If the IHSAA can seed individual wrestlers in 14 different weight classes it can certainly do it for 6 football classes.

Well yeah when there are entire sectionals comprised of very bad teams there does have to be an eventual winner. That's how single elimination tournaments typically work.

Sectionals are most definitely seeded and you're placed in the following round based on your results from the previous round. Sectional 1 winner faces sectional 2 4th place finisher, etc and so on and so on until you get to the state finals.

Wrestling is the only IHSAA sport that I'm aware of that proportionally seeds sectionals, regionals, semi-state, and State. And it's also, at least in my opinion, the most exciting tournament of any sport. I've never wrestled in my life, and outside football, its the only IHSAA tournament I keep tabs. What I was saying, is that if you go to any other sport at any level (high school, college, professional outside of IHSAA) you will never find another postseason format that just blindly disregards the regular season. Hell we used to have to qualify for the postseason back in CYO days.

As a qualifier proponent I would 100% back an all-in format that truly seeded each sectional 1-4 or 1-8, as it would eventually be the precursor to a qualifying format. The IHSAA would have zero leg to stand on in justifying large scale, state-wide blowouts in every single sectional. But we all know this won't happen because of the above-mentioned.

Good. The next step would be to then implement a qualifying format. If Hammond Noll has to lose 100-0 at the expense of keeping teams like Ben Davis and Brownsburg on opposite ends of the bracket then so be it. People in charge need to wake up. Here is how archaic the all-in format is. Ben Davis is going to win the MIC outright after going 5-0 when they inevitably beat North Central by 40+ points. Ben Davis' reward for winning arguably the 2nd toughest conference in the state is a date with the #1 ranked team in Indiana, Brownsburg, in the first round. That same North Central team who went 0-9 in the regular season has an easier first round sectional matchup than Ben Davis, a team who went undefeated in conference play and won the conference outright. Or how about this. Brownsburg and HSE are going to finish 1-2 in the HCC, the toughest conference in the state. Brownsburg is going to play Ben Davis, a top 10 rated Sagarin team. Meanwhile, Avon who is currently 1-7 and in last place of said conference draws 1-8 Pike. How on Earth does that happen? Anyone who thinks that is acceptable or seriously thinks the regular season has true, inherent meaning needs their heads examined. PLEASE MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!

Uh wrong. The NCAAT invites, ie have to qualify, 68 teams out of 350 some D1 basketball teams. Villanova and NC State EARNED their right to play in the NCAAT. Keep trying.

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.