OHSAA To Announce Possible Football Playoff Change, From 16 To 12 Teams In A Region

MentorGrad2002 said:
Go back to 8 per region and 6 divisions

Back to making the playoffs actually meaning something in football .

Regular season is meaningless now especially in D1

OHSAA greed did that to the regular season
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This exactly! The way we had it from 1999-2012 was perfect. And while we're add it, let's have the OHSAA's book audited and have Doug Ute investigated for fraud.
 
smurfyeah19 said:
I don't agree here. This is the state sanctioning body for all taxpayer funded high schools in the state. They unilaterally gave those schools the middle finger, who else is going to step in?
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They can't even get education right. FAR more important thing to worry about than football.
 
OH$AA only makes money off playoff games. 16 teams means 4 more games per division or 28 more games. The first two rounds are hosted by the higher seed. Which means OH$AA gets free stadiums rent. The schools get the money off concessions and parking.

Look at the College Football Playoffs this year all four teams with byes lost in their first game.

I don't see them going to 12.
 
David Wooderson said:
Tough one. From a pure football standpoint, less is more. But from a look at the bigger picture - taking away the opportunity for kids to get to play in the state playoffs doesn't sit well with me. Also, gives a chance for bottom of the roster kids a chance to play if there are blowouts.

Plus, what does it really give you?

A look at my favorite region, R5 shows that dropping to 12 teams wouldn't have improved the quality of football one bit. With the exception of Hudson crushing Boardman (example of the seeding being imperfect), the bottom seeds were not competitive at all. But I bet every single player from Hay, Riverside and Hoover all appreciated the opportunity to play in those games. I looked at a few other regions. My other favorite region R1 was basically the same story. Very few competitive 5-8 vs 9-12 match ups.

So what would we really be accomplishing here?

I'd be hesitant to change.
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When everyone makes it then that takes away what makes it special to play in the playoffs.
 
BGSUGrad said:
If they do this 112 schools will miss out on a week 11 game and for what?
Are there blowouts? Yes just like in the state championship games. But in the 3 years it has been in place a 16 has already beaten a 1 and a 15 played for a regional championship, seems like giving kids a chance to play has been fine.
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If you want to give the kids a chance to play then get rid of the running clock rule.

Playoffs in football should be for the teams that perform well in the regular season and not for sub .500 teams.
 
David Wooderson said:
Tough one. From a pure football standpoint, less is more. But from a look at the bigger picture - taking away the opportunity for kids to get to play in the state playoffs doesn't sit well with me. Also, gives a chance for bottom of the roster kids a chance to play if there are blowouts.

Plus, what does it really give you?

A look at my favorite region, R5 shows that dropping to 12 teams wouldn't have improved the quality of football one bit. With the exception of Hudson crushing Boardman (example of the seeding being imperfect), the bottom seeds were not competitive at all. But I bet every single player from Hay, Riverside and Hoover all appreciated the opportunity to play in those games. I looked at a few other regions. My other favorite region R1 was basically the same story. Very few competitive 5-8 vs 9-12 match ups.

So what would we really be accomplishing here?

I'd be hesitant to change.
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I see your point, but my argument to what your saying is shouldn't you have to earn the playoffs. Why play a regular season that is not going to matter when your letting teams in the playoffs that only win 2 or 3 games or less. Also your making the season longer. Imo, all sports seasons are too long where your starting baseball in March going into November. NBA and hockey going into the middle of June. The super bowl in February, college football until January 20. High school football should not start August 18th and end in early December imo.
 
Coach1304 said:
I love the idea of 1-4 getting a bye, it is a reward for hard work and dedication and allows some players to heal. It will also make it an incentive for teams to schedule their OOC games correctly like they used to do to make sure they get the correct number of points to earn the bye. The 6 rounds was a money grab from the OHSAA who made millions off of 1 extra round.
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I don't like the idea simply because you are still looking at a 6 week playoff window. If you are going to keep the 6 week playoff window, you might as well stay at 16.

I would be all for going back to 8 and eliminating a week off of the playoff season.
 
vamp2syd said:
If you want to give the kids a chance to play then get rid of the running clock rule.

Playoffs in football should be for the teams that perform well in the regular season and not for sub .500 teams.
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There are a variety of reasons a team could be .500 - difficult schedule, injuries, issues filling out their schedule
Why should the playoffs be for teams that "performed well"? They are simply a recognition that a team finished in the top 16.
I am sure if you ask the kids from Edison who pulled the 16 over 1 win in 2021, they felt they deserved to be there
 
wildcat71 said:
Let's go really old school and go back to 8pm starts! Those were the days...plenty of time before the game, got dark so stadium lights were brighter...all good.
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If I remember correctly, the early start was precipitated by schools and television stations wanting to have highlights on the 10 o'clock news.
 
BelowTheLine said:
I don't like the idea simply because you are still looking at a 6 week playoff window. If you are going to keep the 6 week playoff window, you might as well stay at 16.

I would be all for going back to 8 and eliminating a week off of the playoff season.
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Yes, eliminate a week. 6 weeks is too long.
 
I think I speak for everyone when I say we want EVEN MORE DIVISIONS. Specifically one division for every possible enrollment number. If the number of state champions still isn't high enough after that we can go into the decimals.
 
Very unpopular opinion:

But I actually like 7 divisions for Baseball and Basketball.

For football I think 6 or 7 divisions works well. In all honesty I don’t think there’s much of a gap or difference between the current D6 and D7 divisions (outside of the MAC schools lol)
 
What if there were 11 teams per division? Seeds 1-5 get a bye. Since both #4 and #5 get a bye before playing each other in the second round, those games are on Thursday night, so fans can see more games.

Never happen by the way.
 
Ideally, the playoff field should be 8 teams, but 12 is a good start. Week #10 would have more at stake (who gets in, who doesn't, who gets a first-round bye, etc.) Additionally, the bye week would give the top 4 a chance to heal any injuries.

There would be years where 7-3, 8-2 teams end up failing to qualify, and others where 4-6 or even 3-7 teams qualify, based on the strength of the region. With the exception of Division I, there would have been ONE three win team that qualified for the playoffs under this format over the past four seasons.

Additionally, since Region I is a bigger region, I wonder if it's been thought about to trim the field to 8 teams.
 
Changes all depend on the ultimate goal.

1. If the goal is maximizing revenue, keep at 16 or expand to everyone.

2. If the goal is ensuring player safety while also ensuring that the likely winner isn't left out of the players, cut to 4 teams per region (or 16 per division overall). Sure, there are some upsets among the #5 - #12 seeds, but they typically fall out after the first round against the top 4.

3. If the goal is to balance the above, cut from 16 to 10 or 12. The #1 - #6 seeds rarely lose but past results show #7 and #8 are evenly matched with #10 and #9 (due to some flaws in the Harbin system).
 
Just curious if those advocating going back to fewer divisions are also for combining current D I and D II into a single division like the old days when making the playoffs meant something ?
 
big medicine said:
Just curious if those advocating going back to fewer divisions are also for combining current D I and D II into a single division like the old days when making the playoffs meant something ?
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It wasn't the schools in D1 trying to get things changed...

Youd have to ask the D2 schools on that as many of them were the complainers that drove this
 
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