Bryson City – The 2021 NCHSAA football playoffs could be a real shock for those who have followed football for a long time. NCHSAA and their Board of Directors have revamped the playoff system for all sports, but it will by far be the biggest shock for football. First of all gone are the subdivisions of 1A and 1AA, every team will compete as 1A.
The biggest change, outside of no subdivisions, will be the use of the RPI for seeding teams. Overall record doesn’t matter as much as your RPI score. RPI is calculated as follows – Your winning percentage * .3 + Your opponents winning percentage *.4 + Your opponents opponents winning percentage * .3.
As in the past each conference gets automatic bids depending on the number of schools in the conference. For example the Smoky Mountain Conference gets two automatic bids, so the first and second place teams are automatically in. After that teams will be determined by their RPI.
So once conference champions are set, all of those go into the pot and are ranked based on, you guessed it, their RPI. Then conferences who have more than six teams get a second place team and those teams are placed after conference champions and then sorted by RPI. Following that the remaining slots are filled by sorting all remaining 1A schools by RPI and then filling out the remaining spots until 32 teams are seeded for the West and East. When this is finished the seeding is complete and brackets are drawn.
One thing is for certain, there are sure to be much weeping, screaming and anger generated at whatever comes out of the seeding process. There is the potential for teams to be seeded higher than teams they finish behind in the standings, because their RPI is higher. Also the RPI could be fluid, in that it will change each week depending on results of that weeks games.
Sadly it is also possible that there are schools who have no idea this is coming, because their Athletic Director and or their football coach doesn’t pay attention to the NCHSAA.
I know there will be fans and media members who will be taken aback by what transpires over the next week. I have personally heard conference media folks from other schools talking about being little A or big A.
But for us there is some satisfaction that the rest of our conference will be competing on the same field that we are for the first time in several years.
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