The names of the schools change, but the complaints stay the same.

How did this team with more wins get in over this team? They should have played an easier schedule. This team should have played a more challenging schedule? Why did we get in and they didn’t?

It’s a tale as old as time. People complained all the way back when champions were declared, in the 1930s and 1950s and ’60s under the Colliton system. So, we decided on two-team playoffs, where applicable. Sure, that will solve it!

That was how the “playoffs” started in 1974. Soon, it was four teams per section, then eight. Now it’s 16 teams in each half of the state, split on the whims of whatever the football committee decides that given year, with a formula so complicated that most football coaches in New Jersey still don’t fully grasp (after being used for seven years) and our counterparts in other states bug their eyes out.

One actually said to me “Holy cow! That is a ‘complex’ system. I am DEFINITELY NOT a fan of any system that bases points on how teams are ‘rated’. Anything that keeps it on the field and common criteria gets my vote.”

But before we talk about any meaningful tweaks or reforms to the playoff system or formula, let’s get a few truisms out of the way:

• No system is perfect.
• Someone will always complain.
• Someone always thinks they know better.

That last one is important, but we’ll get back to that.

What are the issues?

The problems with the current system have been well-documented. Not everyone agrees there’s a problem, which is one in and of itself. Seems that every time you talk to someone in the loop on this stuff, they fall back on “Well, the best team won, and the best two teams made the finals, so it works.”

That’s a weak position at best.

If you’re going to have 160 public schools out of over 300 in the state qualify for the playoffs, you should be concerned about all of them. If not, just go back to four-team brackets, four groups, and the 64 teams in all – when enough qualified, or did you forget you had to be .500 to make it?!? – like we had in the early 1990s.

But this is true of all sports, high school, pros, even the NCAA Tournament. Expand, expand. Before you know it, there won’t be a regular season We’ll start with playoffs on opening day and anyone who loses is in consolation games the entire year.

Geography

A great politician once said, “All politics is local.” So is high school sports.

Does anyone in Middlesex County really worry about what’s going on in the NJIC? Does Warren County follow the Cape-Atlantic League? Not until it’s time to face one of those teams in the playoffs, in any sport.

But virtually every other NJSIAA sport still has pre-determined geographical sections. Why? Because high school sports, in and of itself, is regional. Let’s get back to that.

The excuse you’ll hear is “well, now we have state champions, so it’s essential we get the best 32 teams in the state.”

But we don’t hear that in basketball, or baseball. They even had a Tournament of Champions in some sports. (We miss that, too.)

Winning a South Jersey Group 3 title in whatever sport you care to think about matters because you are the champion of all the Group 3 schools in South Jersey. If one day, Dunellen football was reborn and they sneak into a snaked bracket in the South because all of a sudden Middlesex, Somerset, and Union County small school football reigned supreme, how fast do you think the West Jersey Football League coaches would be up in arms??

(Ooh! Ooh! I know!)

Dunellen is a Central Jersey school, not South Jersey. (Then, again, maybe these South Jersey people just don’t believe in Central Jersey. Hard to argue with people who don’t think you even exist!) They should play in a Central Jersey bracket.

Other states play in their “regions.” Stop making it up.

Winning Matters

Football is great because it teaches student-athletes about life, working as a team, dealing with adversity, winning with humility, etc. At least it’s supposed to.

And when you lose in life, you pick yourself up, and live another day. Just like when you fumble, you pick yourself up, and play another play.

Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you don’t. You get rewarded if you succeed. It might be a trophy, or a raise. But you get rewarded for doing something well.

In every other high school sport in New Jersey, its about wins. The new NJSIAA power point formula for all sports (besides football) is made up of three things:

• A team gets 6 quality points for a win
• A team gets 3 residuals for every win by an opponent they beat
• A team gets the value of their opponents’ opponent winning percentage

What you’ll notice in that list is that each factor has the same word or variation thereof: win.

Wins matter. Losses don’t.

Not just rewarding losing, but losing BIG:

The simple fact is this: New Jersey’s current playoff formula rewards teams for losing by larger margins than for losing by close margins.

