Inside Selection Sunday: Mapnalysis '16
October 24, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
There was a wheel and something that looked like a magic wand. Another started out looking like the head of a caterpillar.
A number of Michigan football teams realized their sky-high dreams with Sunday’s playoff selection announcement on Fox Sports Detroit.
But earlier that day, as is the case at the end of each fall, shaping this season’s tournament at times looked a little like finding pictures in the clouds.
Beginning last night and into this morning, MHSAA staff have been busily gathering game days and times for this weekend’s opening round. We’re assigning officials for those contests. Schools are preparing for what likely will be one of their biggest crowds of the season. And, of course, teams are preparing for what surely will be one of their most memorable games.
But before all of that could begin, we met Sunday morning with nine maps of Michigan and 272 dots that needed to be organized to set another playoffs in motion.
As we’ve done the past five seasons, we’ll explain our most difficult decisions in this Mapnalysis 2016 breakdown of how we paired 272 teams that will play next month for championships across nine divisions. For those familiar with our playoff selection process, or who have read this report in the past and don’t want a refresher on how we do what we do, skip the next section and go directly to the “Observations & Answers: 2016.” For the rest, what follows is an explanation of how we selected the playoff pairings during the morning hours Sunday, followed by how we made some of the toughest decisions and a few thoughts on the breakdown of the field.
Ground Rules
Our past: The MHSAA 11-player playoff structure – with 256 teams in eight divisions, and six wins equaling an automatic berth (or five wins for teams playing eight or fewer games) – debuted in 1999. An 8-player tournament was added in 2011, resulting in nine champions total each season.
The first playoffs were conducted in 1975 with four champions. Four more football classes were added in 1990 for a total of eight champions each fall. Through 1998, only 128 teams made the postseason, based on their playoff point averages within regions (four for each class) that were drawn before the beginning of the season. The drawing of Districts and Regionals after the end of the regular season did not begin until the most recent playoff expansion.
In early years of the current process, lines were drawn by hand. Dots representing qualifying schools were pasted on maps, one map for each division, and those maps were then covered by plastic sheets. Districts and Regionals literally were drawn with dry-erase markers.
Our present: After a late Saturday night tracking scores, we file in as the sun rises Sunday morning for a final round of gathering results we may still need (which can include making a few early a.m. calls to athletic directors). Re-checking and triple-checking of enrollments, what schools played in co-ops and opted to play as a higher class start a week in advance, and more numbers are crunched Sunday morning as the fields are set.
This season, there were 218 automatic qualifiers by win total – only two more than the record low set a year ago – with the final 38 at-large qualifiers then selected, by playoff-point average, one from each class in order (A, B, C, D) until the field was filled. For the second consecutive season there were only four Class D additional qualifiers with 5-4 or 4-4 (playing eight games) records from which we could choose – so after those four we added 12 teams from Class A and 11 each from Class B and Class C.
Those 256 11-player teams are then split into eight equal divisions based on enrollment, and their locations are marked on digital maps that are projected on wall-size screens and then discussed by nearly half of the MHSAA staff plus a representative from the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association. Only the locations themselves are marked (by yellow dots) – not records, playoff point averages or names of the schools or towns. In fact, mentions of those are strictly prohibited. Records and playoff points are not part of the criteria. Matchups, rivalries, previous playoff pairings, etc. also DO NOT come into play.
The same process is followed for organizing the 8-player bracket, with the difference that the 16 teams are selected purely on playoff-point average.
Geography rules: This long has been rule number one for drawing MHSAA brackets in any sport. Travel distance and ease DO come into play. Jumping on a major highway clearly is easier than driving across county-wide back roads, and that’s taken into consideration. Also, remember there’s only one Mackinac Bridge and hence only one way to cross between peninsulas – and boats are not considered a possible form of transportation. When opponents from both peninsulas will be in the same District, distance to the bridge is far more important than as the bird flies.
Tradition doesn’t reign: Every group of 32 dots is a new group – these 32 teams have not been placed in a bracket together before. How maps have been drawn in the past isn’t considered – it’s hard to say a division has been drawn in a certain way traditionally when this set of 32 teams is making up a division for the first time.
Observations & Answers: 2016
First things, first: Congratulations to five first-time playoff qualifiers – Bloomfield Hills, Detroit Delta Prep, Southfield Arts & Technology, Southfield Bradford and Wyoming Tri-unity Christian. Bloomfield Hills (Lahser and Andover) and Southfield Arts & Technology (Southfield and Southfield-Lathrup) were created by mergers of previous schools. Southfield A&T and Detroit Delta Prep are eligible for tournament play this season for the first time. Bradford and Tri-unity Christian both started programs during the latter half of the 2000s; Tri-unity qualified in 8-player after moving back to that format from 11-player this fall. Of 617 varsity football programs that played games this season (including five not eligible for the playoffs as either a first-year program or with an enrollment too high for 8-player), all but 18 have made the playoffs at least once going back to the first series in 1975.
