Playoff changes can have unwanted effects

Billy Haun has seen the demographic swings in Virginia. He was a coach less than 20 years ago at Western Albemarle in Crozet, when the population of Albemarle County was significant enough to carry a number of large high schools. It was a coal town near Charlottesville, and until recently that was enough to sustain the economy.

Earlier this year, Haun became the executive director of the Virginia High School League (VHSL) in Albemarle County. The county is smaller now with the population booming in the Tidewater region of eastern Virginia. The big schools he was so familiar with as a coach in Albemarle County are shrinking. The remaining ones lack enough peers to form their own district of similar-sized opponents.

“If you were going to make them play all 6A schools,” Haun said, “they were going to have to travel all the way to Northern Virginia, Richmond or the Tidewater in order to get a district.”

This fall, Albemarle and Orange, the two biggest schools in the Charlottesville region, will play in Class 5A. They are in the Jefferson district together, but so are Class 4A schools Charlottesville, Louisa County and Powhatan, and Class 3A schools Fluvanna County, Monticello and Western Albemarle.

Since 2012, the VHSL has used mixed-classes districts, grouping schools from all classifications based on geography. Only occasionally can it create groups of same-size schools — as in the Patriot district located in Northern Virginia. As a result, Virginia leans on its points system more than any other state. District winners don’t get an automatic berth into the postseason. Instead, the points leaders in each classification make up the playoff field, and the points system awards bonus points so a schedule against smaller, district opponents will not cost a team its postseason spot.

“During the regular season, Albemarle High School doesn’t travel more than 30-40 minutes to a game, but if it were playing in the old system where it played only other 5A schools, the team would be traveling an hour, hour-and-a-half to their closest game,” Haun said. “Geographically this helps them, financially it helps them.”

It also has preserved natural rivalries, a concern of those who in the Tampa Bay area who oppose a strength-of-schedule system. Class 8A Manatee, for example, plays Class 5A Southeast every year. Two years ago, the Seminoles won only one game. Under the proposed system, the Hurricanes wouldn’t have benefited much from playing the Noles.

The Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) has had a points system since it began a statewide postseason tournament in 1975. In 2000, it played with districts for the first time. Michigan teams can earn an automatic playoff spot if they win six games in a nine-game schedule. The FHSAA isn’t including that wrinkle in its proposal.

“You have people who will avoid people to schedule where they can get their six wins,” MHSAA communications director John Johnson said. “It has done an awful lot to break up natural rivalries. It’s done a lot to break up conferences because people want to schedule to either get the wins or get the points.”

Johnson watched the playoff format take shape from a different perspective — he was a high school student in the 1970s, working as a sports writer at The Daily Times-News in Mount Pleasant, Mich.

A group of football-coaching math teachers, he learned, were trying to bring perfection to an imperfect system, and for more than 30 years states have continued to search for an elusive ideal.

Nate Neuhaus, from the Nebraska School Activities Association, sums it up well.

“I don’t know that there’s a scientific way,” Neuhaus said. “The nice thing is that as long as it’s in place everybody is following the same standard.”

This story was originally published August 4, 2016 at 9:19 PM with the headline "Playoff changes can have unwanted effects."