When Team A with a 60 SI loses to Team B with a 70 SI by ten points, they get 35 OSI points.

When Team A with a 60 SI loses to Team B with a 70 SI by 40 points, they get 38 OSI points.

Those are the undeniable mathematical facts of the system, and this is crucial for all to understand.

The system rewards teams who lose by blowout than teams who lose competitive games.

That must change, moving forward. Unless your philosophy is to reward teams with poorer performance over teams with better performance.

What is seeding?

Sure, you all know the answer to this question, but do you really?

Are we trying to predict who will win? Are we ranking the teams? And how do we decide this?

District III in Pennsylvania’s PIAA – which has a page on its website with FAQs that also gets into its philosophy – hits the nail right on the head:

“The District III Committee is not in the clairvoyance business. That is to say, when a team is seeded first in a district playoff bracket, the district is saying that team’s body of work, measured by an unbiased mathematical formula, merited that slot on the bracket. It is not saying that No. 1 seed is necessarily the best team or the guaranteed champion in that classification. That is why we have playoffs to begin with: for the schools themselves to determine their playoff outcomes. Seeding provides an orderly process; it is not a projection.”

In essence, home or away, top-seed or 16, the best team should win. If they are truly the best of all teams, where they play, when they play and who they play does not matter. The best team is the one that wins.

(And yes, there’s that word again: win.)

Oh, and one more side note. Did you know that in Pennsylvania, each “district” – like a “section” in New Jersey – has its own self-governance? Each had different playoff criteria, recognizing the “local” characteristics of each district might be different. And they all go into the main playoff bracket in their respective size group, 1A through 6A.

Solutions? We have a few…

Complaining is meaningless without ideas. A few thoughts:

• Keep the current system, but make wins more valuable. This could be done a number of ways. Perhaps the OSI component should be 100% for a win, but only 25% for a loss. Consider that power points – which don’t take the quality of wins into an account – still was always about a 4:1 ration winning to losing. But OSI is 2:1. There’s too much credit for losing a game, not enough for winning.
• Cap blowouts. When a 7-win team gets left out over a 3-win team, everyone says the 7-win team should play a “tougher” schedule. What does that mean? Play up? Why should a Group 2 school play a Group 4 to make the Group 2 playoffs? And group points aren’t awarded anymore, so that’s an antiquated way of thinking. Play tougher SI schools? Sometimes they are significantly bigger or there are not enough good small schools in one area. So why penalize the few good ones? Capping blowouts at 30 when calculating SI could help that case.
• Go back to SI instead of OSI. Actually, we never used it. In 2018, when the UPR system was installed, we went right from the Born Power Index (which Strength Index is derived from) to OSI, the reverse form of SI. The main reason was that blowout wins were encouraged because it led to higher SI values, and higher seeds. But if a cap is put in, that could work. We figure few teams come back from a 28-point deficit, and 33 is the running clock, so split the difference because a 30-point margin is a nice, even six-point SI change for either team.
• Use what all the other sports use. This would mean going back to power points, under the formula described above. So, if Team A is 4-4, for each win they get just what they get now, six quality points for each win and three residuals for each win by an opponent they beat. But they also get the winning percentage of the teams their opponents played, plus .500. So if Team A beat Team B with 4 wins, the get 6 quality points, 12 residuals, and if all the teams on Team B’s schedule come out to a .617 win percentage, they would add 1.117 to that total, to get 19.117, their power point number. We get it, basketball has more teams, and most teams make the playoffs. Public school sections have around 21 or 22 teams each, and the top 16 make it. But here are last year’s final standings from NJ.com. Did anyone get massively cheated? No. And if they did, they results likely took care of themselves on the court.

So, will any of these work?

That’s a job for the football committee to figure out. This is the group that tweaks the rules each year.

They have done some good work.

Remember when mutlipliers gave teams more points for losing to a powerhouse non-public than winning against the best public school? Sound familiar? Guess what? The NJSIAA reduced that greatly last year, to the benefit of everyone. Good job there!

In the last few years, the NJSIAA also raised the minimum win level to get into the playoffs to two. Good start, but we think it should at least be three, maybe four. If you can’t win three games – enough to win a sectional title – you don’t deserve the chance to win three more to win a title. For those who say “talk to your league, 8-1 teams, and get a stronger schedule,” how about those teams get an easier schedule from their own league.

