We all know the playoff setup for Louisiana high school football has been a joke, continues to be a joke and will be a joke in the future until somebody(s) stop joking around.
The non-joke tellers will point to the outlandish number of teams that qualify for the playoff in the EIGHT divisions that comprise the playoff structure. Even though the top teams have byes in the opening round, it continues to produce scores such as 62-12, 56-0 and 58-0.
Spare us all how it’s an honor just to make it to the post-season or what a lifetime thrill it is to get a chance in a win-or-go-home format.
Almost all of the teams should have just stayed home in the first place. By the way, if there weren’t so many illegalities involved, you could inject quite a few of the participants with sodium pentothal (truth serum) and they’d tell you that it’s no fun to practice for a week, drive across the state and get beat by 40.
In the first half.
Yes, there will be some under-seeded team that provides the counter argument, but not only is it mostly Chalk City for the higher seeds, it’s often a borderline embarrassment that admission is charged to watch this abomination.
You can blame the split (select/non-select) all you want for the first-round carnage, but the real problem comes in the second round, when you would think things would start to even out a little bit.
Until you see scores such as 56-7, 54-7 and 49-7, as was the case last week – and that was just in one of the brackets.
You might want to hang on to your hat for this little nugget –
More than half the second-round playoff games were decided by a margin of victory of at least 20 points. Of those 34 games, an amazing 22 of them were by at least 30 points.
And trust me, you don’t want to know the scores of some of those that were even worse than that.
Sure, some of the games were down-to-wire nail-biters, but more than half?
This is where the split really comes into play. There’s no way that there should be this many second-round mismatches. But you get those because there simply isn’t enough depth in the quality of teams after the first round.
You would have that depth, however, if there weren’t a split and there were only five divisions/classifications. Not to mention a whole lot less confusing.
Work with me here …
This is just a generality, but most observers would tell you that there are about eight teams in each bracket that meet the benchmark of being a team that is not only worthy of being in the playoffs but winning a game of two. These teams not all ordering championship rings in advance, but the coaches on the other sideline know better than to take them lightly.
Round numbers here, but with eight teams and eight divisions, that’s 64 teams, spread out in all shapes and sizes. That’s Catholic-Baton Rouge and Catholic-New Iberia. Southside and South Plaquemines.
Now take those 72 teams and reclassify them into five, pre-split classifications (just like the good ‘ol days!). Instead of 72 teams playing in the quarterfinals this week, you’d only have 40. That means 32 teams — who are good enough to be in the quarterfinals right now – would have turned in their equipment earlier this week.
Now imagine how good the second-round games would have been.
As it is right now, most of the top teams in each class don’t even break a sweat in the first two weeks of the playoffs.
The numbers don’t lie: In six of the eight brackets, at least seven of the top eight seeds have advanced. In three of the ones that didn’t, it was a No. 9 seed that did, which is hardly an upset.
In Select Division II, all eight advanced, which almost everyone would have predicted when the brackets first came out.
There will always be blowouts in the playoffs, no matter how brackets get arranged. But there were 12 teams that made the playoffs this year that won three games or fewer in the regular season. What a thrill that must have been for 1-8 Bogalusa to make the three-hour trek over to Erath and lose 56-0.
But this year isn’t any different than previous years. If it’s not Bogalusa next year, it will be somebody else doing this same sordid dance.
The idea that this might all get changed, however, may be the biggest joke of all.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com