This year’s state playoffs were great; here are 5 suggestions to make them even better

For the first time ever, New Jersey has just seven state champions – five public and two public – and by all accounts, it was a blast. The new thing, of course, were the public school group championships, held for the first time at Rutgers. And Toms River North, Old Tappan, Caldwell, Millville, and Woodbury all left Piscataway with hardware.

The group championships didn’t cheapen the sectional championships at all, something a few coaches feared. There was plenty of glee in Edison and Annandale when the Eagles and Lions won sectional titles that will be celebrated for decades to come.

But nothing is ever perfect, and far be it from us not to have a few suggestions for how to make things even better. Some may never get off the ground, but that’s ok. This is our take on five things to improve the NJSIAA state football playoffs:

1. Bring back true geographic playoff sections

When the playoffs changed drastically with the advent of the NJ UPR system, the state did away with traditional sections, in a way. Instead of four pre-determined sections in each group, it split each group into north and south supersections, then divided the top 16 teams into fields of eight by Northing number (geographically).

But some felt that left some sections “stronger” than others, so beginning in 2019, the brackets were “snaked,” so that the top two teams earned No. 1 seeds, the next two were the number two seeds (with the overall 2 belonging with the overall 3, and overall 1 with overall 4), etc. This conceivably resulted in a much more even bracket.

But it also resulted in some long trips, particularly those in the South supersections. With more density among high schools up North – about two thirds of the schools are in the top one-third of the state, geographically – many schools had bus rides close to two hours.

Among Big Central teams, Delaware Valley had the longest ride, over two hours down to Oakcrest, a 107-mile bus trip down to near Atlantic City. That’s fine for a vacation, but not for a first round playoff game. New Providence had to go all the way down to Willingboro.

And just so its doesn’t sound like we’re whining about the Big Central, Camden Eastside had to come all the way up to play at South Plainfield in the first round.

And as far as those matchups, who cares? Playoffs are better when you see rivals, and you build those by playing the same teams every couple of years. Piscataway had some a great playoff rivalry with Hunterdon Central, which initially began in their Mid-State Conference days. They played epics with Phillipsburg, too.

Johnson-Pleasantville? Somerville-Seneca? South Plainfield-Camden Eastside? Other than a game that advances you in the playoffs, there’s just no juice to these games.

Titles also carry more cachet when you actually win the geographical section you’re in. Salem is not remotely in Central Jersey, and shouldn’t be winning Central Jersey Group 1 any more than Manville should have a crack at South Jersey Group 1.

Throw in inflation and today’s gas prices, and it’s just a smarter idea to play these games more locally. Your section is loaded? Them’s the breaks.

2. Play Group Semifinals at bigger venues

I wasn’t down at Cherokee for the South group semifinals, but I was at Franklin, and Athletic Director Ken Margolin and Anthony Brito were tremendously accommodating and ran a fantastic show. They have a fantastic facility, with a large concession stand, plus heated bathrooms that came in real handy for the North Group Semifinals. There’s plenty of parking, the roads can handle the traffic, and even the mobile service in the area has improved (they’ve got 5G now).

We’re immensely grateful, of course, that they helped get Central Jersey Sports Radio get some room in the press box as well, so we could broadcast the game live. We got in, so there’s no complaint there.

But the attention these games get require a bigger facility than any high school in the state can provide. In a shrinking media landscape, the idea of putting all these games at a neutral site is to have just two sites where you can send reporters, instead of ten, and the newspapers would have to choose one over another. And that’s a good idea. But there’s not enough room to accommodate everyone in high school.

Then, what about the coaches? The “eye in the sky” guys should be indoors, especially in mid-November, when you can have rain, wind, snow and brutally cold weather. The fact that we had all of that except for rain on group semifinal weekend underscores that point. These games don’t have to be at Rutgers, but could be at Kean, Montclair State, Rowan or TCNJ. They’ve hosted state finals before, they should be good enough for state semifinals.

It’s likely a money issue, and we get that, but maybe better deals could be worked out with these schools. After all, sheer math tells you a greater amount of New Jersey high school talent will play at any one of these four schools than will play at Rutgers. It’s a good recruiting tool, and better for the NJSIAA. It’s a win-win.

3. Get rid of multipliers… or expand them

Of the two top seeds in the South Jersey Group 5 section, one team was head and shoulders above the others. That’s Toms River North. The Mariners finished the year as the first 14-0 team in state history and are the top-ranked public school in the state in all the year-end polls for good reason. But the other No. 1 seed was Lenape, which was 4-4 at the cutoff, with two losses to multipliers in St. Joe’s of Hammonton, and St. Augustine.

They might have lost those games by a combined eight points, but a loss is still a loss. It was all set up for Lenape: top seed, home game in the finals, and yet – with all due respect – they lost that final at home to a sixth-seed – Edison – after getting the choice whether to move the game or not due to the miserable, rainy, windy weather. They kept it where it was, ostensibly to gain an advantage over the Eagles and their passing game – as is entirely 100% their right. And it still didn’t help.

