Changes to playoff formula in football may have leveled the playing field more in 2024

With another Cutoff Weekend in the books, the 25th for this reporter, we always like to look back and see how things went.

For starters, we’ll pat ourselves on the back: for the first time ever, we were able to accurately predict all 160 teams in the public school playoffs, and all 80 first-round matchups. The only thing we didn’t do was place North 5 top overall seed in the right bracket.

No matter, North 1 and North 2 are only names, and schools move around so much, who even knows what some team’s “natural” section is any more?

But one of the noticeable thing was the lack of complaints around the state, anecdotally-speaking, about multipliers.

This NJSIAA changed the way multipliers are calculated this year. It used to be a fixed amount of power points for a win or loss, depending on what level multiplier. Some teams got 24 points for a loss to a third-tier multiplier, where a normal loss might have garnered seven residuals, at the most. (A win against a seven-win Group 5 team, for example, could only get 29.)

In 2024, multipliers were removed from power points and added to OSI. Instead of 50 percent SI value for a loss, teams got 70, 75 or 80 percent based on their level. And, a loss (or two for higher-tier multipliers) to a non-multiplier could result in a loss of that status this year.

That brought the impact of multipliers way down. From a math standpoint, against the lowest multipliers, teams would get 242 percent more power points than a loss to the best public school non-multiplier. This year? About 20 percent.

Then, add in the fact that Group Size was taken out of power points as well, there was even more of an impact. Group Size is an arbitrary number – not at its source, since it’s based on real enrollment numbers, but in its impact. After all, school size has nothing to do with performance on the field.

Last year, the state saw 15 public schools with three wins make the playoffs, and four with two wins. That’s 19 of 160 (or 12 percent) of all the publics to qualify for the playoffs.

This year, there were only eight public schools – just over half – to make the playoffs with just three wins, and only three two-win teams. That’s 11 out of 160 for just under six percent.

So, if it’s quiet out there, dig this: the NJSIAA got it right.