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Playoff Format: Start from Scratch


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As is the case annually, several recent threads have touched on the debate about the best playoff system for Indiana football. This is not about that ... at least, not directly.

If Indiana had never utilized any playoff format — just played a 10 game regular season like they used to, and that was it — and decided to start from scratch to design one, what would it look like? The goals of the playoff are as follows, in no particular order, and attributing whatever weight to each goal you think appropriate:

  • Determine a worthy champion in each class.
  • Make the caliber of Indiana high school football as good as it can be.
  • Generate revenue.
  • Increase the visibility of and interest in Indiana high school football by making as many regular season games as meaningful as possible.

Also, any explanation or justification that accompanies your proposal cannot give either of these two reasons:

1. “It’s always been that way.”

2. “Because we can.”

Now, you are now the czar of the IHSAA. You have absolute power. Aside from appointing me to the newly-created position of “Grand Poobah of Football Officiating,” how do you exercise your power over the form the post-season takes? What do your playoffs look like?

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The biggest problem (s) I see in the current system are the best two teams or the worst two teams playing in the first round.  I would seed the sectionals, including home field advantage, according to the Sagarin ratings and have set sites for semi-state games. 

Positives: Rewards a good regular season.  Penalizes a bad one.  Gives a chance to teams with injuries to get healthy.  Allows for team improvement and play-off success. No team feels screwed by a system created against them.  Creates better second and third round games.

Negatives: Lots of blowouts in the first rounds. (Which could happen anyway).  Incentivize teams to run up the score (and their Sagarin rating) during the regular season.   

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Seeding the sectionals is a good start, but as this year showed, the Sagarin ratings wouldn't be a good indicator due to the number of games some teams played and it not taking out of state games under consideration.  I'm not sure of another way to seed if the Sagarin is out of the equation.  

Regionals and semi-states on neutral fields.  There are plenty of ways to figure out how to make $$$ off of this idea.

Let teams in 5A & 6A schedule a 10th regular season game.  Sometimes a week off isn't necessarily a good thing.

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I have discussed this for many years after seeing it work in Kentucky, although they aren't without their flaws. 

1. Abolish conferences. 

2.  Utilize "sectionals" as districts. 

3. Play 10 game regular season schedule, with 7 of those games being opponents from your district. This gives coaches/ADs 3 games to schedule at their leisure. If they're building a program, they can schedule easier. If they want stiff competition, they can schedule up a class or two. The open weeks will be weeks 1-3, so everyone has the same open dates. 5A and 6A will remain as 4 team districts and will only have 3 required games and 7 open to schedule how they please. 

4. Top 6 of 8 teams in 1A-4A qualify for the tournament. This is based on district standings (win/loss column). 

5. First week of the playoff the 1 and 2 seed from 1A-4A have a bye. The other games are seeded based on district standings. 

6. Playoff matchups are not inter-district.  We'll match closest districts for close as possible play. Higher seeds get the home games. I will use sectional 48 and 47 as examples. It gets a little funky since teams played different numbers of games due to COVID. 

SECTIONAL 48
  Sect Class Overall
West Washington 6-  0 7-  1 11-  1
Perry Central 5-  2 5-  2 8-  4
North Daviess 3-  2 3-  3 4-  5
North Central (Farmersburg) 1-  2 1-  5 1-  7
Tecumseh 1-  3 1-  3 3-  5
Springs Valley 1-  4 1-  5 1-  8
Eastern Greene 1-  4 1-  5 1-  9
Rock Creek Academy 0-  1 0-  3

0-  6

 

SECTIONAL 47
  Sect Class Overall
North Decatur 5-  1 8-  2 10-  3
Milan 4-  1 5-  1 7-  4
Tri 3-  1 5-  2 8-  3
Knightstown 3-  2 4-  2 6-  4
South Decatur 2-  2 4-  2 5-  2
Cambridge City Lincoln 1-  3 1-  4 1-  6
Oldenburg Academy 0-  4 2-  6 3-  6
Hagerstown 0-  4 0-  5 0-10

 

In this scenario in Sectional 47, Oldenburg Academy and Hagerstown would not have qualified for the playoffs (again it's not a true representation this year since number of games is off). In sectional 48, Springs Valley (lost to Eastern Green) and Rock Creek would have been eliminated. West Washington,  Perry Central, North Decatur and Milan would have earned the byes.

