FHSAA approves final football playoff point system with changes

The Florida High School Athletic Association has officially put in place the new point system for determining football playoffs, and the final scoring methodology varies slightly from the original proposal.

The final system maintains the four-tier system with teams divided by their end-of-season win percentage, and it will keep the values for victories — 50 points for a win against a top-tier team with values scaling down by five until reaching 35 for wins against the lowest tier. But losses are now more costly. A loss to a top-tier team is worth only 30 points, as opposed to 35 under the original proposal, with points also scaling down by five.

This means that any win is now more valuable than any loss. Under the original proposal, a loss to a top-tier team was worth 35 points — or the same as a win against a bottom-tier team. The distinction between tiers remains the same — the lowest is for teams with a win percentage worse than .400, the second is between .400 and .590, the third is between .600 and .790 and the top is for .800 or better.

The final format also brings the return of bonus points — a concept featured in the earliest proposals but scrapped by the end of the summer — although the points will be handed out in an entirely different way. The original bonus-point proposal rewarded teams for playing opponents from a larger classification. The final format has teams receiving three bonus points for playing an opponent who reached the postseason during the previous two-year scheduling cycle.

This system should somewhat alleviate one of the primary concerns with the new system. Coaches have expressed worries that a team could schedule an opponent with a recent history of success, only to end up playing them during a down year. With scheduling done with two-year contracts, a team can schedule a team coming off a playoff berth during one of the previous two seasons and still be ensured some sort of benefit no matter how the team fares during the coming two-year cycle.

This story was originally published November 21, 2016 at 3:41 PM with the headline "FHSAA approves final football playoff point system with changes."