High school football is at it again.
According to a report out Thursday from Shore Sports Insider (formerly Shore Sports Network), the NJSIAA’s Leagues and Conferences committee has recommended that the NJSIAA move back to snaking playoff brackets in each section, rather than splitting them up geographically.
Snaked brackets are intended to “balance” them. In that process, when the top 16 in North and South in each group are determined, teams are placed into sections with, for example, the top overall seed in Central, then seeds 2 and 3 in South, then 4 and 5 in Central, 6 and 7 in South, and so on.
For those keeping score at home, this will be the sixth different format the NJSIAA has used for seeding high school football in nine playoff seasons, going back to 2017, and not counting the COVID year of 2020, when no state playoffs were held.
See if you can follow along:
- 2017: Just like it had for years, the state was simply using power points for playoff qualification. The NJSIAA in the mid-2000s eliminated the “.500 or better” requirement to get in the playoffs.
- 2018: In a radical shift, the NJSIAA adds the Born Power Index, and combines that and the traditional power point formula to make the NJUPR (United Power Ranking) to seed teams. The top 16 are split geographically, and the two eight-team sections are ranked top to bottom. But that could allow the fourth-place overall team to be a top-seed in their section.
- 2019: Once it’s learned that the Born Power Index (a proprietary formula which was never revealed) gave teams better seeds by scoring more points in games – a fact discovered and revealed to the public by this reporter, who broke the code while at WCTC Radio – the NJSIAA ditches it, adopting a similar formula called the Strength Index, but using the number in reverse, counting the value of an opponent’s ranking instead. That eliminated the incentive to run up the score. Brackets also were snaked to get competitive balance, but it also meant teams would be in non-traditional sections (such as Middlesex being in a South Jersey Group 1 section, for example).
- 2024: Group points are eliminated from the power point formula (not just in football, but all sports), but snaking remains.
- 2025: After receiving complaints about travel (see the Middlesex example above) mainly in the South and Central sections, the NJSIAA goes back to teams being divided by geography after the field of 16 is set. But in a concession to snaking proponents, a better adjustment is made this time. The top two teams in the field of 16 are awarded No. 1 seeds, split among the two sections geographically (the Northernmost top seed would go in Central, the Southernmost in South, for example), then the rest of the teams were divided geographically, to achieve balance.
Now, the big move to cut down on travel appears on its way out the door, at the behest of the leagues and conferences.
But when will someone stand up and say enough is enough?
Every football coach in favor of snaking the top 16 in North and South – and some want to see the whole state be snaked, 1-to-32 in each group, use some variation of two arguments:
The first is: “We have true group champs now, we have to do it this way.”
The second is: “They drive five hours in Texas for a playoff game, why can’t we go 2 hours?”
Let’s address the first. Football was the only NJSIAA sport without group champions until 2023. Every other sport has them. But every other sport with as many teams as football also has sectional champions, and even when there was the Tournament of Champions – a six-team event featuring all the state group champs – they never lost a bit of lustre. Those sections are predetermined before the start of the season by the NJSIAA. They can change every couple of years, but relatively few move around. As a school’s population grows or shrinks, they move up or down. Some have been in the same section for decades.
There have been some complaints over the years, but as far as we know, none have ever gained any traction to the point the NJSIAA would upset the apple cart. St. Anthony, Christian Brothers, St. Patrick, all of them would meet somewhere before the Tournament of Champions Final. So what?
What makes football different? We get why the playoff formula needs to be different. Unlike basketball or baseball, your schedule is your schedule. Most can pick up a Week 0 game on their own, but with just nine games before the playoffs, there’s little opportunity to add a game. In basketball, some teams bounced early from their county tournaments are picking up random games to try and get power points and improve their standing. We’ve even seen baseball teams play a late pick-up game in the afternoon and play a county tournament game in the evening.
So before we finish this argument, let’s look at No. 2. And the answer to that is the same as No. 1: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
Yeah, we know, they do everything bigger in Texas. But let’s be real. Traveling two hours for a playoff game – a first round game at that – is ridiculous. Go look at the scores of first round games. Does an 8-seed really need to travel two hours to get their doors blown off by an eventual state champion??
Going back to when the state’s coaches voted on whether to adopt the Group Championships, many obviously liked it and voted yes. Others figured it would happen anyway, and voted yes, but worried sectional championship would be cheapened. And that’s exactly what happened, but not simply because there are group championships.
The snaking procedure turns a legitimate “Central Jersey Group 5” championship into a Group 5 quarterfinal. But we’re giving out a random trophy. For what? Washington Township is not the 2025 Central Jersey Group 5 champion. They are not from Central Jersey. No more than Old Bridge is from South Jersey.
Washington Township won a state Group 5 quarterfinal.
(And don’t get us started on whether “Central Jersey” is even a thing. Just stop right there.)
Every playoff formula is going to have its detractors, and someone is always going to get screwed. Or at least perceive that they have been screwed. But the bottom line is this: the best teams rarely fail to win. If they do, it’s not because you didn’t have a home game, or got a “bad matchup,” the worst excuse in the book.
Want to win a championship? Ignore the seeds. Make a tackle. Catch a ball. Make a goal line stand.
But for crying out loud stop whining.
The problem is, the people in charge keep listening.
When the NJSIAA changed the power point formula a couple of seasons ago and removed group points – teams would get more points for beating larger schools – they did it across the board. The reasoning was that school size didn’t automatically equate to a tougher opponent.
Debatable, but a fair point either way. And the state appropriately picked one criteria and applied it across all sports.
So if the powers that be want to let the inmates run the asylum, go for it. But then you might as well save the money on those meaningless sectional championship trophies.
The NJSIAA doesn’t want to do that, so far as we know. They like having sectional titles. But you can’t have it both ways. Either those games must have meaning, or they don’t.
So if high school football coaches want to go back to snaking, or even expand it to all 32 teams in each group, fine. I give up. You win.
But then get rid of sectional championship games entirely, because they don’t mean squat anymore.
Or, common sense can prevail, the recommendation should be rejected, and the NJSIAA can go back to traditional sections so that those trophies actually mean something.
Nothing is set in stone yet. The Executive Committee still must have its final say. Right now, it’s leaning toward snaking.
That’s a shame.