Not so easy, is it? Of course not, or you wouldn’t be 3-5.

But our question is this: If no wins or 1 wins is not good enough for the playoffs, and you have to get to two on the bottom end, why isn’t eight wins – or seven if you play on Thanksgiving – a guaranteed playoff berth?

Don’t get us wrong. We don’t propose doing this immediately. But maybe a good idea would be to run a few systems concurrently next year and the year after. Or reconstruct this year and last year, having known the results already.

There’s only one catch to this: What do you believe about sports? If you believe wins don’t matter, you’ll probably want more of the same. If that’s the case, we’re not going to convince you.

But if you truly believe wins matter – at least when it comes to playoffs and awarding trophies – you should want some change. Because this system isn’t rewarding winning. It’s rewarding losing, and losing big.

Every year, there seems to be a team that’s struggling to make the playoffs. But they’re not a .500 team, they’re an eight-win team.

In the last few years, we’ve had Manville in that situation and Spotswood. Sometimes they’ve been in, sometimes they’ve been out. This year it was an out again.

The Spotswood Chargers beat everyone they faced but one team, 6-2 Dayton, falling 20-19 back on the road back on October 10th. At the end of the game, they scored to pull within one. After a penalty, they went for two for the win, and were stopped short.

One yard, one point. One disappointing playoff season for a group of seniors who won’t have one. But are they giving up that spot to another 8-1 team? Or even a 5-4 squad?

Of course not. They’re giving it up to 3-5 Camden Eastside, which ended up tied with the Chargers for 16th place in the South Jersey Group 2 supersection, at 15.8 UPR. The first tiebreaker is head-to-head, and they didn’t play. Next is common opponents, and they had none.

So, it came down each team’s average OSI, the Opponent Strength Index. You take the rating of a team you played and get full value for a win and half for a loss. Eastside won that tiebreaker with a 3-5 record.

That’s right: 3-5. Three wins. They beat teams that were 7-4, 5-2, and 0-9. Not exactly playoff-worthy.

After starting the year 3-1, they lost their last four games through Cutoff Weekend. Not exactly a team on fire or playoff-ready.

Of those four teams, three ended up with seven wins and one had six. But show me the last time any sports league – college or pro – decided to have pity on a team with a hard schedule. Does Rutgers make the College Football Playoff at 4-8 just because they played Oregon and Ohio State?

Don’t even bother to utter the words, because you know the answer before I even named the teams. They don’t.

Camden Eastside had a tough schedule. Maybe even a brutal schedule. There’s no denying that. They may even be a better “team” “on paper” than Spotswood.

But there is denying this simple fact: they won the tiebreaker on their losses, not their wins.

Spotswood beat three five-win teams, a three-win, two two-win teams and a winless team. The opponents the Chargers beat had a total of 22 wins. The opponents Eastside beat had 12, almost half.

Camden Eastside got in on their losses. I repeat: On losses.

Oh, and let’s look at those losses: 45-6 at Kingsway, 27-0 to Pennsauken, 50-0 at Winslow, and 38-14 at Shawnee. A combined 160-20.

That’s what they got in on. Four losses by the sum total of 160 points to 20. Not even close, folks.

But here’s the best part, and why Camden Eastside should be upset, too. What if they were more competitive, played a lot closer, but only lost those games 25-6, 14-0, 20-0 and 38-24?

They actually would have missed the playoffs. Why? Because losing by a smaller margin would have decreased the value of their opponents, resulting in a lower SI, and they never would have made it.

And how would that be fair to Camden Eastside? They did themselves a favor by getting their doors blown off. Could they have been smart enough to know? If not, now they do.

And now the whole state does. If you’re going to lose, lose big. Blowouts help you.

So, if you’re OK with this system, say nothing. Enjoy the rest of the playoffs, you’ll forget about it in the winter, unless you live in Spotswood, Helmetta, or Milltown.

If not, someone print this and send it down to the ADs on the football committee in Robbinsville. Because enough is enough already. (We’re already testing a few ideas.)