First round matchups would be:

48 #3 North Daviess vs. 47 #6 Cambridge City Lincoln

47 #3 Tri vs. 47 # 6 Springs Valley

48 #4 North Central vs. 47 #5 South Decatur

47 #4 Knightstown vs. 47 #5 Tecumseh

The winner of the 47/48 region would face the winner of the 45/46 region, etc. 

 

As a whole in this scenario, 64 of 320 teams playing do not qualify for the playoffs. Therefore, 80% of eligible teams still participate in the playoffs. Each 

7. These districts can be redrawn every 2-3 years to adjust based on changing enrollments. 

 

I really think a scenario like this will increase competition, reduce the number of blowouts and lead to a better overall product. 

 

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11 minutes ago, Ballhawk said:

Seeding the sectionals is a good start, but as this year showed, the Sagarin ratings wouldn't be a good indicator due to the number of games some teams played and it not taking out of state games under consideration.  I'm not sure of another way to seed if the Sagarin is out of the equation.  

Regionals and semi-states on neutral fields.  There are plenty of ways to figure out how to make $$$ off of this idea.

Let teams in 5A & 6A schedule a 10th regular season game.  Sometimes a week off isn't necessarily a good thing.

Sagarin's going to be problematic even in non-COVID years as, if I'm not mistaken, Indiana has at least one closed-conference schedule ... someone please remind me of the conference(s) ... which makes Sagarins for teams in that conference relatively unreliable. 

As a matter of fact, conferences in Indiana are potentially the big wrench in figuring out the situation and, most solutions might actually weaken the current conference structure or alter their current scheduling.  For example, in the Hoosier Conference, but this could apply to any conference and the way they schedule games.  Teams play four games within conference division, two games cross-division, and then a conference crossover "championship" which pits top in one division against top in the other, second in one division against second in the other, etc.  Seven games are locked in with two flexible for rivalry games, etc.  For top teams in divisions, it'd be less of an issue year-to-year, since you'd be, presumably, playing teams with relatively higher Sagarin ratings.  Would there be a push for teams who might more traditionally be in the mid-/lower- grouping of those crossover championships to push the conference to drop those to allow for possibly scheduling an outside opponent to build on the standing?  Or possibly push for loosening restrictions of the out-of-division required games to allow more pick-up of "stronger" games?  Also, with some conferences, the appeal is proximity.  Would some of those members feel the pressure of leaving the conference to push for different competition?  Would there eventually be conferences that fully realign from their traditional make-up specifically to address post-season or would there potentially be a lot a lot more teams going independent either because they didn't like restrictions of a conference or no local conferences taking them?  Would there be a more profound impact in more rural areas?

In Texas, a big part of the reason that their qualification works, besides the sheer number of teams which makes all-in infeasible, is that teams are assigned to proximity-based districts based on size of school.  There are no conferences, no one chooses which district they want or don't want to belong to.  Most districts are 8 to 10 schools and you typically play everyone in your district to make the within district numbers apples-and-apples.  The state takes the top 4 teams in a district to qualify for the post-season.  Of course, there's nothing that assures between-district parities, so potentially, the 5th place school in your district could be better than the 3rd-place school in the next district, but they go to the post-season and you stay home.  Typically you don't see a lot of cross-over play, if any, between classes.

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6 Class System. 16 Teams in 6A, 48 teams in 5A, 64 in each of 4A down to 1A.

1A through 4A will have 8 sectionals with 8 teams. Each sectional will have 2, 4 team pods based on geography. You will play your pod the last 3 games of the 9 game regular season. This allows 6 regular season games to be scheduled. Seeding will be done based those pod games. Example: Pod A, 1st place team will play Pod B 4th place team in round one. A3 will play B2. A2 will play B3. A4 will play B1. Round 2 will be Winner of (A1 vs. B4) plays winner of (A3 vs. B2). Winner of (A2 vs. B3) plays winner of (A4 vs. B1). 

In the 5A there will be 48 Teams split into 8 sectionals with 3 team pods made in those sectionals. 1st place team in the pod gets the first round bye. A2 will play B3 (B1 plays winner of this game) and B2 plays A3 (A1 plays the winner of this game). 5A will have 10 regular season games with pod games in weeks 9 and 10. 

