After covering a full, mostly normal year of sports in western North Carolina, I feel like I have a good handle on how sports run in this part of the state. Last week, I made two suggestions on how to improve things locally. Today, I’m back with two more changes that will help statewide.
As I wrote in last week’s column, this is not going to be a treatise on what to do with charter and private schools.
Make playoff draw deadline consistent
This is a small ask and would be a big help for 1A schools. In football, basketball and soccer, teams had at least two days in between the playoff draw and the first round game. With North Carolina only having east or west regions, 1A teams especially may have to travel long distances to games.
More time allows teams with long trips to coordinate travel, which is more complicated than just getting on a school bus to go play. Teams tend to stop multiple times on long trips, in some cases going through walkthroughs or getting in a quick practice if possible. With more days in advance, that’s easier.
That’s what made the baseball and softball playoff reveal so frustrating. The draw was announced on a Monday, with the first round scheduled for the next day.
That put Andrews softball in quite a scramble, as the Lady Wildcats were originally projected to miss the field but were given the
No. 32 seed and a 261-mile trip to South Stanly after a team ahead of them in the RPI rankings dropped out. They were able to get ready in less than 24 hours, though it wasn’t an ideal situation.
With the RPI rankings being updated daily starting at the halfway point of each season, it’s easy to figure out what the bracket will look like as the end of the regular season nears. But the final draw can change if teams opt out or are disqualified from playing in the post-season.
There’s usually a few days between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs in North Carolina, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the bracket. Just giving teams a few days notice will allow everyone involved to be in the best position possible to perform, especially those with long bus rides.
Reduce size of football playoffs
Before moving to North Carolina, I had no idea how inconsistent playoff selection was in the state.
The MaxPreps rankings were hidden behind a shroud of mystery. Teams on the East-West border didn’t know what region they’d be in depending on the sport. In football, teams could be 1A next year and 1AA the next year.
Things look to be stable for the next few years, though it could be made better at the 1A level. There are 32 teams selected in both the east and west brackets, though in 1A there just weren’t enough teams to fill it.
Only 31 teams in the 1A East played football last fall, and 27 participated in the playoffs. In the 1A West, 34 teams played and 31 participated in the playoffs.
That led to some incredibly lopsided 1A first-round games, which were decided by an average of 36.2 points per games – six points higher than the average in 2A, almost 15 points higher than 3A and 12 points higher than 4A. There was only one upset in the round, compared to four in 2A, seven in 3A and nine in 4A.
It doesn’t make sense to have a 64-team playoff with only 65 total teams playing a sport. Classes 2A through 4A all had at least 99 teams, so the worst teams aren’t sniffing the postseason. That’s not happening in 1A.
Here’s a potential solution. For the state playoffs, teams that win their conference or are a top three, .500 or better team in a split 1A/2A conference get seeded above the rest of the field. To reduce the 1A field, those teams would now get a first-round bye.
It’s an even bigger reward for winning the conference, as a blowout first-round game turns into a chance to rest and get healthy before making a potential playoff run. It could make the last week bigger for teams at the top and bottom of the bracket, as some teams will be fighting for the bye, while others will be fighting to get in the field.
It could mean changing the number of teams in the field each year as well, since 1A/2A conferences aren’t guaranteed a team in the top seeds each year. It won’t get rid of all the blowouts, but it will at least raise the bar needed to make the playoffs.
Justin Fitzgerald is sports writer for the Cherokee Scout. Call him at 837-5122 or email sports@cherokeescout.com.