The stupidest thing your state high school association allows to happen

I wasn't paying attention to all the details on the TV broadcast the other day, but evidently there was at least a three-way tie for the last playoff spot in a (football) conference here in Florida. They gathered all the teams together at one site. Team A and Team B played for ONE quarter; the winner then got to play Team C for ONE quarter . . .

 

We've had that happen before...they have a three-way tie and they bring the teams to a neutral field and play overtime rules to decide a winner. Draw straws to see who gets a bye.

Now, our state has BCS type rankings that decide the playoff teams.

 

IIRC, a similar situation in "Friday Night Lights" (the book, not the movie or TV show) was decided by coin flips. Three coaches flip coins for two playoff spots; the odd coin is out.

 

Correct ... and that scenario was part of the movie.

 

...and the TV show, IIRC? Could be wrong on that.

 

We had a situation here, I think it was two years ago. A six-team football league. Five teams tied for first at 3-2, one was 0-5. Three automatic playoff berths. No wild card in that division. All they could do was flip coins to see which teams made the playoffs. If I remember right, one team that was in our top 10 all season didn't make the playoffs.

 

Some states have a uniform procedure to break ties involving three or more teams, using margins of victory up to a maximum number of points per game.

But in Texas, they let each district decide how to break the tie and it's a crazy-quilt system. Every district is different (positive points, positive/negative points, max points 15, 14, 13, etc.) But coin flips are extremely rare these days. That would be necessary only if all other tiebreakers don't work.

I've heard about the Florida "jamborees." That's whack.

 

Kentucky has one alignment (or pretty close) for basketball, baseball/softball and volleyball and quite another for soccer.

Or not.

The KHSAA has unveiled its proposed soccer alignment, which will rock the sport to its core. Basically if a school is in District 17 for basketball (baseball/softball and volleyball), it would become a District 17 soccer school, too.

Only bad thing is of the 64 basketball (et al.) districts (all of which have at least three teams, most have four, some have five), there are two districts in which none of the member schools sponsor soccer.

With the new alignment, some districts will have as many as six schools while there will be several zero-team, one-team and two-team districts. Furthermore, a 10-win team could have to win twice to make it to the region tournament (Kentucky goes district then region then state) while a 0-win team can be locked into the region simply because it's in a one-team or two-team district (top two teams from district advance to region; region champ goes to state; Kentucky has just one class for soccer).

Not many coaches in my area in favor of it, even coaches who would be locks for region don't approve.

 

It's not uncommon in Texas to have "dead" districts where a team would draw a bye in the playoff bracket. It happens all the time in (for example) volleyball in smaller classes where not all schools play it, and districts with few playing schools may be combined. That sounds like the way Kentucky should go.

Soccer is a different animal altogether in Texas anyway. Instead of 32 districts like all other sports, Class 4A is split into 64. That's because the lowest soccer class is 4A, and a bunch of 3A and smaller schools have to get lumped in. And the UIL isn't ready yet to start 3A in soccer, even though more than 80 schools that size play it.

 

Football_Bat,

Outside of football (six classes) and track/Cross Country (three), every other sport has just one state champion - and publics and privates compete together (although a public has never won state in volleyball or field hockey and the privates dominate swimming).

And thankfully the KHSAA came up with an alternate proposal yesterday at the urging of the coaches (who the KHSAA did not run by when they released Proposal A). Proposal B is better as it gets rid of the one- and two-team districts, but does not get rid of the empty districts.

However, as screwy as that first proposal is, I understand the KHSAA's rationale. In Kentucky, we don't have conferences or leagues (not for team sports anyway). As such, teams have come to be known by what district they're in. If you're a single-digit district, you're out near Paducah and Western Kentucky. Districts in the 50s and 60s are in eastern Kentucky, while most 20th District teams are in Louisville.

It's also easier for the media (which the KHSAA SID, a former daily sports writer, pointed out), to remember that a school is District X for basketball, baseball/softball, soccer and volleyball and then Class 1-A, District X (only eight districts per class in football) for football.

At the same time, the KHSAA should have known trying to divide less than 150 soccer schools into 64 districts based solely on geography, meaning with no regard to competitive balance or district size, was going to be a disaster.

 

That SID must have a pretty low opinion of sports writers. Up here in Indiana most of us have no problem remembering what class and conference the schools we cover are in

 

Amen to that. And also having the softball championship in Akron.