OPINION: High School Football has a shiny new toy, but NJ coaches seem hell-bent on breaking it

As the folks at Varsity Aces – Twitter home of the Bergen Record high school sports scribes – noted on Friday, conversation among reporters in the MetLife Stadium press box during the first four of seven state football championships centered around the seeding procedure for the state tournament.

Specifically, it appeared to center around how the state divides up its “sections” on Cutoff Weekend.

“Back in the day” – we’re talking just eight years ago, by the way, not 1974 – there were 20 geographic sections in the state for public schools, four per group. Each had approximately 16 teams, and the top eight made the playoffs.

Some sections were brutal, like North 2, Group 5. Some were not. But that’s the way it went.

Starting in 2018, the NJSIAA – mainly at the behest of a couple of mammoth superconferences, the Super Football Conference in the North and the West Jersey Football League in the South – came up with the “NJ United” plan. And it instead divided the state into two supersections per group, North and South.

The top 16 of 32-or-so teams made in, then they were divided geographically. Eventually, it was decided to “snake” brackets so that each was relatively equal based on strength. State championships in each group were added for the first time in 2022, and this past season, teams were divided geographically again, after the fact, mainly to cut down on travel times in the most congested state in the country.

Now, there is talk of forgetting North and South and taking the top 32 teams in each group statewide, regardless of geography, and splitting them up, perhaps going back to the snaking model.

Who’s ready for a first round game with Montclair traveling down to Washington Township? Hammonton at Northern Highlands? Park Ridge at Glassboro?

Does anyone else see how ridiculous that is?

When will someone stand up and be the voice of reason and simply say, “No.”

We’ll find out in the off-season, when the NJSIAA football committee meets, and takes into account a recent New Jersey Football Coaches’ Association survey on snaking and geography. They’ll come up with yet another tweak, then roll it back the next year when people see how it actually worked – or didn’t – in real life.

The only other big-time sports organization that does anything like this is the NCAA Tournament. The Big Dance. March Madness. And when was the last time you heard a school say “We’re South Regional champs?”

Exactly. Never. They don’t say it. They say “We’re in the Final Four!”

So why are New Jersey’s high school football coaches hell-bent on stripping any meaning away from sectional titles?

Washington Township won the Central Jersey Group 5 title this season. The home field of the Minutemen is 15 miles in a straight line southeast of Center City Philadelphia.

For God’s sake, someone please look at a map!

And the NJSIAA needs some consistency on this issue. In 2024, it eliminated group size from the football power points formula, noting (correctly) that group size isn’t a great indicator of strength. Then, perhaps most notably, they did the same in all other sports, making it consistent across the board.

And a few years ago, the NJSIAA also eliminated the Tournament of Champions. Besides the fact that it reasoned the same few teams won it every year (who cares?) it also sought uniformity; some sports had it, some did not. The result was to get rid of it entirely.

Further back in the day, it was St. Anthony of Jersey City and CBA battling it out every year in the sectional finals in high school basketball. They could never meet in the Tournament of Champions. That’s just the way it was.

In five of the last six playoff seasons, the Colonia boys’ basketball team has won the North 2, Group 3 title. In all six of those, Ramapo has won the North 1, Group 3 title. That means Colonia and Ramapo have faced off in the same round five of the last six years. Would it be better if they played some years for the sectional title, some years in the sectional semis, and other years in the group semis?

Nope.

So what makes football different? Absolutely nothing.

Here’s a thought. Stop tweaking formulas based on who someone thinks should win a title, or who someone thinks should be the top seed. Or, who gets in the playoffs to begin with based on how good someone thinks a team is.

Playing tough opponents – and losing – doesn’t mean squat, folks. Sorry, about that. The only thing that matters in terms of making the playoffs and where you’re seeded is (or should be) winning.

Now, if you want to give me two 4-4 teams or two 8-0 teams and compare their strength of schedules, that’s a fair comparison. If one 8-0 team played all seven-win teams and the other played cupcakes, by all means, give it to the team with a tougher schedule. That only makes sense.

But a 3-6 team that “challenges” itself – and doesn’t successfully meet that challenge – isn’t worthy of a chance to be a champion. Nor are they worthy of the playoffs.

Win, baby, win.

To be the best, you have to play the best, but you also have to beat the best. If that were the case, Rutgers would be in the College Football Playoff almost every year. (Exaggeration, but you get the point.)

But back to the geography question, and the 1-32 seeding theory. Such an idea would take any and all meaning away from sectional championships. They are still esteemed and revered in every other sport. Because they are first determined by geography, not concerned with equal brackets.

But if the football coaches in this state want the best 32 statewide in each group, do us all a favor and don’t pretend anyone is the champion of a section.

They’re just in the Final Four.