6A will be 15 of the biggest Indy Area Schools plus Cathedral. There will be 2 sectionals broken into 4, 4 team pods. They will have an 11 game regular season with weeks 9,10, and 11 being pod games. 

Other notes. 

Reginal and Semi State games will be played at neutral sites. 6A will not have a reginal. Only sectional final and Semi State. 

All P/P's will play up one class from enrollment. 

It will still be based on North and South. You could have some fun with how to mix and match the pods in 6A. 

2 year classification cycle. 

Success factor for back to back Semi-state champions in the 2 year cycle. 

It is an all in system, but you will play teams in your pod to seed your sectional. 

Still can allow for conferences to exist.  

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45 minutes ago, foxbat said:

In Texas, a big part of the reason that their qualification works, besides the sheer number of teams which makes all-in infeasible, is that teams are assigned to proximity-based districts based on size of school.  There are no conferences, no one chooses which district they want or don't want to belong to.  Most districts are 8 to 10 schools and you typically play everyone in your district to make the within district numbers apples-and-apples.  The state takes the top 4 teams in a district to qualify for the post-season.  Of course, there's nothing that assures between-district parities, so potentially, the 5th place school in your district could be better than the 3rd-place school in the next district, but they go to the post-season and you stay home.  Typically you don't see a lot of cross-over play, if any, between classes.

I can't speak for the larger schools, but 2A thru 4A typically 6 or 7 teams per district, maybe one or two 8-team districts per class.  Ideally your 10-game schedule is 5 non-district and 5 district games. The outliers will have less of one & more of the other.

Between district parity is the one thing that still causes some grief here and there.  Your example of that is spot on.  Case-in-point, the 2A school my kids graduated from has a quarter-final game tomorrow night vs. another school from our own district.  Each quarter, or "regional", is made up of four districts (with 4 teams/district) and teams are seeded.  So, the top two teams in our region this year, among the total 16, are from the same district and were the 1st & 2nd place teams in that district.  There was at least one district in this region, whose top team probably wouldn't have finished better than 4th in our district.  The parity thing can be resolved in many districts/regions, but there has to be a concerted effort to do this, and because of geographical/socioeconomic/other factors, there always seem to be some outliers every cycle.

Again 2A through 4A, most schools try to play up a class one or two games in non-district.  We usually had two games vs. 3A opponents, two games vs. other real good 2A teams and one easy win.

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1 hour ago, qbcoach13 said:

6 Class System. 16 Teams in 6A, 48 teams in 5A, 64 in each of 4A down to 1A.

1A through 4A will have 8 sectionals with 8 teams. Each sectional will have 2, 4 team pods based on geography. You will play your pod the last 3 games of the 9 game regular season. This allows 6 regular season games to be scheduled. Seeding will be done based those pod games. Example: Pod A, 1st place team will play Pod B 4th place team in round one. A3 will play B2. A2 will play B3. A4 will play B1. Round 2 will be Winner of (A1 vs. B4) plays winner of (A3 vs. B2). Winner of (A2 vs. B3) plays winner of (A4 vs. B1). 

In the 5A there will be 48 Teams split into 8 sectionals with 3 team pods made in those sectionals. 1st place team in the pod gets the first round bye. A2 will play B3 (B1 plays winner of this game) and B2 plays A3 (A1 plays the winner of this game). 5A will have 10 regular season games with pod games in weeks 9 and 10. 

6A will be 15 of the biggest Indy Area Schools plus Cathedral. There will be 2 sectionals broken into 4, 4 team pods. They will have an 11 game regular season with weeks 9,10, and 11 being pod games. 

This is an interesting approach to using seeding to make some regular season games more meaningful. But I’m not sure why the half-measure, if you’re convinced more meaningful regular season games is a good thing. You’ve basically shortened the exhibition season from 9 games to 6-8, depending on your class.

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58 minutes ago, Bonecrusher said:

I can't speak for the larger schools, but 2A thru 4A typically 6 or 7 teams per district, maybe one or two 8-team districts per class.  Ideally your 10-game schedule is 5 non-district and 5 district games. The outliers will have less of one & more of the other.

