Single wing

[bisonlj]

Originally Posted by RichMSN

7 divisions, 32 teams each in Wisconsin. Half the state, give or take.

They've talked about an all-in in the past, which would mean every single crew in the state would be needed Week 1 and they'd have to relax requirements for crews to qualify.

IMO, too many teams get in as it is and there are way too many blowouts in the first round.

If you do an all-in you could have a random draw like we do and two undefeated teams could play in the first round while two 0-9 teams could also play. This year 2 of the top 3 teams in the state lost in the first round. They lost to 8-1 and 7-2 teams who were also pretty good. 50 of the 160 teams in round 2 had losing records during the season (about half of them were 4-5 and are now 5-5). 2 teams won their first game of the season in the first round of the playoffs but they both played teams with losing records (3-6 and 1-8).

[Rich]

Originally Posted by bisonlj

If you do an all-in you could have a random draw like we do and two undefeated teams could play in the first round while two 0-9 teams could also play. This year 2 of the top 3 teams in the state lost in the first round. They lost to 8-1 and 7-2 teams who were also pretty good. 50 of the 160 teams in round 2 had losing records during the season (about half of them were 4-5 and are now 5-5). 2 teams won their first game of the season in the first round of the playoffs but they both played teams with losing records (3-6 and 1-8).

Sounds like the regular season is completely meaningless, then.

[bisonlj]

Originally Posted by RichMSN

Sounds like the regular season is completely meaningless, then.

Don't tell that to any Hoosiers. Every team plays every game hard according to them. And there are still conference championships to earn. Proponents see the system as two different seasons. There is some truth to that and it is unique. I just think it is counter to what most people are used to. If it was such a good system you'd think at least one other state would consider it. I believe we are the only state with no playoff qualification. The same is true in all high school sports. There is some seeding in sports like wrestling and tennis but I think that's it.

[BuckeyeRef]

You think those are a little strange. Check out the tiebreaker method used in Utah that let a 2-8 team get into the playoffs.

Utah team earns playoff berth despite just two wins in school history - Prep Rally - High School - Yahoo! Sports

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by bisonlj

Don't tell that to any Hoosiers. Every team plays every game hard according to them. And there are still conference championships to earn. Proponents see the system as two different seasons. There is some truth to that and it is unique. I just think it is counter to what most people are used to. If it was such a good system you'd think at least one other state would consider it. I believe we are the only state with no playoff qualification. The same is true in all high school sports. There is some seeding in sports like wrestling and tennis but I think that's it.

Are there teams that refuse the playoffs and prefer to play games against traditional rivals? Or do their association rules forbid that, and make everyone finish their seasons once the playoffs begin? Are there consolation games? Do teams that have been knocked out get to arrange games while the playoffs are under way?

I thought it was weird to read of states where even a quarter or more of competitors qualified. Then reading here of Wisc. and it's about half?! But all in Ind.? The software on this board won't allow the adjectives I'd apply!

It's nuts to have this long, very variable length tail on a season. If they want more football or other sports, just let them have more of a regular season. That way they'd know a decent time in advance whether, when, and who they were playing (or officiating), and could in many cases arrange better games than playoff pairings would produce. Plus they could cut their travel. How's that in Indiana, where the random draw could mean many teams from the far corners of the state could play each other in every round? At least Ind.'s not that extended a state, but still....

Plus, these extended playoffs probably completely chop off the JV season.

AFAICT it shouldn't be that hard to arrange conferences in football that would fairly knock out 7 of 8 teams before playoffs begin. If you don't want to play in a conference big enough to do that, your school isn't interested enough in playoffs to qualify anyway. Adopt that in Wisc. and you get rid of 2 rounds of playoffs, easily enough to abolish the situation where you have to play a round during study hall and another round on the bus.

It's funny in the present environment to read in Rocket Boys (reissued under the movie title, October Sky) of a W. Va. undefeated varsity football team that didn't qualify for the championship in 1957 because they didn't play enough games against opponents from the same state. Apparently they played 2 opponents from another state (more convenient, I guess), and I forgot how many games total they played, but I'm figuring there might've been a 4 team playoff for the state title -- or maybe just a single pairing.

[bisonlj]

Teams are arranged in classes (by 9-12 enrollment) and sections (geographically 7 or 8 teams) so your sectional games are somewhat close to each other. There are some sections that get spread out and a team has to travel an hour or two for a game and that's a big issue. But it's entirely possible for 2 highly ranked teams to be in the same sectional and play each other in the first round rather than the sectional final.

Regular season is 9 weeks; playoffs 6 weeks. Once your team loses in the playoffs they are done. I don't know of any schools that play a JV game after the playoffs start.

The source of Indiana's all-in system was the introduction of a "cluster" playoff system created back in the early 80s. I don't know exactly how it worked but they somehow clustered teams together and points were associated with who you beat. It sounds like a screwy system and it resulted in some 10-0 and 9-1 teams not making the playoffs. I believe the percentage of teams that made the playoffs was pretty small. Some of these schools decides to sue the IHSAA and rather than deal with it, they came up with this all-in system to avoid any future issues. It has gone unchanged since then.

Indiana does have conferences and they are formed independently like NCAA. They are not assigned to a conference by the IHSAA. Many of the conferences have teams from multiple classes. Because of that some teams play very few teams in their class. A few years ago a team went 3-6 during the regular season but they won the state championship in their class. Their conference apparently had teams in higher classes so they lost to bigger schools. A couple conferences have 10 teams so they only teams they play are in their conference.

One idea floated around is to have 7-8 team conferences similar to today's sectionals. That would give each team 6-7 conference games that would be used as the primary determination in playoff qualification and use the other 3-4 games for traditional rivalries with teams from any class. That is usually shot down because people don't want to break up conferences. They exist for all sports and not every sport would be broken up the same way.

One of the common arguments for keeping it is it gives teams that struggle early a reason to stick with it the rest of the season. There's always another opportunity. Since a bad team could draw another bad team, they could get an extra game or two or three in the playoffs. And how could you possibly take away the playoff atmosphere away from the kids? Isn't that what this is all about? What kind of atmosphere did the kids get when they got beat 60-0?

Keep in mind this is the same state that still assigns officials to all playoff games based 100% on a coach's vote.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by bisonlj

Teams are arranged in classes (by 9-12 enrollment) and sections (geographically 7 or 8 teams) so your sectional games are somewhat close to each other.

Whew! So it's not really a statewide random seeding.

One of the common arguments for keeping it is it gives teams that struggle early a reason to stick with it the rest of the season. There's always another opportunity.

I thought as long as you have a game scheduled, that's an opp'ty.

Since a bad team could draw another bad team, they could get an extra game or two or three in the playoffs. And how could you possibly take away the playoff atmosphere away from the kids?

When you have so many rounds of playoffs, you have taken away the playoff atm.

Isn't that what this is all about?

I hope not.