Playoff Format: Start from Scratch

[BTF]

6 minutes ago, US31 said:

@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.

Good point. We should all agree on an all-in format as long as there is a seeding system that makes sense. The extra game would need to be afforded to 5A & 6A schools since they would have an extra week with the bye. That would allow the bigger schools in Fort Wayne an opportunity to play outside of their conference. Therefore, making the the Sagarin Ratings more relevant. 

[FastpacedO]

16 hours 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 

 

 

Asnine, no parity created. Literally you are talking about  maybe 20 teams in P/P split into 2.

[Bonecrusher]

17 hours ago, foxbat said:

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. 

Wow! Yes, everything IS bigger in Texas lol.

Houston area, IIRC?

[Bonecrusher]

1 hour 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.

 

41 minutes ago, BTF said:

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

Ditto

[foxbat]

7 minutes ago, Bonecrusher said:

Wow! Yes, everything IS bigger in Texas lol.

Houston area, IIRC?

Stomping grounds when I went to school are NW Houston area.  Taxpayer grounds are in north Dallas area, although I guess that Allen isn't officially North Dallas ... yet.  Basically though if you say anything like Plano, Richardson, Allen, Mesquite people still pretty much consider that Dallas anyway.

[foxbat]

39 minutes ago, FastpacedO said:

Asnine, no parity created. Literally you are talking about  maybe 20 teams in P/P split into 2.

And a chunk of them come from 1A ... and despite the claims of many that no PP belongs in 1A, at least half of these aren't any real danger to public or private programs and a couple of them have only just become "dangerous", Covenant Christian and TPCS, although TPCS still has more non-winning seasons than winning seasons.  This also doesn't include schools like Anderson Prep Academy who didn't play this year and the various homeschool teams that play in the regular season, but aren't tourney-certified.

• Covenant Christian
• Indianapolis Lutheran
• Lafayette Central Catholic
• Traders Point Christian
• Park Tudor
• Oldenburg Academy
• Indiana Deaf
• Riverton Parke
• Rock Creek Academy

[foxbat]

2 hours 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.

Looks like it'd still be all-in, right?  I though you didn't like all-in.  😀

Seriously, I like the idea.  Don't really know about the Harbin system though to know if it would suffer from the same shortfalls of Sagarin with "closed ecosystem" conferences or not.  If it doesn't, then it sounds like a step in the right direction.

[Bobref]

1 hour ago, US31 said:

@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.

On the face of it, that seems logical. Fewer tournament games = less revenue. But actually the opposite will happen, for two reasons:

1. While there may be fewer tournament games, there will be more regular season games. In fact, with 5A and 6A teams able to schedule an 11th game in the bye week, there will actually be more total games played in the season than under the present system.  Regular season games are a better deal than a first round sectional for the host school anyway, since they don’t have to split the pot. Keep in mind that all the revenue ends up in the same place, whether it’s tournament revenue or regular season revenue: it all goes to the schools after IHSAA operating expenses are deducted.

2. To the extent playoff games generate more revenue than regular season games, the qualification/seeding format creates a new class of games: “playoff-like” regular season games. More important, with more at stake, than regular season games, these games might include a week 9 matchup between two 4-4 teams. Under the current system, that game is basically a “I hope I don’t get anyone hurt for the start of sectionals” game. But under my format, that could essentially be a playoff game. More “playoff-like” regular season games = more regular season revenue.

So, fewer tournament games might mean less tournament revenue. But it doesn’t mean less total revenue. And from the schools’ standpoint, that’s what really matters.

[foxbat]

2 hours 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.

I was somewhat joking about the "all-in" because it seems that you've added one game to the season which would seem to be like a "consolation" round of the tourney to address the fact that everyone doesn't get to compete in the tourney.

At first I thought about calling the 10th game a non-advance tourney bracket, which would allow for the psychological issue of all-in, but I like the benefits of the schools keeping the dough for that 10th game.

