Today's bizarre high school football score

Not a score, but the final standings of the West Sierra League of California's Central Section:

Firebaugh 3-2
Dos Palos 3-2
Avenal 3-2
Mendota 3-2
Coalinga 3-2
Tranquillity 0-5

In a six-team league, there are five co-champions. Never seen anything even close to that before.

 

That happened in Orange County's Sunset League 3 or 4 years ago.
Los Alamitos, Edison, Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley and Newport Harbor were all 3-2. Marina was 0-5. They flipped coins for the playoff berths. If I recall correctly, Newport Harbor was in the county top 10 but finished 5th in the coin flips and didn't make the playoffs.

 

Not quite the same thing, but if you look at the standings in the American Athletic Conference a five-way tie looks quite possible.

 

Made it a lot of fun when they made playoff brackets, since all of them got beauty points for being a league champ.

 

In Georgia and Florida, among others, they'll flip coins for seedings where both teams are in, but if they're not, they use one or more "mini-games." I think Florida's is one 12-minute quarter, Georgia's 10 minutes divided into two halves. In the days of overtime penetration, that settled ties in Georgia mini-games; now it's just standard overtime rules.

 

Texas has a crazy-quilt system of tiebreakers. Every district votes its own rules; there is no standard tiebreaker.

Normally, head-to-head is used in the case of a two-way tie. But for ties of three or more teams, just about anything goes.

Most districts use a plus-minus points system taking the margins of victory and defeat among the tied teams up to a maximum point total. But that max total is different for every district, and some have a rule where the team with the highest points is elevated and then the bottom teams are matched head-to-head with no regard for their points.

I've seen districts use fewest points allowed as a final step before a coin flip, which I haven't personally witnessed yet since I started working. Some districts even specify that procedure: drawing names out of a hat, or playing the "zip code game" in lieu of flipping a coin.

 

Texas' stadium rule for high school playoffs borders on the absurd.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/high-schools/headlines/20141105-are-there-enough-playoff-venues-finding-suitable-stadiums-for-later-rounds-wont-be-easy.ece

 

I covered a 2-0 high school game once -- with the safety coming on the opening possession. Punt City after that.

Called it into the desk, and they told me to write 18 inches.

rb

 

There is no shortage of stadiums in DFW. That is bunk.

Maybe the really nice ones that everyone wants to play in are in short supply, but there are plenty of average 5A and 6A stadiums that are less than 20 years old and still 50 times nicer than a lot of goat-ranches that some 2A or small 3A schools play in.

 

I covered a 2-0 district final. In the Hersheypark Stadium press box. A grey concrete tunnel where the air blows straight down the row.

The wind-chill that day was minus-10.

 

That's quite a wind chill in the Hershey tunnel.

 

I heard the Hershey tunnel is really shitty.