The NJSIAA gives trophies for championships in 33 different sports. The champions are winners.

It needs to stop rewarding teams for losing.

The NJSIAA has released its public playoff pairings for the 2025 high school football postseason, and 25 Big Central teams made the dance. That’s down three from last year, when 28 teams made it.

Defending North 2, Group 4 champion Phillipsburg earned the overall top-seed in North Group 4, meaning if they repeat as champions, they’ll be home all the way through, except for a potential state final, which would be the Wednesday after Thanksgiving at Rutgers, just like last year. Bridgewater-Raritan took the top seed in North 2, Group 5.

Only five of 22 traditional GMC public schools qualified on what has been a down year in Middlesex County. Though all three had good regular seasons, only two of the three Woodbridge Township schools – Colonia and Woodbridge – qualified, while JFK (6-2) missed the postseason.

Last year, eight GMC schools made it.

Union County led the Big Central with ten of its 17 schools earning playoff berths, the same as last year.

Somerset County had eight of 13 – one more than a year ago – and the Hunterdon/Warren area had two, one in each county – Voorhees and Phillipsburg – out of seven schools in that combined area, after getting three in last season.

Here are the full pairings, as announced by the NJSIAA earlier Sunday via Gridiron New Jersey:

North 1, Group 5

• #8 Passaic at #1 West Orange
• #5 Ridgewood at #4 Livingston
• #6 Bloomfield at #3 East Orange
• #7 Morristown at #2 Passaic Tech

North 2, Group 5

• #8 Linden at #1 Bridgewater-Raritan
• #5 Irvington at #4 Union City
• #6 Bayonne at #3 Elizabeth
• #7 Plainfield at #2 Piscataway

Central Group 5

• #8 Howell at #1 Washington Twp.
• #5 Hillsborough at #4 Rancocas Valley
• #6 Freehold Twp. at #3 Old Bridge
• #7 Trenton at #2 Sayreville

South Group 5

• #8 Cherokee at #1 Atlantic City
• #5 Toms River North at #4 Cherry Hill East
• #6 Eastern at #3 Kingsway
• #7 Williamstown at #2 Southern

North 1, Group 4

• #8 Hackensack at #1 Ramapo
• #5 Chatham at #4 Wayne Valley
• #6 Nutley at #3 Mount Olive
• #7 Morris Knolls at #2 Northern Highlands

North 2, Group 4

• #8 Newark Central at #1 Phillipsburg
• #5 Colonia at #4 Ridge
• #6 Westfield at #3 Montgomery
• #7 Rahway at #2 Woodbridge

Central Group 4

• #8 Marlboro at #1 Brick Memorial
• #5 Steinert at #4 Red Bank
• #6 Middletown South at #3 Middletown North
• #7 Hamilton at #2 Manalapan

South Group 4

• #8 Cumberland at Winslow Twp.
• #5 Pennsauken at #4 Shawnee
• #6 Northern Burlington at #3 Central
• #7 Toms River East at #2 Millville

North 1, Group 3

• #8 River Dell at #1 Old Tappan
• #5 Montville at #4 West Milford
• #6 Pascack Valley at #3 Passaic Valley
• #7 Sparta at #2 Wayne Hills

North 2, Group 3

• #8 Snyder at #1 West Morris
• #5 Cranford at #4 Roxbury
• #6 Mendham at #3 West Essex
• #7 Warren Hills at #2 Summit

Central Group 3

• #8 Cinnaminson at #1 Holmdel
• #5 Neptune at #4 Hopewell Valley
• #6 Ewing at #3 Seneca
• #7 Matawan at #2 Somerville

South Group 3

• #8 Timber Creek at #1 Burlington Township
• #5 Ocean City at #4 Mainland
• #6 Delsea at #3 Pleasantville
• #7 Triton at #2 Cedar Creek

North 1, Group 2

• #8 Newton at #1 Westwood
• #5 Dumont at #4 Caldwell
• #6 High Point at #3 Ramsey
• #7 Waldwick at #2 Glen Rock

