Big Changes in NCHSAA Playoff System

Chapel Hill – For folks who are familiar with the NCHSAA Playoffs, this year may prove to be another harsh learning curve.  Since the inception of the playoffs, fans, coaches and NCHSAA officials alike have searched for the perfect system.  Of course, such a system doesn’t exist.  For the last few years the NCHSAA along with a special committee, of coaches and school officials, have been discussing ways to improve the NCHSAA Playoff system.

The committee listened to coaches, schools, and fans from across the state.  Corrections were made to the most universal complaints of the old system.  Too many teams qualify, check.  The strength of a team’s schedule should matter, check.  Get ride of the 0-11 teams, check.

So, just what does this new system look like? Well here are the highlights:

1. In the 1A and 4A ranks, 64 playoff teams will be cut down to 48, while 2A and 3A will remain at 64 (2A and 3A have more schools than 1A and 4A).
2. Automatic bids are awarded based upon the number of teams in a conference.
   1. 1-4 teams get 1 automatic qualifier
   2. 5-8 teams get 2 automatic qualifiers
   3. 9 or more teams get 3 automatic qualifiers
   4. Conference tournament champions automatically qualify, unless they are also the regular season champion
   5. Split conferences will automatically qualify the highest finishing team in the classification.
   6. Teams in their classification with the highest MaxPreps ranking (or other NCHSAA selected ranking system) will be selected to fill the remaining slots of the bracket.
3. Seeding of brackets:
   1. Once the qualifiers are determined they will be split into East/West depending on the longitude of the school.
      1. In football qualifying schools will be sorted by their ADM number, and then split into 2 24 team sections (making the 1A and 1AA), and then each section is split into East/West based upon longitude.
   2. Seed all 1st place finishers, and highest finishing team from split conferences by their MaxPreps ranking.
   3. Seed all 2nd place automatic berths by MaxPreps ranking.
   4. Seed all 3rd place automatic berths by MaxPreps ranking.
   5. Seed all conference tournament champions and at-large berths by MaxPreps ranking.
4. Existing byes will be awarded to the highest seeds possible.

Obviously MaxPreps rankings play a crucial part in the new playoff format.  It is worth note that MaxPreps is a corporate partner of the NCHSAA.  On their website MaxPreps gives some insight into how their rankings work, while not giving any real specifics.

“The system utilizes the huge number of game results stored in the MaxPreps database. Generally, the more a team wins the higher the ranking, but the system takes into account quality wins (against other highly ranked opponents) and strength of schedule.

For example, a team’s ranking is hurt more by losing to a team that is ranked below them verses a team ranked ahead.”

Please also note, that the MaxPreps High School Football Rankings are not the same thing as the rankings that you see by going through a team’s page and conference standings.

Here is a link to the Class 1A High School Football Rankings, by MaxPreps, just to get you started!  If you want to seed the whole 1A brackets, the school ADM numbers are set to be released sometime Friday, and MaxPreps normally updates the true rankings every Tuesday, so these are as up-to-date as is possible.

As far as recent efforts go, this iteration seems to be pretty universally fair.  It is far from perfect, like all of it’s predecessors.  It would appear that split conferences tend to benefit more on strength of schedule. Twice now, teams that either do not exist or do not have a sport, have risen in the polls.

The actual brackets will be released sometime Saturday, on the NCHSAA website as well as on MaxPreps.  Until then, honestly no one knows what the brackets will look like.