Big school playoff update: How would Group 4 and 5 brackets would look if playoffs were today? And when does “moving up” not mean moving up? Your questions explained!

Once again, it’s a bit silly to say “If the playoffs started today, here’s how the brackets would look,” since the playoffs don’t start today in high school football.

Public schools still have four more weeks to go, some teams don’t have the minimum two wins to get in, and some will still play games that could be used as tiebreakers.

But with the NJSIAA changing up its playoff seeding procedure this year – assigning teams into divisions by Northing, a geographical number, then ordering teams by UPR – the brackets will look a little different. Gone is the “snaking” that guaranteed one bracket would be relatively equivalent in terms of strength to the other.

Could the NJSIAA be floating a trial balloon here on its way back to pre-determined geographic sections? We hope so, for a lot of reasons, but that’s another story for another day.

For now, we’ll take a look at how playoff brackets would look in Groups 4 and 5. And again, the exercise is to learn more about how the seeding is done than what it will actually look on Cutoff Weekend.

The main thing to know is this: in the past, moving up in the overall field of 16 would move you up in the seeding, whichever bracket you landed in. But this year, that may not be the case, since teams are assigned brackets according to geography. UPR is used in the beginning and end – at the start to determine the field of 16, then after being put in a bracket, to determine the order. But the brackets are determined by geogprahy.

For example, a team that is 10th overall in the South 4 bracket could move up to eighth in the standings. But if geographically they fall into the Central bracket, they could jump two places to eighth, but might jump two teams that are in the South bracket. That means, when they’re placed in Central, they don’t move up at all!

Group 5

Now, here’s another good example of how moving up in the Top 16 doesn’t necessarily move you up in the standings. Look at Morristown, which is the 5th northernmost team out of all 16 (see the last column, “N Rank”). If Bloomfield moved to No. 8 in the standings and Irvington down to nine, Bloomfield is still a North team, and they wouldn’t jump East Orange. So, they could gain a spot in the field of 16, the overall UPR standings, but they don’t necessarily move up a seed.

Note also how the sections are “uneven” in terms of strength. The North 1 section has just three of the top eight teams, while North 2 has five of the top eight teams. That means North 2 is considered “stronger.”

And again, we’re not looking at the full picture here, with still four more weeks to go. Linden wouldn’t make the playoffs with one win; the minimum is two. But we have more football to play. This is just a snapshot to show how the teams move around.

Look at Central 5, specifically at Hunterdon Central and Franklin. They are the top to Northing teams in the South 5 supersection, so essenitally they likely are going to be in Central no matter how things shake out. Hunterdon Central is 13 in UPR and Franklin is 10. If the Red Devils moved from 13 to 11 – a jump of two spots – they would still be in Central because of their geography. And, they would not jump Franklin, because the Warriors are 10th in UPR. If they climbed from 13 to 9 overall, then they would jump Franklin.

It’s also worth noting that if you’re one of the Northern or Southernmost teams in a section, you’re likely to end up there. Let’s say Wildwood or Cape May were in the playoffs. There’s no one south of them. So they’re always going to end up in South, so you have a better idea who you’ll face. Southern is a good example. The top-seed N Rank here is the OVERALL, while the other teams are only among the bottom 14 (for our automated calculation purposes. But out of 32 teams overall, there are only four teams more South than them. They are guaranteed to be a South section team every year.

But Rancocas Valley – which you can’t see here – has a Northing rank in the middle at 18. If an extra south team jumps into the top 16, they could get bumped to Central, and if not, they could end up in South. They’re going to be a 50-50 shot, which – in our mind – is unfair, and why we believe the NJSIAA should move back to geographic sections.

These two are also highly unbalanced. The South has six of the top ten teams, while Central has only four. So the South section would be considered more difficult than Central. Couldn’t we achieve the same thing with pre-determined geographical sections?

Group 4

In this supersection, Northern Highlands is the Northernmost team (N Rank No. 1), so wherever they land in the top 16, they are guaranteed to be a North 1 team. They’ll Never be in North 2. Newark Central, on the other hand, could end up in either. Right now they’re the Northernmost team in North 2. But let’s say Rahway made it and knocked out Morris Knolls, a team more north than Newark Central. That would change Newark Central’s Northing rank to a 7 instead of 8, and put them in the North 2 section.

Of the eight brackets we’ve looked at so far, this one is the most even. Central and South each have four of the top eight seeds; Central has 2, 3, 5, and 8, while South has 1, 4, 6 and 7. Those are pretty close. But look at the 8-seed in each. Middletown South is 13 overall, Hammonton is 16. So the Central 4 first round game is a 2- vs. 13-seed overall, while the South 4 has a 1 vs. 16 matchup: unbalanced.

Overall, the goal of the change by the NJSIAA was to cut down on travel. While that doesn’t necessarily mean teams will get to just head to the next town over, you’ll notice all the Big Central teams are in North 2 or Central, the sections they’ve traditionally be in. It may not be foolproof, but if that was a goal, the system works.

We just think it would be easier if they set the sections ahead of time based on geography, rather than on Cutoff Weekend.