Tie it up: We had a few ties in a few ways this season. In two situations, we had multiple teams with the same enrollment at a line between divisions. In those cases, the teams with the higher playoff point averages go to the larger divisions – so Ferndale went to Division 2 and East Lansing to Division 3 to settle one tie, and Lansing Sexton went to Division 4 and Dowagiac to Division 5 to settle the other. The additional tie came in 8-player football, with Portland St. Patrick and Wyoming Tri-unity Christian both having the same playoff point average, the same opponents’ winning percentage and drawn into the same District. A coin flip was used to determine St. Patrick as the top seed and home team both this week and next if it advances and plays the Defenders.
Local really is the rule: Division 3 provided us with a fine example to help show that we work to draw maps locally and beginning with the earliest rounds. There were at least three ways to separate the schools in Region 3 District 1: East Lansing, DeWitt, Fowlerville and Mason. DeWitt, as the westernmost of the group, could’ve been drawn southwest with R2D2’s Vicksburg, Battle Creek Harper Creek and Coldwater, replacing Chelsea. Doing so would’ve literally split the state’s regions down the middle along U.S. 127, which is a favorable picture. But protocol is to favor local matchups at the earliest rounds, and it just didn’t make sense to take DeWitt away from three schools mere minutes away when subbing it in for Chelsea would’ve created a wash in terms of travel for the other three teams in R2D2.
Sometimes, there’s no choice: But keeping a group of four local teams together often is impossible. Remember, 32 dots usually are spread out at least all over the Lower Peninsula. In Division 4, we had Grand Rapids Catholic Central, Wyoming Godwin Heights, Wyoming Kelloggsville and Grand Rapids South Christian stacked nicely along U.S. 131 – but had to send southernmost South Christian down with Benton Harbor, Three Rivers and Hudsonville Unity Christian because there was no other grouping for Allendale, which is about 20 miles west of Grand Rapids. Another incident of splitting up near-neighbors happened in Division 2; we had Lowell and Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central next door to each other, but no other Grand Rapids area teams qualify. By only a few miles, Forest Hills Central is south of Lowell – so although the Rangers had shorter drives than Lowell to possible opponents both north and south, they went into a group with Portage Northern, Portage Central and Battle Creek Lakeview, and Lowell went north to join Greenville, Traverse City West and Traverse City Central.
Why coast to coast: It wasn’t lost on the committee that teams waking up looking at Lake Huron traveling to play on Lake Michigan isn’t the greatest scenario. But it was the best of the options, and we stayed consistent by setting up a possible two District trips across the Lower Peninsula. Tawas will journey to Maple City Glen Lake in Division 6 this week. With wins this week, Lincoln Alcona could end up heading to Frankfort for a Division 8 District Final. Those trips aren’t ideal, but they did allow us to keep northern Lower Peninsula teams together – and in reality, aren’t too different than when teams from the Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula match up the first week, as will be the case in Division 4 (Whitehall to Escanaba), Division 5 (Kalkaska to Menominee and Grayling to Kingsford), Division 6 (Charlevoix to Negaunee and Boyne City to Calumet) and Division 8 (Gaylord St. Mary to Newberry).
It’s just the math: The one unexpected oddity of this week’s matchups is Canton going back to Northville for the second week in a row, and after beating Northville 42-27 last week. But math does rule, and Northville does have a higher playoff point average despite that Week 9 loss; the Mustangs beat five teams that finished with winning records, while Canton beat three – which of course is no fault of the Chiefs. It's just the way – rarely – things work out.
At the end of the day …
In six years of being part of these discussions, this weekend’s at least seemed to be the most extensive. We had two and three versions of multiple divisions before deciding which we believed to be the best.
Only one division map – 8-player – was an absolute slam dunk. The rest received plenty of scrutiny from a committee that now includes veterans going back to the beginning but also has had some new eyes join in over the last couple of years. That variety of viewpoints certainly pays off.
And wow, did we fall into some incredible first-week matchups:
• Rockford and Hudsonville in a rematch of the Ottawa-Kent Conference Red-deciding game of Week 9 (a Hudsonville 14-7 win).
• Traverse City West vs. Traverse City Central for the first time in playoff history (Central won 10-8 in Week 3).
• Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood at Detroit Country Day in a homecoming for longtime Yellowjackets coach Joe D’Angelo.
