Fair point. 32 teams instead of 18 is a big difference. I do bet that they could do a better job than the current system. 9-0 and 8-1 teams would not be as over seeded and some 6-3/7-2 would not be under seeded. MC and LA compared to Whitney Young, Glenbard East and a few others wouldn’t happen.
Yeah, that's 32 teams across the entire state rather than 18 teams in one section of the state.
Yes, I agree that a better system would help avoid what we saw at ISU, with 7 of the 8 games being 20-plus point spreads.
I am surprised that there isn't movement in the IHSA to put together a state-wide committee that would pay attention to statewide football all season and on Saturday/Sunday would put together the top 4 seeds in each class regardless of won-loss record. Those four would be placed in the. bracket with 1-4 in one half and 2-3 in the other. The other 28 teams in the class could then be ranked based on the current system.
That would keep a Chicago Public League team with a 9-0 record from being a No. 1 seed and would keep Loyola from being a 12 seed and Mt. Carmel a 19 seed, and Montini a 9 seed, etc.
The problem is how to put together a committee that's committed to becoming educated on an entire state of football for 9 weeks in the fall.
The NCAA does it with the college playoff system and ranks teams. But at the college level, they can watch tapes of the top teams in action each week and then rank them on Tuesday evening on TV.
In Illinois prep football, how do you do that? You don't know who is in what class until late Saturday afternoon after Week 9 of the season.
I mean, a blind person could rank Mt. Carmel as No. 1 in the 7A class, but what if after nine weeks, it turned out they wound up in 8A with Lincoln-Way East and Loyola (yes, that's coming next year, I know). A committee can't correctly rank the top four teams until they know what class all 256 teams are in.
It's a tough situation. There's the Saturday night pairings show that would not happen on Saturday night. Are you going to pay committee members to do all the work necessary to correctly rank the top four teams in each of 8 classes? There are a ton of issues, and just using the current system of seeding teams isn't going to solve a thing by just seeding 1-32. We had seeds 12 and 14 playing for the 8A title on Saturday in a 21-point game, and we had seeds 4 and 19 playing for the 7A title in a another 21-point game.
I think one area about Illinois prep football that's really changed in recent years is that the elite-level programs are now actively seeking out what could be called "potential loss" games during the nonconference portion of the schedule rather than facing the nearest school not in the same league.
As a result, we're getting top programs — top-4 seed calibre programs — landing in the middle of the seeding pack due to nonconference losses against really good competition. I mean, Loyola played East St. Louis and one of the teams had to lose.
Chicago Kenwood opened its season with St. Francis of Wheaton and Nazareth Academy.
Maine South opened with Lincoln-Way East and Warren.
A lof of these top-level programs have correctly determined that playing really good teams and learning while losing is way better than going 9-0 and being semi-untested heading into the playoffs. These top teams know they can get to 5 wins, and obviously believe that 5 wins and experience against powerhouse teams is better than 7-8-9 wins against middlin' competition.
