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Here we are just three weeks away from playoffs and we have a broken playoff system still. I have been lobbying for playoff change as long as I had for the 5-Class system, which was finally adopted. But this playoff system we have is terrible and today I’m going to talk about the 4A Brackets as an example.
The Class 4A has seven regions – four in the upstate and 3 in the lower state. The three lower state regions have six teams for a total of 18 lower state teams. The upperstate regions are uneven, with Region 1 and 3 each having six teams and Regions 2 and 4 having five teams for a total of 22 upperstate teams.
The 4A bracket committed in their meetings in off-season to set up automatic bids for top four teams each region. That works ok for the upstate. But in the lower state, there are only 18 total teams and there are 16 playoff spots. So the bracket committee put 4 at-large spots in the lower state. The PROBLEM is, that they wrote in for the at-large teams to come from the lower state regions for the lower state bracket. So, now you have three fifth place teams and one sixth (last) place team making the playoffs in the lower state.
Who in hell thought this would be a good idea or fair? The fair thing to do would be to give two at large bids to upperstate teams (that would have to play in the lower state bracket) and two at large spots to the lower state regions. That way, you only have at total of four 5th place teams in the playoffs. There are currently seven teams in the lower state with losing records that will not finish better than 5-5 and four of those teams will finish with more losses than wins. So, we will have AT LEAST two and possibly four teams in the lower state playoffs with losing records because of the way the 4A Bracket committee set it up.
If you look at the way the 5A brackets are set up, they state clearly in the notes ON the bracket the rules for at-large and the way their bracket will work. On the 4A bracket, there are no notes and nowhere did it indicate all four at large teams would come from lower state. I don’t believe that it was a coincidence that it was left off of the bracket.
As it stands right now, there will be some teams in the upstate with winning records not in the playoffs because they finish fifth in their region, while there are at least two to four teams with losing records in the lower state in the playoffs.
You want to talk about things assaulting high school football? This is one of them and it is internal. This bracket committee for 4A needs to get together and discuss this NOW because it not only makes the classification look stupid in the way set this up, it also waters down and devalues the playoffs. Not to mention leaves kids out of the playoffs that deserve to be in there.