Between district parity is the one thing that still causes some grief here and there.  Your example of that is spot on.  Case-in-point, the 2A school my kids graduated from has a quarter-final game tomorrow night vs. another school from our own district.  Each quarter, or "regional", is made up of four districts (with 4 teams/district) and teams are seeded.  So, the top two teams in our region this year, among the total 16, are from the same district and were the 1st & 2nd place teams in that district.  There was at least one district in this region, whose top team probably wouldn't have finished better than 4th in our district.  The parity thing can be resolved in many districts/regions, but there has to be a concerted effort to do this, and because of geographical/socioeconomic/other factors, there always seem to be some outliers every cycle.

Again 2A through 4A, most schools try to play up a class one or two games in non-district.  We usually had two games vs. 3A opponents, two games vs. other real good 2A teams and one easy win.

I have to admit that the vast majority of my Texas experience is based on big school ... I have confessed to being a big-school bigot prior to moving to Indiana.  My old stomping grounds were District 17 when I was back in school and District 5 as a taxpayer ... and yes, that school to the north has lots of my tax dollars invested in it. 😀  My alma mater's district has eight teams, so they play a full seven games in-district and three outside.

My old school district is actually so large now, that it spans two Texas football districts to fit all the schools in 16 and 17.  They still schedule some games with teams in District 15 as those are some old rivalries from the 1970s that dissolved as that area grew big and had to add more football districts.  When I was in high school there, my school district had three high schools and we were the brand-new third school.  That school district now has 12 6A high schools ... talk about everything being big in Texas ... that school district alone would be just a tad under 40% of Indiana 6A. 

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1 hour ago, Whiting89 said:

Split private and public into there own tournament

private is 2 classes big and small

public goes on as is now 1-6 with success factor

will create parity and easy to implement 

 

 

Well I knew it would not take long for you to post your "Kick out the Catholics" take.    As stated in all my previous posts, you might have 5% of the Administrators and few if any walking the halls of the IHSAA headquarters that support this.  But you keep trying!  

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1 hour ago, Grandpa B said:

Well I knew it would not take long for you to post your "Kick out the Catholics" take.    As stated in all my previous posts, you might have 5% of the Administrators and few if any walking the halls of the IHSAA headquarters that support this.  But you keep trying!  

What about the Lutheran and Christian schools?  They would be in the same boat.   Pretty narrow thinking

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7 minutes ago, LaSalle Lions 1976 said:

What about the Lutheran and Christian schools?  They would be in the same boat.   Pretty narrow thinking

You are absolutely correct and my apologies.  Tried to "fix it" after I posted it but you must only have a certain amount of time to "edit" a post.    

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1.  Eliminate pre-season scrimmage. Add 10th regular season game. Going to be VITAL for athletic budgets for the next few years to bring in added revenues, from the Covid foolishness we've dealt with in 2020.   Having a guarantee of 5 home games every year and being able to schedule a 10th game against a rival/someone who will generate a big gate makes all the sense in the world.  The scrimmage is useless and has been for years anyway. 

2. Seed top 2 teams in each sectional.  Put them in opposite brackets. Neutral sites at regional and semi-states.   Being forced to travel 150 miles on a school bus on a  Friday to play on someone's home field, when that host may be a weaker opponent is not fair.  Playing regional or semi-state games on somebody's crappy, drenched worn out grass field is also backwards thinking.  Its not 1986 anymore.  Turf is everywhere.  These are supposed to be "the best of the best" teams playing at this level of the playoffs.  Make the field conditions the best they can be too. 

3.  Split 5A and 6A into 16 teams in north and 16 in south (as it is today).  2 sectionals in each.  Play 3 games to win sectional.  One game to win regional.  No more semi-state.  Some of these 5A and 6A sectionals are completely unbalanced from a competitive standpoint.  Ben Davis could play their freshmen team and win the sectional they were in the past 2 years.  Make it mean something to win a sectional again in 5A and 6A.  Again seed the top 2 teams in each sectional.  Make the regular season count for something.  This does this. 

4.  If we have to have the "feel good" running clock nonsense, make it after 42 points in the 2nd half instead.  Completely disagree with giving kids fewer opportunities to play the game.  Especially with how JV and freshmen teams are dwindling (from 3A down) all over the state.  Varsity games can be a way for younger kids to get experience playing.  So make the running clock deal harder to get to.  35 points is not enough, with the way teams score more points nowadays. 

5.  

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8 hours ago, Ballhawk said:

Seeding the sectionals is a good start, but as this year showed, the Sagarin ratings wouldn't be a good indicator due to the number of games some teams played and it not taking out of state games under consideration.  I'm not sure of another way to seed if the Sagarin is out of the equation.  

