I was listening to a radio sports talk show while driving to a speaking engagement last week.  Several callers wondered why the high school football playoffs are not seeded; and the host opined that the state association would find that too difficult.  I wondered on what planet, or at least in what state, these people were living.

First of all, the MHSAA Football Playoffs are seeded.  After placing qualifying schools in geographic groups of four within each of eight divisions based on school enrollments, the team with the best playoff point average within each District hosts the team with the worst, and the team with the second best hosts the team with the third best.  That’s seeding, and it’s simple.  It’s been done for years with a computer points system that has been tested and is trusted.

When the District winners within the two-District, eight-team Region square off, the team with the better playoff point average will host.  That’s seeding:  favoring the team that survived the tougher schedule and earned the privilege of hosting.  If they keep winning, teams with the best records over the toughest schedules earn the privilege of hosting their first three playoff games.

It bothers us not at all that a school with a tough 6-3 record earns the right to host the first-round game in its District of its Division while a team with an 8-1 record in a different Division or a different District of the same Division must travel for its first-round game.

Now, if the suggestion is that we do away with geography, rank the 32 teams of each Division on the basis of their playoff points average and make the 32nd-ranked team play the 1st in each Division, it will never happen.  Far too much travel and far too many mismatched “mercy rule” games.

If the suggestion is that we do away with geographic Districts of four but maintain four geographic Regions of eight teams within each Division and make the eighth-ranked team travel to the first, seventh to the second, etc., the problems of travel and mismatches are reduced, but not greatly for schools in most parts of the state and in most Divisions of the playoffs.  It might work for Division 2, which is the most geographically concentrated Division this year.  But travel lengths would increase greatly for the great majority of qualifying schools.  And the added expense would be met by appropriate protest by those who are trying to balance school sports budgets with declining support.
 
A possible compromise that is utilized in a neighboring state is to seed the top four teams of each Region (using our current playoff points system) and then assigning the other four schools to their first-round games on the basis of geography.  It’s not as straightforward as our current system and leads to more controversy, and often but not always to increased travel; but it could be something to think about.