By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
Back when he was an assistant coach, Airline’s Justin Scogin spent about as much time with a calculator as he did with a whistle during this time of year.
When it gets to the final weeks of the regular season, high school coaches start getting anxious about their playoff fate and with Louisiana’s power point system, you need somebody who can crunch numbers as well as diagram plays.
At least for a couple of weeks.
“When I was an assistant at Parkway, I’d have the Excel spreadsheet all laid out and have about 16 tabs open,” says Scogin. “About three or four weeks out, I could predict who we were going to play. I was always pretty close when it was all done.”
Now that he’s a head coach? “I haven’t broken down one single number,” he says. “I’m too busy.”
So much for that advanced degree in mathematics for Scogin.
The good news these days is that websites – particularly GeauxPreps.com – have become the central location for the latest numbers and the power ratings are updated several times a day. (The LHSAA, which is ultimately the official source, updates its power ratings once a week.)
But no matter how many numbers are crunched, the sad truth is that the result of a game in West Feliciana Parish in Week 10 could determine the playoff fate of a Shreveport-Bossier team. A tenth of a point here or there — basically the difference in a win or a loss — could be what determines the playoff journey for teams across the state.
What it really comes down to for high school football teams is one of three questions:
(1) Will we get in the playoffs?
(2) Will we have a home playoff game?
(3) Will we have a first-round bye?
At this point, nothing is a certainty. Just when you think you know, you don’t.
“When we lost to North DeSoto last week, I was sure we would fall a few spots,” Huntington coach Stephen Dennis says. “And we stayed right where we were. Who knows?”
The current playoff system is more than 20 years old and while it may not be perfect, it beats the previous system of teams being slotted by their district finish and then being matched up regionally. (The current system could have a school playing a school three miles away or 300 miles away in the first round.)
The power point system is the best thing that’s ever happened for local Class 5A schools, who often ran into the “Monroe roadblock” in the first round.
“When I was at Airline in 1998 (the last year before the power point system), we were 10-0 in the regular season,” says current Loyola coach Mike Greene. “And we had to go play Ruston in the first round. They were in the district with West Monroe and Neville, so they were a wild card. We lost by a field goal and they ended up playing for the state championship.”
These days, a 10-0 team like that would probably not even be playing in the first round.
“We look at it a lot because we want to get a home game,” said Calvary’s Rodney Guin. “That’s a big deal. There are so many factors involved, but we do want to keep up so that we can be in the top eight.”
Guin is referencing a new factor involved this year – the first-round bye. The latest tweak to the system has 24 teams making the playoffs from each bracket of the Select divisions. In the non-Select divisions, 28 teams will make it. That means the top eight will get a first-round bye in Select and four in non-Select.
Previously, 32 teams in each bracket would qualify, which often created some first-round matchups so lopsided that they were unwatchable.
“Honestly, though,” says Guin, “I’d rather play a game than have a bye.”
Here’s how the locals stand in their respective brackets (there are eight overall) with two weeks to go:
THINKING BYE: Byrd (7), Northwood (9), Calvary (5), North Caddo (7)
THINKING HOME PLAYOFF GAME: Airline (8), Parkway (13), Benton (15), Huntington (11), Captain Shreve (16), Evangel (14), Loyola (10), Green Oaks (18)
SWEATING OUT GETTING IN: Haughton (24), Woodlawn (25)
“Really, you can come pretty close at this point in the season in knowing what’s going to happen,” Greene says. “You can actually start exchanging film with two or three (potential playoff) teams before the brackets even come out.”
Contact by JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com