Eliminate Regions In OHSAA Football Playoffs

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It’s time of the year for delete the regions thread. Funny it only comes up in week 9-10 every year.

Considering Columbus always puts its teams in the traditionally week southeast region, even though Columbus is more “southwest”... maybe it makes sense.
 
I posted this in the other thread, so I'll post it here as well:

I think we've gotten away from the goal of the playoffs. It is to crown the best team in the state. It is not to reward teams with good seasons an extra game.

No one is arguing that there aren't better teams left out of the playoffs and weaker teams that get in. That is going to happen because no system can accurately pick the exact top 32 teams. Even if we got rid of regions, we would still be letting in weaker teams over stronger teams.

The goal is to make sure that the top team in a division is included in the playoffs. The current system does that.
 
Notice that it’s always the few posters who don’t live in Ohio or have a larger affinity for football outside of Ohio that’s doing 95% of the advocacy for region elimination.
 
The Dock said:
Notice that it’s always the few posters who don’t live in Ohio or have a larger affinity for football outside of Ohio that’s doing 95% of the advocacy for region elimination.
[/QUOBeliwv




Believe radiodave spent much of his life in West Central ,wbl, country
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I've been in favor of no regions for awhile but knew the travel distance would be too much for the first round. This "Pot" proposal is very interesting, after the first Round the remaining 16 teams could be put into a bracket based on their points. Neutral sites would then be chosen and Major travel distance would no longer be a problem. to be honest I like this Proposal rather than the Proposal that Snodgrass tweeted out with 12 teams a region.
 
wls_color said:
No, no, no. That’s dumb.

Plenty of worthy teams have missed the playoffs. Beef up your schedule or don’t play after week 10. That’s what makes Ohio HS football so great.

People need to stop trying to fix something that isn’t broken.
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That’s kinda true, but you can only play who is on your schedule, you can put teams who normally are good teams and they end up going 1-9 when they’re normally a 6-7 win team you can’t control that.
 
While your at it do away with conference play. Each division plays a round robin schedule based on prior year ranking.
 
H#ll let them all in and give them trophies while we are at it.

If you can’t make the playoffs with the current setup it’s because you obviously didn’t play nobody or beat nobody and you don’t deserve to be in the playoffs as someone’s cupcake game. A quarter to half the teams that make the playoffs currently have no business being in the playoffs.
 
West Virginia has never had regions for the football playoffs. This year I am again rejoicing because of that. It does make for some long trips. In fact, because of the shape of the state and much worse roads, a trip in West Virginia can be an hour longer than the longest trip in Ohio.

This shows the longest possible trip between two schools on Google Maps--Conneaut High School in the northeast to Taylor High School in the southwest. It's 325 miles, mostly freeways. It's four hours and 46 minutes:

www.google.com

Conneaut High School to Three Rivers Local School District

www.google.com www.google.com

Here is a longer trip in West Virginia. It's Wayne County High School in the west to Jefferson County High School in the east. That's 380 miles, also five hours and 39 minutes:

www.google.com

100 Pioneer Rd to Jefferson High School

www.google.com www.google.com

I am truly amazed at how ridiculous the arguments in favor of this idiotic system of regions. The only rational ones are that it cuts down on travel costs and may increase attendance.
 
Does West Virginia have fewer blowouts? Are the games more competitive?

If not, what is the point? The computer rankings aren't supposed to accurately pinpoint where each team is relative to the others. There is a significant margin of error. Why send teams across the state with inaccurate rankings when they can keep them closer to each other and play for the right to represent their area.
 
Agreed.

I think people are under the false assumption that without regions, the games would matchup perfectly. It doesn't work like that.

The only thing it would change would be shifting around a couple teams at the bottom of the playoffs. No real guarantee that the #32 team REALLY is better than the #33 team. But too many fans would pay the price as they would have to travel further or just not go to the game at all.
 
