For those of you who think that no playoff blowout is bad or that all teams should make the playoffs...
10-0 vs 1-9 playoff game
10-0 vs 1-9 playoff game
104-0
- Thread starter ramblinman
- Start date
I never understand this. If the clock is running in the second half, you are only running fullback dives once you are up 50-60. And then beyond that, the clock is running and the officials will surely look the other way as you use up 50-60 seconds on the play clock between each play. There are only 24 minutes of the second half with the clock running.
Unless the losing team is Bad News Bearsing it and literally fumbling the ball into scoop and scores for the defense, it should never get to that if the winning coaching staff has any knowledge of how to run out a clock.
Unless the losing team is Bad News Bearsing it and literally fumbling the ball into scoop and scores for the defense, it should never get to that if the winning coaching staff has any knowledge of how to run out a clock.
It was 84-0 at halftime. Says a lot about the coach.
Nobody has argued that blowouts are good. What keeps being stated is that blowouts are inevitable (insert Thanos pic here).
Again, in the quarterfinals this weekend, 22 out of 32 games were at least 3 score difference. That's with the 2 "worst" records being 6-5 Naz and 7-4 Providence (they both won). Everyone else was at least 8-3.
IMO, no matter the score (and esp in the playoffs) you have to give your team atleast 1 half of playing football. They obviously let off the gas in the 2nd half. And if the other team was like Normal West, for example, and came out throwing a bunch and got picked off a few times, its pretty easy to put up 100 points.
This team that lost was 1-9 going into the playoffs.
Blowouts are inevitable, but admitting EVERYONE into the state playoffs is stupid and frankly irresponsible.
I cannot think of ONE LEAGUE that does this besides a handful of states including VA. Not Pop Warner, not college, no pro leagues, etc.
Just add one week to the reg season and cut this thing by a round, sheesh!!
Blowouts are inevitable, but admitting EVERYONE into the state playoffs is stupid and frankly irresponsible.
I cannot think of ONE LEAGUE that does this besides a handful of states including VA. Not Pop Warner, not college, no pro leagues, etc.
Just add one week to the reg season and cut this thing by a round, sheesh!!
But people have argued that they have no limit on their tolerance for blowouts.
No surprise there. All that does is further prove my point that enrollment is a crappy indicator of competitive level. You know damn well that ESL could be winning quarterfinals or better in 7A, Montini in 4A, Le-Win in 2A, etc.
What is the motivation behind eliminating or reducing the number of blowouts in the playoffs?
I'm not trying to eliminate them, but what is the motivation to keep the same number of them if we could reduce them with a new classification system?
Again, if reducing them with a new classification system is a stated goal, whats the motivation for that? If we really wanted to reduce the number of blowouts, why not just pick the top 2 teams in each class after week 9 and let them play. That system would have, at most, only 8 blowouts for the entire playoffs!
It was 14-0 12 seconds in. 56-0 at the end of the first quarter.
Before we talk about districts, this is an example in Virginia why districts are a very bad idea.
Before we talk about districts, this is an example in Virginia why districts are a very bad idea.
Surely this is more of an issue of letting every team into the playoffs and not districts themselves?
Jamestown (the team that got blown out) finished dead last in their district. Three of the top four teams in that district are alive and well in the playoffs and dishing out blowouts of their own.
The motivation is to create more competitively balanced classes top to bottom. The by-product of that is going to be fewer blowouts.
So why not propose adopting the old BCS format in high school and picking the top 2 ranked teams in each class and have them compete for the state title. The number of blowouts would decrease dramatically, and immediately.
Maybe the more important questions are how many blowouts are too many? And at what point in the playoffs would you consider a blowout victory unacceptable? 1st or 2nd rd? We had more than half of the state championship games last year decided by 3 scores or more.
Again, I'm not thinking we can eliminate blowouts.
Can we lessen them? You betcha.
Imagine for a second if you could identify the top 18 teams from 8A, the top 9 teams from 7A and the top 5 teams from 6A and create a new 8A with them. Would that eliminate the blowouts? No. Would it lessen their number and decrease their margins of victory? Probably. Would it improve the competitive balance top to bottom in that class? Absolutely.
Because that isn't a reasonable solution and I suspect you know that.
I think what we have now are too many. There are others on this board that have flat out admitted that no number of blowouts is too many for them.
I don't think it matters when. What matters is that the way that the classes are classified now according to enrollment is a crappy way to create competitively balanced classes.
State champions are state champions for a reason. They are true outliers. I'm talking about the overall number of blowouts that could be lessened substantially if the classes were more competitively balanced.
By doing that, you are essentially invalidating state championships from teams like L-W, Rochester, JCA, IC, etc. I don't think that would be ideal for HS football.
Why is it unreasonable? Because too few teams would have the opportunity to compete for a championship??