Edison shouldn’t have been the No. 1 seed, let’s be clear, even though they won the title. It took a skillful miracle against North Brunswick to even get to the finals. But should Lenape have been a top seed? They were clearly aided by the multipliers – and not only that, but got credit for both mutlipliers, a new wrinkle this year added by the NJSIAA.

I’m not a fan of them to begin with, but to allow getting credit for a second multiplier when the Shore Conference and West Jersey Football League clearly have a multitude of scheduling options is terribly wrong, and a move in the wrong direction.

Those on the other side of this argument say, “Well, then schedule a mulitplier instead of complaining!” But not every one can. The Big Central Conference has 59 teams, but only two private schools – St. Joseph-Metuchen and St. Thomas Aquinas – and neither is a multiplier. You think St. John Vianney is going to help out a Central Jersey public school? Of course not.

And even if St. Joe’s and Aquinas become multipliers next year, if they all played different Big Central teams, still only 18 of the 57 remaining teams could schedule them. Still not a level playing field.

And what’s the difference, really, between Vianney and Aquinas? The Trojans beat SJV this year in a Week 9 game. Why isn’t STA a multiplier? They’re just like Vianney in that they can pull from multiple towns, unlike public schools.

Look, this whole thing started when North Jersey non-publics like Don Bosco and Bergen Catholic has “trouble” scheduling opponents. Multipliers were an incentive, even if only a handful of public schools took advantage of them. They don’t have that issue now, so why do we have them anymore? St. John Vianney is in a public school division, they have no issue scheduling opponents. And with the NJSIAA seeding non-public playoffs by committee, they can – and clearly did this year – deviate from the UPR formula for seeding, so what’s the worry here?

Either get rid of them entirely, or give them to every non-public school in the state. And while we’re at it, why not choice schools, which also can attract kids from anywhere else in the state? In that case, make the multiplier a “true” multiplier. That is, a natural power point value times a certain amount. This way, there’s a difference between an 8-0 multiplier school and one that’s 4-4. You should get more for beating or losing to a multiplier that’s 8-0 versus one that’s .500.

4. Consider one formula or another, but not both, in the coming years

The NJ UPR formula – even with out-of-state opponents out of the mix – is still way too complicated. It’s been in place now since 2018, and there are still coaches who can’t follow it. And some of it makes no sense. In some cases, you have to jump a team behind you in UPR in either power points or OSI to make a move up in the standings. It’s just counterintuitive.

That said, 2023 is not the year to make a change. We really don’t have that much data yet, or enough to make a good, informed decision. That’s how we ended up with the Born Power Index fiasco in 2018. And with no playoffs in 2020, we really only have three years worth of playoff data to analyze.

Some teams had complaints with the old power point system on its own. Some people have legitimate complaints with the UPR system. And if we went to OSI on its own, some would have complaints about that, too.

The bottom line is this: No system is perfect. So why have a complicated imperfect system when you could have a simpler one, just different teams complaining?

Don’t get us wrong, we’re not saying to make a move one way or the other, or even saying to do it right now. Even with three playoff years to analyze, it’s not enough. Take a few more years. Look at five or six seasons of data, then think about it.

Now, one might look at the playoffs this year, and those five public group champions, and say the best teams certainly won. No one could even say any of the ten teams in the group finals didn’t deserve to be there.

My thinking is this: if those teams are good enough, they’ll get there, whether they’re a one-seed or an eight-seed. If they’re the best team in the bracket, they should beat anyone, right? If we could get to the same seeding with a simpler model, give it a go.

Don’t do it – yet. Just think about it.

5. Helping out the small schools

The Big Central has a scheduling problem. It doesn’t have enough “good” small schools for teams like Brearley or Manville to play without hurting their playoff chances. And there aren’t enough teams for Highland Park or Dunellen (or Bound Brook this year) to play without hurting their league-mates. So, what to do?

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of those teams like Highland Park or JP Stevens to make an Ivy division (similar quality schools that agree to play only each other, but aren’t playoff-eligibile) like they have in the Super Football Conference and the NJIC. So how can the Big Central get some help?

Currently, any team whose SI is below a 20 counts as a minimum of 20 for their opponents’ playoff qualification. Inotherwords, if Manville plays Highland Park, and the Owls’ SI is a 13.4, they get 20 minimum toward their for a win.

Our thinking? That’s too low. That number needs to be closer to 30, or maybe even 35.

And if you tell me that’s a concession to Central Jersey by the NJSIAA, absolutely it is! But so was adding a second multiplier for playoff qualification. Clearly none of the northernmost leagues asked for it. That was a gift to the Shore Conference and WJFL.

Now, the NJSIAA needs to give the Big Central a gift.