High school sports – including football – generally work on two year scheduling cycles.
The NJSIAA updates its group classifications every two years, with an occasional in between tweak if there’s a change like this year’s Jackson Memorial/Jackson Liberty merger, or a new co-op pops up.
The leagues follow, although for some reason, the leagues go first, soon after the season, then the state comes out with new groups based on enrollment over the summer.
Still, this process is a good time to fix inequities for programs that have either soared to the top in the conference, or bottomed out after heavy graduation losses and the like.
The Big Central Conference needs to take advantage.
Big schools have very few issues. If you’re good, halfway decent even, you’ll qualify. That’s because of the state’s UPR system, particularly the OSI component. The threshhold to get in – which isn’t set, but we typically look at a long-term average – is the same, or sometimes lower than the one for the smaller schools, but in general, team SI values are higher than for small schools, so there’s some extra wiggle room.
The margin for error for small schools is much slimmer, and the teams aren’t rated as high, on the average. This is what leaves you with situations like Spotwood, which missed the playoffs at 8-1, the only loss a one-point defeat at Dayton.
Had they been undefeated, they’d have been in. But they shouldn’t need to be. 8-1 should be enough. Spotswood’s schedule wasn’t even that bad. They beat three five-win teams. JFK missed at 6-2, but none of their wins came against anyone with more than two wins.
Be that as it may, the Big Central – from Group 3 on down to Groups 2 and 1 – needs a well-thought out plan for division assignments and scheduling. They haven’t had one yet, at least not one that benefits or helps the small schools.
Here are a few ideas:
Stop saddling small schools with losing programs. Small schools have it hard enough. They can’t play too far “up”; Group 1 schools should not have to schedule Group 3 schools to make the Group 1 playoffs. Besides, you don’t even get the benefit of group points any more in the power points equation. But if some team absolutely has to be in a division with a couple of no-win teams from the year prior, giving them a crossover against another winless team is downright malpractice. We won’t name any names here, but anyone who minimally follows Big Central football – including its scheduling committee – knows the kind of teams I’m referring to. Might as well give them a pebble, put them in a cage with a lion, then say “go!”
Give us larger divisions… Larger divisions will mean more common opponents. The benefit of this is that if one team in a division all of a sudden plummets with major graduation losses – which is much more a possibility at smaller schools than large ones – the rest of the teams in that division can get those points back by beating other teams that played them. If a division only played itself, with no crossovers, the teams are playing in the same “pool” of SI points. Remember, what one team gains, the other loses. If you play a lot of non-conference opponents, and lose points, you can’t get those back. BCC divisions should be six teams, as much as possible. With 59 schools, they could do it, with one five-team division leftover.
…and more balanced divisions. The Big Central generally puts teams in divisions by size, with a few tweaks here and there for quality. There are four Group 5/larger Group 4 divisions… Some with 4s and 3s, some with 3s and 2s, and some with 2s and 1s, with a few exceptions. Find your teams and snake them. For example, pick 12 teams of Group 2/3 size and snake them by SI. Put Team 1 in one division, Teams 2 and 3 in the other, put Teams 4 and 5 with Team 1, Teams 6 and 7 with Teams 2 and 3, and so on. This will ensure balance.
Crossovers need to make sense. If you can have two divisions of each “group” combo, make them crossover only against each other. And make the top teams crossover against top teams (mostly) and the bottom teams do the same against bottom teams. Lets say you have six teams in each division. Teams 1 and 2 crossover against 1 and 2 in the other division, one gets Team 3 and one gets Team 4. Teams 3 and 4 get one or the other of Teams 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6 in the other division. And Teams 5 and 6 face the 5 and 6 from the other division, and one of the 3 and 4 teams. Each team has eight games now, with a Week Zero opportunity left over. This will increase everyone’s chance of making the playoffs: The top teams won’t hurt their playoff chances against the lower teams, and the bottom teams have a chance to get wins against some other bottoms. And if they can pick-off a middle team and finish 4-4, they might have a shot at the playoffs, too.
And that’s the part that gets tricky. Not everyone is going to make the playoffs. Not everyone will have a shot, based on their numbers, talent, or skill level. But the Big Central needs to make sure these teams don’t drag everyone else down in the process.
The league “doesn’t consider playoffs” when making their schedules, they just want everything to be competitive. We’ve seen the results. Some programs just aren’t right now. And it’s pie-in-the-sky to think everyone in the Big Central has a shot at 4-4.
Granted, the state’s system needs some serious revamping. Rewarding teams for challenging schedules is fine, if they win. Teams are getting rewarded more for getting blown out than close losses, and that has to end.
Maybe it needs to do more to help smaller schools, too. Maybe it needs different qualification criteria for smaller schools. As long as everyone competing in the same section has the same rules. But leagues and conferences need to be the next, last line of defense. If the system makes it harder on your teams to be successful and make the playoffs, the leagues need to work the system.
Some of them do, like the Super Football Conference and the West Jersey Football League. Then again, this whole cockamamie system was mostly their idea.
If that requires an Ivy in the Big Central like the SFC has – since they know this system – so be it. I know of one coach of a small school who already has said he knows his team won’t make the playoffs next year, and he would prefer to be in an Ivy Division (lesser competition, allowed by the NJSIAA, but ineligible for the playoffs due to a significantly weaker schedule) in an effort to rebuild the program, avoiding demoralizing blowout losses.
There are a small handful of teams right now – and we won’t name names, you know them – who will guaranteed, 100%, without a doubt, not make the playoffs next year. Maybe even the year after.
If they do, “ah salute!” as Tony Soprano might say.
In that same vein, let’s hope the Big Central doesn’t whack anyone’s chances before the season even starts. In its first few seasons, that hasn’t been the case.
Here’s the BCC’s chance to fix that.