North 2, Group 2

• #8 Lyndhurst at #1 Shabazz
• #5 Hoboken at #4 Rutherford
• #6 Becton at #3 Hanover Park
• #7 Madison at #2 Bernards

Central Group 2

• #8 Voorhees at #1 Camden
• #5 Johnson at #4 Manasquan
• #6 Point Pleasant Boro at #3 Rumson-Fair Haven
• #7 Bordentown at #2 Wall

South Group 2

• #8 Willingboro at #1 Haddonfield
• #5 Gloucester City at #4 Lower Cape May
• #6 Overbrook at #3 Delran
• #7 Camden Eastside at #2 West Deptford

North 1, Group 1

• #8 Hawthorne at #1 Butler
• #5 Bogota at #4 New Milford
• #6 Kittatinny at #3 Wallkill Valley
• #7 Park Ridge at #2 Kinnelon

North 2, Group 1

• #8 Brearley at #1 Mountain Lakes
• #5 Glen Ridge at #4 Cedar Grove
• #6 Secaucus at #3 New Providence
• #7 Wood-Ridge at #2 Hasbrouck Heights

Central Group 1

• #8 Bound Brook at #1 Burlington City
• #5 Asbury Park at #4 Manville
• #6 Point Pleasant Beach at #3 Riverside
• #7 New Egypt at #2 Shore

South Group 1

• #8 Audubon at #1 Glassboro
• #5 Salem at #4 KIPP Cooper Norcross
• #6 Schalick at #3 Pennsville
• #7 Woodbury at #2 Paulsboro

When the NJSIAA high school football playoffs start next weekend, 25 teams from the 59-school Big Central Conference are expected to participate, with 14 of them starting at home, and two of them earning top seeds: Bridgewater-Raritan in North 2 Group 5, and defending North 2 Group 4 Phillipsburg.

Here’s a look at Central Jersey Sports Radio’s unofficial projected matchups, by section. The NJSIAA will release its seeding Sunday through Gridiron New Jersey. We’ll have a story here once that’s out, and the brackets become official as of noon Monday.

NORTH 2 GROUP 5

• #8 Linden at #1 Bridgewater-Raritan
• #7 Plainfield at #2 Piscataway
• #6 Bayonne at #3 Elizabeth

CENTRAL GROUP 5

• #7 Trenton at #2 Sayreville
• #6 Freehold Twp. at #3 Old Bridge
• #5 Hillsborough at #4 Rancocas Valley

NORTH 2 GROUP 4

• #8 Newark Central at #1 Phillipsburg
• #7 Rahway at #2 Woodbridge
• #6 Westfield at #3 Montgomery
• #5 Colonia at #4 Ridge

NORTH 2 GROUP 3

• #5 Cranford at #4 Roxbury
• #7 Warren Hills at #2 Summit

CENTRAL GROUP 3

• #7 Matawan at #2 Somerville

NORTH 2 GROUP 2

• #7 Madison at #2 Bernards

CENTRAL GROUP 2

• #8 Voorhees at #1 Camden
• #5 Johnson at #4 Manasquan

NORTH 2 GROUP 1

• #8 Brearley at #1 Mountain Lakes
• #6 Secaucus at #3 New Providence

CENTRAL GROUP 1

• #8 Bound Brook at #1 Burlington City
• #5 Asbury Park at #4 Manville

Here are Central Jersey Sports Radio’s projected playoff brackets for all four Group 1 public sections.

The NJSIAA will unveil the official brackets Sunday via Gridiron New Jersey. The brackets will become official at noon Monday.

Here are Central Jersey Sports Radio’s projected playoff brackets for all four Group 2 public sections.

The NJSIAA will unveil the official brackets Sunday via Gridiron New Jersey. The brackets will become official at noon Monday.

Here are Central Jersey Sports Radio’s projected playoff brackets for all four Group 3 public sections.

The NJSIAA will unveil the official brackets Sunday via Gridiron New Jersey. The brackets will become official at noon Monday.

Here are Central Jersey Sports Radio’s projected playoff brackets for all four Group 4 public sections.

The NJSIAA will unveil the official brackets Sunday via Gridiron New Jersey. The brackets will become official at noon Monday.