There's really no other way to say this: there are plenty of teams in the North Carolina High School Athletic Association playoffs that have no business being anywhere near a playoff game.
The NCHSAA expanded the playoffs this year, so there are now 64 teams in most sports. Those are divided into two 32-team brackets, one for the western part of the state, one for the eastern.
There is now a "half plus one" rule that dictates how many berths a conference gets. Take the North Piedmont Conference, one that contains five of the six Iredell County schools. Take the number of teams in that conference (8) and half it (4). Then you add one to get five playoff slots.
One additional playoff game means one more gate, and one more gate gives the NCHSAA another chance to line its pockets with its share of the proceeds.
No, the NCHSAA won't strike it rich solely because North Iredell soccer played a playoff game. But those extra games begin to add up when you consider it's for most sports, in two different brackets at four different competitive levels (1A-4A).
Take a look at the 1A West softball bracket. There are 32 teams, and the majority have losing records. Robbinsville made the wild card at 2-17. Avery County is 1-15-1. Thomasville is 1-22!
And they earned a wild card how, exactly?
Not only are the playoffs diluted, but I honestly think it's unfair to the students on those 1-22 teams.
Going 1-22 is hard to do - you have to be really bad. After a miserable season, the last thing those kids probably want to do is take a long bus ride to Polk County, knowing they are probably going to lose 16-0 in five innings.
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2 comments:
Why is there such a disparity in the number of games played? Some teams in the tourney have only played 13, others as many as 27.
Just curious.
Maybe the 1-22 team just played too many day games.
Enjoying the blog, great topics!
D. Kingman
Mr Kingman,
Teams have a certain number of games they are allowed to play. I think 26 or 27 is the maximum, so most programs take advantage and schedule a lot of out-of-conference games.
Then there are some teams who only play their conference slate, which can be as a few as 12 or 13 games a year.
I'm not sure why most teams don't load up with non-conference foes. The playoffs only take into account conference record. You can go 0-14 in non-conference, but still get the conference's No. 1 seed based on your conference record.
Tiebreakers don't look at the overall record either, so it seems it would be very smart to play as many games as possible out of conference to prepare for the conference slate.
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