First release of playoff standings from Gridiron NJ shows unintended effects of new NJSIAA seeding method with unbalanced brackets

When the NJSIAA moved away from using pure power points for playoff qualification in football, bringing in the NJ UPR system in 2018 along with the Born Power Index, it was a major change and confused many, especially since Bill Born’s system was proprietary and not shared with the public.

Over the years, there have been tweaks and changes. After that first year, the NJSIAA ditched the Born Index for a similar metric called Strength Index, and used the SI value of opponents rather than a team itself, because the original method rewarded teams for having larger margins of victory.

One big change was splitting the five groups into North and South, with the top 32 qualifying for the playoffs. First, teams were split geographically on cutoff weekend, then reseeded. Then, they moved to “snake” the brackets so that seeds would be distributed evenly.

But much had been made about long travel for some games, especially in the South half of the state, to this year, the snake method was abandoned for one that’s more true to geography.

But one of the unintended consequences of that is that sections could again be very unbalanced in terms of strength.

By NJSIAA rule, Gridiron New Jersey – which does the official playoff calculations for the state – released the first UPR standings after this weekend’s games, Week Two. And the differences just between North 5 and South 5 show how one section might be considered “tougher” than the other, just like they were when standings and seeding were done by four pre-determined geographical sections.

Take a look at the below seeding for the North 5 supersection:

According to the seeding procedure, the top two teams overall are the No. 1 seeds. The team with the highest Northing number (a geographical reference) is the top seed in North 1, while the southernmost team is the top seed in North 2. (In the South supersections, the Northernmost of the top two is the Central No. 1 seed, with the other No. 1 in South.)

For all intents and purposes, what you call the sections is irrelevant. Once the two top seeds are decided – this is after the top-down tiebreakers and such, which for our purposes, we did not do in these standings – the remaining 14 teams out of the top 16 qualifiers are divided up geographically. The seven northernmost teams go with the northernmost No. 1, while the remaining seven southernmost teams go with the southernmost.

In this example, East Orange and Bridgewater-Raritan are the No. 1 seeds, and East Orange is the northernmost of the two, so they go in North 1, Bridgewater goes in North 2.

Then, you’ll notice the remainder are sorted by Northing. East Orange gets the teams from 780995 down to 716213, while Bridgewater gets 624639 through 710527.

Finally, you’ll notice the rest of those teams re-ordered by UPR, and you can see their rank by UPR for an easier look in the bracket charts. In North 5, you’ll see North 1 has four of the top ten seeds, while the South has six of the top ten. That would indicate South 1 is slightly more of a “tough” section.

Here in the South 5 section, it’s the same. The South section has six of the top ten teams in the Supersection, while the North only has four. But it also comes down to the rank of the teams within.

If you totalled the UPR rank of playoff teams – numbers 1 through 16 – you’d get 136. “Snaking” brought balance. Add the seeds in each section and you’d get 68 each. That’s an even balance.

In North 1 Group 5, you have 74, and in North 2 Group 5 you have 60. (Yes, that only totals 134, but note that two teams are “tied” with a UPR rank of 12 and two more with a rank of 15.) That’s a +/- seven between brackets, not too far off the mark.

But in Central 5 you have 81, while South 5 has 54. (There are two 13s here, so again, we don’t get to 136.) But overall, that’s a +/- 8.5 swing between brackets.

But that’s the tradeoff for shortening travel. Under last year’s system, if these were the brackets, Hunterdon Central would be playing a first round road game at Atlantic City. That’s what the latest tweaks hope to avoid.

But we’re still likely to have at least a few unbalanced supersections in the state. We’ll keep an eye on it as we get closer to cutoff weekend.

Credit to the NJSIAA for listening to its members. Many have complained about travel. And it made a change.

While some would prefer going the complete opposite direction, going to the best 32 teams in the state then assigning them into sections by Northing, that would cut travel, but still result in unbalanced sections.

Our take has always been, if you can get similar results with a simpler system, use that instead of the more complicated. For now, we think the NJSIAA is on the right track, and would like to see them continue in that direction.

There’s still a lot of football to be played and six weeks until Cutoff Weekend, but we continue to advocate for going back to pre-determined geographical sections, and eliminating power points entirely. A breakdown of the math has shown there would be little difference in the brackets using just OSI, with many of the same teams in the field of 16 and even among the top four.