OPINION: With one tweak, NJSIAA could make football playoff seeding so much better

The NJSIAA’s football seeding formula has been tweaked so often, we’re seeking disability for whiplash.

OK, no, not really. And tweaking it from year-to-year isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As issues and inequities crop up with what is a relatively new system that started in 2018, changes may need to be made. After all, power points were still being tweaked until the UPR system came into being in 2018, and that had been used for over 40 years.

But there’s still more that could be done. Earlier this week, I wrote that the NJSIAA got it right this year in the off-season changes they made to the playoff formula. Specifically, that included taking Group Points out of the power point formula, and moving the multipliers over to the OSI, while making it more dynamic, with teams even losing multiplier status if they lost to a non-multiplier school.

The results this year validated the changes: fewer two- and three-win teams qualifying for the playoffs, and while the multiplier may have helped some teams, it didn’t lead to anyone getting seeded drastically higher than they should have. Every year, coaches will complain someone else had an unfair advantage by playing one, and sometimes two multipliers. Not so much this season.

That said, it could be made better still. Many longtime coaches lament the “.500 rule,” which existed until about the early 2000s, which said teams had to be .500 to make the playoffs. It provided a steady target, where as no such target exists now; it’s just about getting into the top 16.

One of the complaints I hear from coaches is that winning doesn’t seem to matter as much as it once did. They say it appears scheduling tough opponents is more valuable than actually beating them. One proposal that’s being floated is increasing the minimum number of wins to three, and only if a team is 3-5, not 3-6. And there seems to be sentiment to have one metric, not two, which would make figuring things out a lot simpler.

But what that doesn’t address is the formula itself. Currently, the NJSIAA has “safeguards” on both sides of the formula: Two wins is the current minimum to get in, while undefeated teams are guaranteed a playoff berth, albeit the 16th seed.

But that’s a Cutoff Weekend fix. What the NJSIAA should look for is a formula that organically leaves out two-win teams, and maybe some three-win teams – especially the 3-6 squads.

We have a solution. (Of course we do!)

Consider that in power points, teams got six quality points for a win, and none for a loss. That’s not even a 6:1 ratio, that’s 6:0, which in the math world is something called an “undefined ratio.” (I had to look it up and see if it even had a name.) But let’s assume 6:1 for the moment.

Residuals were given out this way: three points for every win by an opponent you beat, and one for every win by an opponent you lost to. That’s a 3:1 margin.

So, let’s say you beat a four-win team, a middle-of-the-pack team that’s 4-4 by the end of the season. That would be worth six quality points and 12 residuals – three for each win – for a total of 18. For a loss, there are no quality points, and four residuals for a total of 4. That’s a ratio of about 4.5:1.

A win over a one-win team would be worth nine, a loss to them would be worth 1, a 9:1 ratio. The most residuals you can get is 18 – that’s the NJSIAA cap since some teams play only eight games and some don’t play their ninth until Thanksgiving – giving you residuals from a maximum of six wins. That game would be worth 24 points and as much as eight for a loss, for a 3:1 ratio.

So the biggest ratio from wins to losses is about 9:1 and the smallest is 3:1. That is, a win in power points is worth anywhere from nine to three times what a loss is worth. That’s a significant weight on winning, but still deemed valuable by the NJSIAA.

But With OSI, teams get 100 percent of an SI value for wins, and 50 percent for losses. That’s a 2:1 ratio no matter how many wins the opponent has. That places more emphasis on strength of schedule.

So our thought was: What if we could get them both in the same metric, keeping the strength factor with OSI, but giving a bit more weight to wins, like power points do?

We did an experiment and ran this year’s public school standings by a different formula. We only used OSI, but we made the value much different. Winners would still get 100 percent, but losing teams would get only 20. (We also adjusted multipliers, which ranged from 70- to 80-percent; we changed it to 30 to 40.)

The results were astonishing: Remember the nine three-win teams and three two-win teams that made the playoffs this year? Four three-win teams would have not made the playoffs in the new system, and all three two-win teams would be out. That eliminated seven of the 12 sub-.500 teams.

