Somerville (in orange) and Summit face off at Brooks Field in Somerville in a battle of undefeated teams on October 4, 2024. The Pioneers are in the drivers’ seat to earn the top overall seed in South Group 3. (Photo: Marcus Borden)
Yes, Cutoff Weekend is upon us, and the complicated NJSIAA playoff structure for high school football leaves many fans – and, yes, even coaches – have many questions about how it’s all done.
Here, we’ll tell you about how it all works, followed by the current standings in all ten public supersections as we head into Week 8 of play.
The New Jersey UPR System:
Each Group in the state is divided into North and South, generally with around 29-32 teams each, taking out the “Ivy” no-playoff divisions in the Super Football Conference. The Top 16 teams qualify, based on their UPR rating, with lower numbers (1 is the lowest) being better.
The UPR rating is comprised of 60 percent of a team’s OSI (Opponent Strength Index) rank, and 40 percent of a team’s Power Point Average rank. The number is arrived at by multiplying the OSI rank by 0.6 and the Power Point Average rank by 0.4, with a team ranked No. 1 in both achieving the best UPR possible of 1.
Power Points no longer include Group Points (teams used to be awarded 5 points for beating a Group 5 school, 4 for beating a Group 4, etc.) but still are awarded in two ways:
- Quality points: 6 for a win, 3 for a tie, 0 for a loss
- Residuals: For every team you beat, you get 3 residuals for every win they have, 1.5 for every tie. For every team you tie, you get 1.5 residuals for every win they have. For every team you lose to, you get 1 residual for every win they have, 0.5 points for every tie.
OSI is the Opponent Strength Index, and is simply that, the Strength Index numbers of opponents. A win earns you 100 percent of the opponent’s SI, a tie earns 75 percent, and a loss earns 50 percent.
This year, the multiplier was moved out of Power Points and into the OSI. Wins over multipliers still earn the full value, where power points used to boost that value. Losses to multipliers, however, earn more than half the SI value.
Tier A multipliers are worth 80 percent for a loss, Tier B is worth 75 percent, and Tier C and D are worth 70 percent. But any A, B, or C multiplier that loses to a non-multiplier gets knocked down to D, and any Tier D loss to a non-multiplier removes that status for all opponents, regardless of when the game was played.
Strength Index Values lock this week…
Strength Index varies throughout the season, with every game played. (We won’t explain that here.) But this week, the values are locked in. This week’s scores don’t matter, it’s only wins and losses that matter for qualification purposes, meaning the SI values will continue to change, all the way through the end of the playoffs. This is to make scenarios and calculations simpler, and also to avoid point manipulation. (A team could “call off the dogs” and win a close game just to keep their opponent’s SI number high, in order to get a better seed.)
Inotherwords, all that matters for calculation this week is winning and losing.
Seeding
The Top 16 teams in each supersection qualify, with a few exceptions. Teams must win at least two games to be eligible. There are several tiebreakers, but it almost never gets past the first one; UPR ties are broken by OSI, and if they’re still tied, they go to power points.
Next, there’s a top-down head-to-head check. If Team 2 beat Team 1, they jump them. Then Team 3 is compared to Team 2, and so on. Some teams have jumped two spaces, beating both teams directly in front of them. It goes team-by-team, and you can only jump a team directly in front of you. For example, if Team 3 beat Team 1 but didn’t play Team 2, they can’t jump both. However, if Team 3 beat Team 2, they jump them, and if Team 3 – now directly beat Team 1 – beat Team 1, they can also jump them.
Finally, the teams are snaked into brackets. Team 1 goes into its “natural geographical section” – North 1 or North 2 in the North supersections, and Central or South in the South supersections. Then the overall No. 2 team goes into the next section, along with Team 3. This is how the NCAA Tournament in March Madness is seeded, with the top four overall seeds becoming the No. 1 seed in each of the four regions.
Ultimately, one bracket of eight will have Teams 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, and 16, while the other will have Teams 2,3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, and 15.
Tune in to out Central Jersey Sports Radio “Playoff Projection Show” this Saturday night, October 25 at 6 pm as Mike Pavlichko presents his playoff seeding projections, joined by analyst Marcus Borden and coaches from around the Big Central Conference!
Now that you know how the playoffs are seeded, here are the current official standings. These are Central Jersey Sports Radio’s calculations and charts, matching Gridiron New Jersey, which performs the official calculations. Gridiron New Jersey releases its projections later Saturday night, and the official NJSIAA seeding on Sunday.
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