Most veterans of this football board are aware of my annual rant about playoff mismatches. For those of you who are new to the board, suffice it to say that I feel that the playoff classification system is flawed in that the competitive level from top to bottom in each class is too wide, and that produces too many mismatches. No, I do not have a better system to propose in its place. @stonedlizard does, though.
The following data pertains to the 128 first round football playoff games recently completed. The numbers in brackets reflect similar data from 2022, 2021, 2017, and 2016, respectively.
There were 52 [54, 56, 52, 52] games decided by margins of 30 points or greater. A total of 33 [36, 33, 32, 31] games finished with margins of 40 points or greater. An additional 59, [54, 38, 15, 20] teams scored fewer than 10 points.
Of 128 first round games, 17% [17%, 22%, 15%, 12%] were shutouts of any margin.
This year's numbers all look to be pretty similar to previous years with one exception. The 59 teams scoring fewer than 10 points is interesting. One might have thought that last year's 54 teams were an aberration to previous years. Now it looks like mid/hi-50s is the new normal. Sixty something if the upward trend continues next year.
Right now, I guarantee that a handful of you Einsteins out there are thinking something along the lines of, "But don't CPS schools contribute to way more than their fair share of these mismatches?" Yes, they do. So what? They are members of the IHSA, and it's not their fault that they are mismatched. Rather, it's the classification system's fault, and that's my point. And, for the record, it's not just CPS schools being blown out, and neither is it just private schools blowing out public schools.
The end.
Let the debate begin.
The following data pertains to the 128 first round football playoff games recently completed. The numbers in brackets reflect similar data from 2022, 2021, 2017, and 2016, respectively.
There were 52 [54, 56, 52, 52] games decided by margins of 30 points or greater. A total of 33 [36, 33, 32, 31] games finished with margins of 40 points or greater. An additional 59, [54, 38, 15, 20] teams scored fewer than 10 points.
Of 128 first round games, 17% [17%, 22%, 15%, 12%] were shutouts of any margin.
This year's numbers all look to be pretty similar to previous years with one exception. The 59 teams scoring fewer than 10 points is interesting. One might have thought that last year's 54 teams were an aberration to previous years. Now it looks like mid/hi-50s is the new normal. Sixty something if the upward trend continues next year.
Right now, I guarantee that a handful of you Einsteins out there are thinking something along the lines of, "But don't CPS schools contribute to way more than their fair share of these mismatches?" Yes, they do. So what? They are members of the IHSA, and it's not their fault that they are mismatched. Rather, it's the classification system's fault, and that's my point. And, for the record, it's not just CPS schools being blown out, and neither is it just private schools blowing out public schools.
The end.
Let the debate begin.
Last edited: