For starters,
- 32 teams qualify for the playoffs again (8-P through 2A)
- In 8-P only......there's 10 districts thus making an odd set-up for pairings.
- That's why the 10 district champs face the 10 district 3rd place teams; it looks like the top 2 teams in the rankings get to face the two At-Large teams; then the remaining two district 3rd place teams get paired with two district runners-up (doesn't seem to be anything to it other than geography); and the remaining district runners-up face each other to round out the 1st Rd, with the D2 vs D2 tiebreakers being 1. district wins 2. 17 pt +/- differential
-Imho, I'd rather see them go to 28 teams and just have the top two teams in each district automatically qualify, and then have the next 8 teams be At-Large based on the 17+ pt differential, since they're pretty set on using that awful indicator for determining the strength of a team
That's the major flaw with relying solely on A. district finish, B. the 17+ pt differential, and then C. the f***ing alphabet.........for your tiebreakers.
There are good teams at the top in every district, but they vary wildly in depth after that, and there's just no real good metric to determine the strength of a team. Judging how good a team is based on how they do against other bad teams in their own district is no way at all to determine who deserves an "at-large" bid over another team from an entirely separate district with zero comparative factors between the two.
The main detraction I see in the 17+ pt differential tiebreaker is that it actually favors weak districts compared to tougher districts, because again it does nothing to truly establish comparative strength. What happened with Exira-EHK and Tripoli is that they finished with next highest amount of district wins outside the Dist. 3rd place teams, AND had the best 17+ pt differential of all the teams in that bubble. It doesn't mean they were better than Colo-Nesco or Baxter or Boyer Valley, etc. Just that they did enough to meet the State's criteria compared to the others.
I also don't like that the non-district schedule is essentially irrelevant in the eyes of the Association, merely because they don't want to deal with the potentially subjective factors of determining overall schedule strength/strength of a team's non-district schedule, particularly when it comes to determining postseason status.
On the one hand, their way is fairly cut and dry. Win a lot of games in your district and win by as much as possible.......................
Unfortunately, that method isn't going to result in perfect pairings for the playoffs, especially when you also want to add "at-large" teams.
Like I said, they want nothing to do with establishing value in a team's non-district schedule (even though they do it for the biggest classes)................
Here's two different examples of difficult schedules:
Siouxland Christian played arguably the toughest schedule pound-for-pound maybe in the state, all classes. Those poor bastards played 5 teams that are in the playoffs this year, including teams that were or currently are ranked #1 in the rankings depending on where you look (Bishop Garrigan, Remsen-St. Mary's). They also faced a 6 win Boyer Valley team and a Newell-Fonda program that typically is solid most years.
The team that played the next toughest schedule is St. Edmond. They went 5-3 and all 3 losses were to top 10 teams, including losses to Bishop Garrigan and Audubon when both were ranked #1.
I mention that because it is VERY rare in any class (well, outside of 5A and maybe 4A) that a team would see one #1 ranked team, let alone TWO in a single regular season schedule. Siouxland Christian faced FOUR unanimous top 10 teams.
Those two teams merely get a pat on the back. In St. Edmond's case, they were able to weather it and finish 2nd in their district. Siouxland Christian got nothing to show for it. Yes, in terms of facing tough competition, it helped them, or at least in St. Edmond's case it would appear. But to the State, playing those schedules, at least on paper, and as it bears any significance to making the postseason, gets them nothing for their non-district matchups, and they can only be punished by playing tough opponents within their district because that most likely means it's gonna keep their +/- differential down regardless if they win or lose.
I understand why they only want the 17+ pt differential to factor in district games (again because of the disparity in schedules), but they really do need to figure something out to better-determine strength of a team/strength of schedule (and overall schedule) at least in 8-Player considering they are pairing teams that finished the same in district play against each other, like in the case of Bedford where they're a Dist. runner-up facing another Dist. runner-up.
Sorry for the tl;dr.
