MSHSAA to change football playoffs

Here's the official statement from MSHSAA about the change.

Here's my story from Friday's edition, some of the information from the press release was not available when I wrote this:

Missouri's playoff system to determine a state champion in football is currently undergoing a drastic change.

MSHSAA, the governing body for all high school sports in the state, is taking steps to do away with the current setup for a new system for the 2012 season.

MSHSAA's Board of Directors voted unanimously Saturday to start the process. Details of the new system are being worked out this week, MSHSAA spokesman Jason West said Thursday.

"The skeleton of the system is what we're moving forward with," West said.

The framework is a nine-game regular season followed by a district playoff starting in Week 10 in which all teams will play. A single-elimination tournament follows, leading to the state championship.

The district, which will be made of eight teams, will be seeded based on the results from the regular season with the use of a point system. The winner of the district championship game advances to the state quarterfinal.

"This brings football in line with the other sports," West said.

Under the current system, which has been in place since 2008, only the final three games determine which schools reach the playoffs with the top two teams in a four-team district advancing. Only the district champion advanced to the state tournament from the 1990s to 2007.

Some of the details to be worked by a nine-member football advisory committee is the point system itself and how it will determine the district seeds, as well as the schedule of the postseason. There will also be districts in Class 5 that will not have eight teams due to the odd number of schools that fall into the second-largest class, of which Poplar Bluff joined this fall.

Poplar Bluff Athletic Director Jim Brown said there is some confusion about how the whole thing will work.

"It's a mess," Brown said. "They kind of ran this thing under the table. There's still a lot of miscommunication right now."

A proposal in which the new system is based was posted in January on the MSHSAA website to get feedback from coaches and administrators.

West said the process started soon after the current system was put in place in 2008 for a four-year trial.

The football advisory committee recommended the new system to the Board of Directors, who meet Saturday for a regularly-scheduled business meeting. Schools will still have to vote on keeping a by-law change that was implemented before 2008 by a vote of 169-91.

"If that passes then everything will fit within the current playoff structure," West said. "If that does not pass we need to go back to the drawing board."

By-laws 322 and 355 were changed "for a 4-year trial period only" in 2008 when the current playoff structure was put in place. Those rules deal with the first practice date and preseason jamborees.

The actual playoff structure for each sport is outlined in a manual published each year and, according to By-law 312 are "considered official." Under one section (e), the 11-man football playoffs are to be "reclassified every two years" and the Board is given authority to assign all schools to districts and to require each school to play all other schools with the assigned district.

Schools will no longer be forced to play teams within their district, freeing up the schedule for more conference games and giving schools freedom in picking their opponents.

"This opens it up to schedule those conference games at any time," West said.

While schools in large conferences will benefit, a school like Poplar Bluff, which has just four conference opponents, may have a harder time finding opponents, Brown said.

"Bottom line is Bluff is going to travel whether we like it or not," he added.

The SEMO North Conference has scheduled a meeting for Monday, Brown said, to go over the plan and set up a schedule framework. Poplar Bluff will have to fill five open dates along with Dexter and teams in the SEMO Central. Malden and the rest of the SEMO South will now have four open dates to fill.

School will also have the ability to set their schedules in place for longer terms than just two years, West said.

The regular season schedule will help determine what seed a team gets for the district tournament, which will feature a quarterfinal in Week 10 followed by a semifinal and final.

"I think it adds a little bit more to the atmosphere of the (district championship) game," West said.

The point system will take into consideration a team's record, their opponents' record, the margin of victory much like the current district tiebreaker with a 13-point cap.

Bonus points will be given to teams that play schools from larger classes, West noted, and there will be no penalty for playing smaller schools while out-of-state teams will be treated as if they fell into the Missouri classification based on enrollments.

Unlike a previous points system used prior to the 1988-89 season, it will not keep teams out of the postseason.

"This is a seeding process," West said. "This has no barring on making the playoffs."

Missouri didn't have a playoff system in football until 1968 and the current four-team districts playing over the final three weeks has been in place since 1988. Between 1968-87 the number of playoff teams changed four times and there were eight different point systems used during that span.

Another playoff system was voted down by member schools in 2005. It featured an eight-week season followed by an four-team seeded tournament with the losing teams playing a consolation game in Week 10.

The current system was voted in as a way to reward teams like the 2003 Mules, who lost just once but missed the playoffs. However, many times the district runner-up and champion ended up meeting again with the same results, as was the case with the 2009 Mules, who lost to Sikeston twice within a three-week span.

West said there are 50 states and 50 different playoff scenarios adding, "if there were a perfect one out there, everybody would be doing it."

From earlier

It appears the football playoff change that was discussed here will start in 2012.

Here's a story from the Associated Press:

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- The Missouri high school football playoffs will undergo a major change in the fall of 2012.

The Missouri State High School Activities Association decided Saturday that one regular season game will be eliminated and a single-elimination tournament will start in the 10th week.

Currently, the top two or three teams from each district advance to the playoffs after a 10-game regular season that closes with three district games.

Under the new system, champions of eight-team district tournaments advance to the quarterfinals. Classes 1-4 and 6 will go into the playoffs. But Class 5 may award byes in some districts because of its large size.

Association spokesman Jason West told The Springfield News-Leader Wednesday that the new system makes football like other sports, and allows teams to schedule for multiple years.

It was also reported by the {http://www.newspressnow.com/christian-sports/27447610/detail.html St. Joseph News-Press.