That means out of 160 teams in the public school playoffs, all but five would have had four-wins or more, or 97 percent of the teams.

Here’s a breakdown:

• North 5: Bridgewater-Raritan (3-6) got a first-round home game, finishing eighth. The Panthers play in the toughest division in the Big Central, the only one in which all five teams made the playoffs last year, and every team on their schedule made the playoffs last year as well as this year. The new formula would keep them in, but at No. 12. Newark East Side – 3-6, but with a weaker schedule – finished 16th, but under the new formula would drop out, allowing Livingston to get in at 4-4, with a similar OSI. Important to note here is that Livingston finished higher than East Side in power points. So, we would say, the changed formula made up for getting rid of power points, where Livingston beat out East Side to begin with.
• South 5: The only three-win team here was Howell, at 3-5. Like Bridgewater-Raritan, they got a first round home game by finishing eighth. And like the Panthers, they’d stay in, but drop to 12th. No one else dropped out; the same teams got in, but in a slightly different order.
• North 4: No three-win teams made it, and no one dropped out. It was all the same teams, bit of a different order.
• South 4: The only three-win team was Middletown South, at 3-5. They went from 12 to 14.
• North 3: The only team that had three wins was Weequahic, at 3-5. They finished 15th, but would drop out in favor of Warren Hills, which was 4-5. They finished .19 behind Weequahic in power point average. We’d call this one a toss-up, but it still eliminated the only three-win team in the field.
• South 3: Nottingham made the playoffs at 15 with a 3-6 record. They would bump down to 16. But we also had a two-win team make it here: Delsea, at 2-6. Theirs was a case of having too many tough teams on their schedule. They were 18th in power points, but 10 in OSI. The new formula would drop them from 13th overall to 17th – out of the playoffs in favor of 4-5 Cinnaminson.
• North 2: This was a strong section, with no three-win teams. And this was the only place a four-win team would have gotten bounced. Lakeland (4-5) finished 16th, and they would have fallen to 17th, getting Cresskill in at 5-3 in 16th place. Cresskill also had a higher power point average than Lakeland – 9.69 to 8.67 – so again: changing the formula so wins are valued more makes includes the power points factor, which we would eliminate on its own.
• South 2: Gloucester City (3-5) finished 13th, but the new formula would have bounced them to 15th – still in the playoffs. But two-win Haddon Heights, which “clinched” a berth with a win on Cutoff Weekend – would be out, falling from 14th to 21. Here’s a perfect example of where you wouldn’t need the “three-win minimum” rule; the formula would keep them out naturally. And who would get in? Metuchen, at 6-3, which had a power point average of 10, compared to Haddon’s 7.88. But Haddon Heights had a 42.47 OSI, good for 13th. That gave too much weight to their strength of schedule, and not enough to their lack of wins. Don’t results count??
• North 1: Three-win Pompton Lakes (3-5) finished as high as 10th place. They would instead fall to 16th, but stay in. Meanwhile, Kinnelon at 4-5 would be out at 17, while Wallkill Valley would get in at 15. Kinnelon actually finished 16th under the current formula, but ironically was bounced out by Wallkill Valley by beating them head-to-head. In this case, the new formula eliminated the need for that head-to-head tiebreaker – instead, it naturally rated Wallkill Valley higher.
• South 1: Woodbury, at 3-5, finished 11th this weekend, and they would drop to 14, which isn’t too significant. But Audubon is the rub here. They finished 2-5 and were 13th in the standings. They would be out, dropping to 20, and Pitman would go from 18 all the way up to ninth; they finished 6-1. They had a higher power point average than six playoff teams. So, we’d say the new formula successfully transferred the weight on wins from power points into the OSI formula.

There were still a lot of four-win teams to not make the playoffs, but sometimes that happens. In South 5 alone, five-win teams Egg Harbor and Vineland didn’t make it, nor did four-win Franklin. They still wouldn’t make it, but at least not at the expense of a three-win team. And they would have been closer: Franklin would go from 18 to 17 – which at least gives them a shot at getting in on head-to-head – while Vineland went from 21 to 18. Egg Harbor stayed at 20.