I tend to agree.
Slightly different argument there.
Again, what number are you trying to get to? You keep saying "too many" but what is too many and when should this competitive balance kick in where a blowout past a certain round should essentially be eliminated.
Because if entering the playoffs, you tell the entire state that we are taking the best 32 teams and placing them in their own bracket, you are telling everyone else they are playing in the Idaho Potato Bowl while the FBS playoffs are going on.
I don’t necessarily think that a 3 score differential is a blowout. Obviously, it’s technically 17 points. You can have many one score games going into the 4th that end up 3,score games with the backbreaker score and the insurance score to take the quick score-onside kick out of the equation.
That's another cog in this whole "reduce blowouts" discussion.
Morgan Park lost by more than 3 TDs (23 pts) to Franny. I didn't watch the whole game, but I really don't think it was a "blowout" from what I saw. I'm sure MP is disappointed, but I highly doubt they feel like they didn't belong on the field with Franny or that it was an unfair matchup (although they may have had some issues with the PA operator).
Like Jha618, I'm of the opinion that the organizing metrics of the playoffs have to be rooted in something tangible to make it meaningful. If Loyola wins, they get to say they are the best team in the state larger than 2,300 kids. If Byron wins, they get to say they are the best team in the state between 400-550 kids. You're the king of YOUR hill. I realize multipliers fudge this a bit, but this is still what "4A Champion" means to most.
I don't think the kids from Danville HS want to be treated with kid gloves or moved to a different conference because they lost by 45 to Washington. They fought hard to play in the 6A playoffs, their classification, they took their shot, and they didn't cut it. The kids from Washington didn't lose out on any great opportunity, they showcased their talent on moved on to the next round.
I understand that, but had to use something. I’m sure there are also many games where the losing team scored a late garbage time TD to get it to under 17 points too.
Of the goal was to win by 100, I'm sure they could have scored more before the last play of the game. 🤷
I think that has already been explained by another poster. I dont think you have elaborated on how you are going to explain to the other 224 playoff participants, and the 7 other state champions that they are no longer needed and their state titles have been effectively reduced to consolation prizes.
Go back and read my annual rant. What we have now in the first round is too many. What we see in subesequent rounds is too many.
My God, man, what do you and others have against more competitive playoff games?
I understand your point, but I don't agree with it.
Explain it to them that they aren't good enough to be the best. Don't sugar coat it. It's a good life lesson. Kids are separated by competitive level in athletics ALL THE TIME! Why should high school football be any different? Do we separate them by enrollment because we are too afraid of having that life lesson conversation with them?
I was on the C team in little league baseball and I had a ball. Made the C league all-star team, such as it was, and I was a happy camper. All of my three kids played club soccer and there were probably two or three levels of increasingly better competition above where they played and one or two below. They had a blast playing club soccer. Feeling like they were reduced to playing for a consolation prize was the farthest thing from their minds.
There's something that never really gets brought up during this annual conundrum.
The entire point of a playoff/championship format is to determine who the best team in a particular bracket is. The goal of a tournament is not to have competitive games throughout the entire tournament, the goal is to have the best two teams still standing at the end. Seed everybody 1-32, that's the best we can do, and be done with it. Change just for the sake of change rarely improves things.
The only real format for just having competitive games would be hand picked bowl games, old FBS style. Which would be boring.
And in your idea of playoff nirvana, we all pretend that the champs of the smallest classes are world beaters, even though everyone knows the largest classes are stronger. By compiling classes based on enrollment, we silently pretend that the smallest classes are actually something other than the weakest classes relative to the larger classes when, in fact, that is simply not the case. And, the price we pay for buying into that pretense is playoff blowouts.
How many times are you going to reference "too many" before you actually tell everyone what that actually means. Number of games, % of games played? I feel like that is a very easy and straightforward question to answer for someone who has disdain for blowouts.
I have nothing against more competition, but i dont think every round of the playoffs need to be void of blowouts.
No one has ever, that i have seen, tried to claim L-W or Byron is as good as Loyola or LWE. But they all deserve to be able to compete for a state championship and it is non-sensical to try and push for a system where L-W is forced to play Loyola in a playoff game.
I will tell you later as I am in an uber heading to the airport and don't have the time to research my former rant posts and give you the answer that you can't seem to do without.
Nope. I want my answer to be precise and data driven.
For the bazillionth time, neither do I. That method of arguing you just used is especially irksome since I have NEVER claimed I want blowout free playoffs, and I have stated that I realize that is unattainable on numerous occasions.
Hey man, you are the one on the rants about too many blowouts. Seems like common sense to me that the one complaining about the blowout would atleast be able to expand on that number a little bit more than you have.
The only thing you have claimed is that there are "too many" blowouts. No one knows what that means except you.