I'd rather they make no changes but when DI went to just 2 regions I really enjoyed the matchup between schools that normally wouldn't play each other. Rarely do the Columbus schools play Cincy or Cleveland schools so I thought it was pretty fun. I do think that as long as we have 7 divisions and the reduced number of teams in DI it's the only division where there should be little objection.
 
There will be just as much screaming from #33-36 in a top-32 format as there are from the #9 seeds today.

Setting first round matchups by proximity is a terrible idea - the method of assignment has to be pre-set in advance to be impartial. There is already much wailing over how regions are (maunally) determined. Can you imagine the howling that will take place when you get a much tougher match because the other school is marginally closer? Where do you draw the line between ranking and distance?

If you are, say #3 in a relatively remote (for your division) location and are assigned #19 because they're much closer that anyone else vs. #15 pulling #32 for the same reason, you're not going to be happy.

We'd be better off cutting back to seven teamd in each region, then taking the four highest-ranked <28 team as wild cards against the #1 seeds. The incentive for aggressive schedules remains very much in place AND makes allowances for your region being loaded in particular year without any arbitrary decisions.
 
Yappi said:
Does West Virginia have fewer blowouts? Are the games more competitive?

If not, what is the point? The computer rankings aren't supposed to accurately pinpoint where each team is relative to the others. There is a significant margin of error. Why send teams across the state with inaccurate rankings when they can keep them closer to each other and play for the right to represent their area.
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He has no point, as usual. WV is lucky is they have 30 teams in one of three divisions. What are you going to have, 2 regions? Waste of time for them. I do like their system of having higher seed host, with lower seed selecting between Friday night or Saturday afternoon tho.
 
I don't think the OHSAA needs to get rid of regions altogether, but I would like to see the predetermined regions go away. Have the top 32 teams in the division make it, and then break them up into regions by geography.
 
BlessEmAll said:
While your at it do away with conference play. Each division plays a round robin schedule based on prior year ranking.
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This is a non starter. Too many rivalries for you to decide who plays who during the regular season, because a couple teams didn't accumulate enough points to make a playoff consisting of 32 teams in each division.
 
No. Just leave it the way it is. This system works very well the vast majority of the time and we shouldn't change it in any way. There will always be someone left out and that's just the way it is. There is no perfect system but I like ours better than anyone else's.
 
Yappi said:
I posted this in the other thread, so I'll post it here as well:

I think we've gotten away from the goal of the playoffs. It is to crown the best team in the state. It is not to reward teams with good seasons an extra game.[/QUOTE}

Why do they give a trophy to the team that loses in the state championship game? Why do they give trophy for regional titles?

[QUOTE}No one is arguing that there aren't better teams left out of the playoffs and weaker teams that get in. That is going to happen because no system can accurately pick the exact top 32 teams. Even if we got rid of regions, we would still be letting in weaker teams over stronger teams.[/QUOTE}

I agree. We can certainly get rid of the flaw of having no regions very easily though. Gibsonburg is 22nd overall in D6, and Northwood is 21st ovverall in D5. With an all-state system, they would have made the playoffs easily.
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Reddengineer said:
He has no point, as usual. WV is lucky is they have 30 teams in one of three divisions. What are you going to have, 2 regions? Waste of time for them. I do like their system of having higher seed host, with lower seed selecting between Friday night or Saturday afternoon tho.
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I am wondering if maybe the system in West Virginia may actually have less traveling. The higher seed has to pick a playoff-approved site, so they don't always host. The lower seed picks the time.

OHSAA, for example, has no qualms about sending two Cincinnati schools to play a game in Dayton or two Cleveland schools to play a game in Akron. West Virginia does avoid these kind of absurdities. When both teams are playing at a neutral site, both teams have to get a bus driver.
 
snowman33 said:
No. Just leave it the way it is. This system works very well the vast majority of the time and we shouldn't change it in any way. There will always be someone left out and that's just the way it is. There is no perfect system but I like ours better than anyone else's.
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So, if the system is working 80% of the time, we should not to make that 90%. What is wrong with improvement?
 
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