So we got some better teams in. What about the top of the brackets? Those are the teams most likely to win. So let’s look at the top four teams in each supersection, since that’s where 14 of the 20 public sectional champions came from in 2023:

• North 5: The top two seeds were Union City (7-1) and Ridgewood (5-3). Union City would remain, but Passaic Tech (7-2) would move up. West Orange (7-2) stays third, but Ridgewood drops to fourth, and Elizabeth (5-4) goes from four to five. But the wins of the first five teams currently go 7, 5, 7, 5, 7. The new formula would put all three-seven win teams first, then the two five-win teams. West Orange ranked two in power points and fourth in OSI. The new system would have them third in OSI, meaning it split the difference – a perfect blend of power points and OSI, but rolled up in one formula!
• South 5: Toms River North (9-0) and Washington Twp. (7-2) would remain exactly where they are, No. 1 and No. 2. But Rancocas Valley (7-2) would go up to No. 3, while Atlantic City (6-2) would drop to fourth.
• North 4: Morris Knolls (8-0) would remain the No. 1 overall seed, but instead of Phillipsburg (7-1) at No.2, it would go to Woodbridge (9-0). Shouldn’t an undefeated team (less than two OSI points behind P’burg) be a top-seed? And again, Woodbridge was second in power points, fourth in OSI. By getting them to third, we have essentially averaged out power points and OSI to arrive at their seed. So the “power point” model – giving more weight to wins – is included in the new OSI calculations.
• South 4: The top four teams all remained in the same order here: Winslow (9-0), Millville (6-2), Brick Memorial (7-2), and Middletown North (7-0). And you might ask, “Why doesn’t Middletown North deserve a top seed?” Unlike the Woodbridge example, North has a significantly lower OSI than Millville – by more than 18 points!
• North 3: Again, the top four remained the same. It’s Pascack Valley (7-1), Old Tappan (7-1), West Essex (6-2), and Mendham (8-1). All four finished in the same spot in both power point average and OSI. So nothing really changed; it tracks.
• South 3: Somerville (9-0) and Hopewell Valley (9-0) would remain No. 1 and No. 2, in that order. Burlington Twp. (8-1) would move from fourth to third – still a No. 2 seed in their section – and Cedar Creek (7-2) would edge up from fifth to fourth, knocking Mainland (6-3) to sixth.
• North 2: Not much change here either. Westwood (7-1) would still finish first, followed by Glen Rock (7-1). Bernards (9-0) and Hanover Park (7-1) would flip-flop, putting the Mountaineers in third and dropping Hanover Park to fourth, but both would still be 2-seeds in their sections.
• South 2: Rumson-Fair Haven (8-0) – which plays a brutal schedule – would take the top spot from Camden (6-2) here. Again, let’s reward teams that go undefeated, which is not easy! Wall (6-1) and Pt. Pleasant Boro (7-2) remain third and fourth.
• North 1: The top four stay exactly the same here: Cedar Grove (9-0) first overall, Butler (8-0) second, then New Milford (6-2), and New Providence (7-2) with one more win, but a weaker schedule. The key thing here is that the new formula – while it improved other sections – didn’t make things worse, either. That’s important to look at as well.
• South 1: Glassboro (8-0) and Woodstown (7-1) would remain the top two teams, in that order, but Paulsboro (7-2) would move above Shore (8-0) into third, with Shore dropping to fourth. That may not be idea, but in the end, both will still be No. 2 seeds. Why the move? Because Schalick (6-3, in 5th) had a higher OSI than both of them under the current formula. When they dropped down, Paulsboro moved up. And Shore’s OSI was stuck at the same number, because they won all their games. Paulsboro actually went down slightly because they had two losses, which were now worth less. But in both cases, they had a higher OSI than Shore.

To sum up, there were few changes to the top four. In all 27 of 40 teams flip-flopped, and only one fell out of the top four entirely. That was Mainland, with six wins, falling behind four teams that had nine, nine, eight and seven wins. Is that so wrong?

And we got all the two-win teams out of the playoffs, and a couple of threes, and only in favor of teams with four or more wins. And there were no special rules or guardrails needed.

Will it be perfect every year? No. But it’s better, and that’s the goal.