Regionals and semi-states on neutral fields.  There are plenty of ways to figure out how to make $$$ off of this idea.

Let teams in 5A & 6A schedule a 10th regular season game.  Sometimes a week off isn't necessarily a good thing.

Unfortunately there are 3 main “problems” with Sagarin:

1.  It doesn’t consider out of state games

2. The closed SAC

3. The closed SIAC

Nos. 2 and 3 account for roughly 6% (going by memory) of the football playing schools and are problematic for ANY analytical approach  until several games into the playoffs.

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OK...let me give this a whirl

To qualify for the playoffs, a team must have 4 wins.  The week that would have been the first round of the playoffs is now used for playoff organization.  and a two round sectional, one round regional, semi-state, and finals.

This will make a lot of games significant at the end of the season.

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16 hours ago, Bobref said:

This is an interesting approach to using seeding to make some regular season games more meaningful. But I’m not sure why the half-measure, if you’re convinced more meaningful regular season games is a good thing. You’ve basically shortened the exhibition season from 9 games to 6-8, depending on your class.

To one of your points, the purpose of the playoffs is to generate revenue. If we make every sectional team play each other during the regular season the money you loose in travel and lack of attendance will not be regained in the playoffs. Just look at the distance teams would have to travel to play every school in sectional. In the system I posted the 4 team Pods will be made with geography in mind. 

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13 hours ago, Grandpa B said:

Well I knew it would not take long for you to post your "Kick out the Catholics" take.    As stated in all my previous posts, you might have 5% of the Administrators and few if any walking the halls of the IHSAA headquarters that support this.  But you keep trying!  

Hey, don't forget about the Lutherans !!!

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Here’s my dream system:

  • 6 classes: 32 in 6A & 5A, 64 in 4A - 1A.
  • Top 16 in 6A & 5A, top 32 in 4A - 1A make the playoffs.
  • Ratings system similar to the Harbin system in Ohio, that takes into account both strength of schedule and won-loss record.
  • 10 regular season games.
  • 5 week tournament, with 6A and 5A getting a bye the first week, in which they are free to schedule another game if they choose.
  • 8 sectionals in each class, teams grouped geographically, seeded in accordance with ratings.
  • Higher seeded teams always have home field in sectional.
  • Classes reseeded after sectional, divided into north and south, and then matched up 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc., in the regional and semistate, both of which are played at neutral sites. Explore the possibility of semistate “doubleheader’s” at suitable venues.
  • Keep the Success Factor, but double the points needed to move up & stay up, and double the cycle to 4 yrs., using a rolling calculation.

By the way, one of the collateral benefits of the implementation of my system will be a doubling (at least) of the traffic on the GID.  😉

Change my mind.

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34 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Here’s my dream system:

  • 6 classes: 32 in 6A & 5A, 64 in 4A - 1A.
  • Top 16 in 6A & 5A, top 32 in 4A - 1A make the playoffs.
  • Ratings system similar to the Harbin system in Ohio, that takes into account both strength of schedule and won-loss record.
  • 10 regular season games.
  • 5 week tournament, with 6A and 5A getting a bye the first week, in which they are free to schedule another game if they choose.
  • 8 sectionals in each class, teams grouped geographically, seeded in accordance with ratings.
  • Higher seeded teams always have home field in sectional.
  • Classes reseeded after sectional, divided into north and south, and then matched up 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc., in the regional and semistate, both of which are played at neutral sites. Explore the possibility of semistate “doubleheader’s” at suitable venues.
  • Keep the Success Factor, but double the points needed to move up & stay up, and double the cycle to 4 yrs., using a rolling calculation.

By the way, one of the collateral benefits of the implementation of my system will be a doubling (at least) of the traffic on the GID.  😉

Change my mind.

Your system makes too much sense. I'm all in. 

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@Bobref

In regards to "generate revenue"....how would less tournament games achieve this?  I would piggy back this on top of the dismissal of "because we can".

I'm not disagreeing with much of your proposal, there is a lot to agree with from a football perspective.  But if "we can" do an all in tournament, in order to "generate more revenue"....isn't that the responsible thing for the IHSAA to do?

I would definitely agree with anything that would get us "better games" (via seeding, neutral sites, rolling success factor, etc), but not necessarily "less games" for reasons above.

Edited by US31
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