What's your thoughts about the potential impact to the conference structure?  Some of the conference structures look at whether a team is a good fit, not just for football, but across several sports ... sometimes ceding average football for above average basketball and other times ceding average basketball for above average football.  Would the emphasis on strength of schedule force some conferences to cut some folks loose due to football even if basketball and proximity are favorable to the conference?  Would it potentially push some conferences to become basketball conferences at the expense of being a football conference or vice-versa?  I understand that we already have that, but it's more of a consequence of where the chips fell in some cases than by direct design or even necessity.  Would a non-all-in tourney, especially using a more encompassing decider like Sagarin or Harbin change the decision process for conferences?  I'm not saying it would definitively as I'm not familiar with every conference and what drives it, but it would seem that a non-all-in tourney would add another layer in operation as opposed to right now where it really has no impact.

[Bobref]

31 minutes ago, foxbat said:

I was somewhat joking about the "all-in" because it seems that you've added one game to the season which would seem to be like a "consolation" round of the tourney to address the fact that everyone doesn't get to compete in the tourney.

At first I thought about calling the 10th game a non-advance tourney bracket, which would allow for the psychological issue of all-in, but I like the benefits of the schools keeping the dough for that 10th game.

What's your thoughts about the potential impact to the conference structure?  Some of the conference structures look at whether a team is a good fit, not just for football, but across several sports ... sometimes ceding average football for above average basketball and other times ceding average basketball for above average football.  Would the emphasis on strength of schedule force some conferences to cut some folks loose due to football even if basketball and proximity are favorable to the conference?  Would it potentially push some conferences to become basketball conferences at the expense of being a football conference or vice-versa?  I understand that we already have that, but it's more of a consequence of where the chips fell in some cases than by direct design or even necessity.  Would a non-all-in tourney, especially using a more encompassing decider like Sagarin or Harbin change the decision process for conferences?  I'm not saying it would definitively as I'm not familiar with every conference and what drives it, but it would seem that a non-all-in tourney would add another layer in operation as opposed to right now where it really has no impact.

I can tell you from the Ohio experience that there will be significant disruptions to the conference structure. The exact nature and extent of the disruptions is impossible to predict because of the number of variables. It all revolves around scheduling, obviously, and there are many different approaches to “gaming” the system, i.e., putting together a schedule that is likely to yield the maximum number of playoff points. At a minimum, conferences that have schools in many different classes like the SAC will see either significant restructuring or disappear altogether. Probably considerably more independents, too.

[foxbat]

1 hour ago, Bobref said:

I can tell you from the Ohio experience that there will be significant disruptions to the conference structure. The exact nature and extent of the disruptions is impossible to predict because of the number of variables. It all revolves around scheduling, obviously, and there are many different approaches to “gaming” the system, i.e., putting together a schedule that is likely to yield the maximum number of playoff points. At a minimum, conferences that have schools in many different classes like the SAC will see either significant restructuring or disappear altogether. Probably considerably more independents, too.

I've always enjoyed the idea of mixed-class conferences and thought that they were an effective way to allow more diversity in play and experience.  Even when LCC's varsity was playing in the equivalent of a 1A conference back in the HHC, the youth program and the junior high program were playing in mixed class environments.  The youth program was at one time playing teams that fed into 1A, 3A, 4A, and 5A high schools and the junior high was playing teams that fed into 1A, 2A, 3A, and 5A if I recall correctly.  Now that LCC is in the Hoosier it's kind of the same across the board from youth to graduation.  I'd hate to see the Hoosier dissolve or drastically change.  Don't know how many other conferences have a similar setup.

[RegionFBFan]

PhilLee and Bobref proposals are similar and both make a lot of sense. A big difference is the number of teams in 6A and 5A. I would like to see 16 6A teams and then divvy up the remaining teams into the 5 classes. The enrollment disparity in 6A from the top schools (Carmel and Ben Davis) and the bottom 16 of the current 32 in 6A is massive and needs to be addressed.