• Constantine at Schoolcraft in a matchup of longtime southwestern rivals (Schoolcraft won 20-10 in Week 8).
• Cedarville at Engadine in arguably the most intriguing of three all-U.P. 8-player matchups (Engadine won 52-42 in Week 7).
Truly, at the end of November, the best teams will have to beat the rest to finish as champions – regardless of maps, matchups, weather and anything else that won’t really factor into what eventually is settled on the field.
For many high school sports fans, it’s the favorite time of year. Join us now as we prepare for kickoff.
The MHSAA Football Playoffs are sponsored by the Michigan National Guard.
PHOTOS: (Top) The Division 1 bracket mapped out on the Lower Peninsula. (Middle) The Division 3 map keeps four mid-Michigan teams together.
Inside Selection Sunday: Mapnalysis '19
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
October 27, 2019
This will be the final MHSAA Football Playoffs under the format created in 1999, with significant changes coming beginning with the 2020 season.
But the soon-to-be old way isn’t going out without a bang.
From a record number of additional qualifiers, to a first-ever coin flip to determine the final team in the 11-player field, to a series of maps that arguably included the toughest to draw at least this decade, this year’s “Selection Sunday” was jammed with notable moments that will play out in 10 divisions over the next five weeks.
Below, we explain how we made many of the most difficult decisions – and follow with a few points of interest that immediately jump out from this season’s brackets.
This process actually begins in April, when we start collecting schedules for the upcoming season – this time for 607 teams, from which 531 ended up eligible for the 11-player playoffs and 71 were eligible in 8-player. And of course, now that the brackets are drawn the major lifting begins – assigning officials for every game, gathering potential Semifinal sites in 11-player and working with our Finals hosts to again create once-in-a-lifetime experiences (for most) when our 8-player finalists face off Nov. 23 at Northern Michigan University’s Superior Dome and our 11-player finalists play for titles Nov. 29-30 at Ford Field.
So let’s dive in. Those familiar with this “Selection Sunday” recap will recognize first a refresher on the playoff selection process, followed by “Observations & Answers: 2019.” That’s followed by thoughts after a glance at this year’s brackets, and be sure to visit MHSAA.com to see all of the pairings in full.
Ground Rules
Our past: The MHSAA 11-player playoff structure – with 256 teams in eight divisions, and six wins equaling an automatic berth (or five wins for teams playing eight or fewer games) – debuted in 1999. An 8-player tournament was added in 2011, and in 2017 a second division of 8-player football was introduced.
The first playoffs were conducted in 1975 with four champions. Four more football classes were added in 1990 for a total of eight champions each fall. Through 1998, only 128 teams made the postseason, based on their playoff point averages within regions (four for each class) that were drawn before the beginning of the season. The drawing of Districts and Regionals after the end of the regular season did not begin until the most recent 11-player playoff expansion.
In early years of the current process, lines were drawn by hand. Dots representing qualifying schools were pasted on maps, one map for each division, and those maps were then covered by plastic sheets. Districts and Regionals literally were drawn with dry-erase markers.
Our present: The last few scores of this regular season were added to MHSAA.com by 8 p.m. Saturday. Re-checking and triple-checking of enrollments, what schools played in co-ops and opted to play as a higher class start a week in advance, and more numbers are crunched Sunday morning as the fields are set.
This final season of 6-wins-and-in (or five wins playing eight games or fewer) produced 202 automatic qualifiers for the 11-player field with a record 54 additional qualifiers then selected by playoff point average – that group of additional qualifiers easily blowing past last year’s then-record total of 43. Additional qualifiers were selected from each class in order (A, B, C, D) until the field was filled. There were only two Class D additional qualifiers with 5-4 or 4-4 (playing eight games) records from which we could choose, and likewise there were 16 additional qualifiers available in Class C – so with those 18 spots filled, we added 18 teams from both Class A and B to fill out the field.
Here’s where the tie-breaker was forced into play. Among Class B teams, Durand and Imlay City tied for the 18th spot with playoff point averages of 42.667. They did not play each other during the regular season – so the first tie-breaker of head-to-head result couldn’t be used. The next tie-breaker is opponents’ winning percentage – and both teams’ opponents won 45.7 percent of their games this season. So we went to the coin flip, and Durand was awarded the final spot in the field.
Those 256 11-player teams were then split into eight equal divisions based on enrollment, and their locations were marked on digital maps then projected on wall-size screens and discussed by nearly half of the MHSAA staff plus two representatives from the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association. Only the locations themselves were marked (by red dots) – not records, playoff point averages or names of the schools or towns. In fact, mentions of those are strictly prohibited. Records and playoff points are not part of the criteria. Matchups, rivalries, previous playoff pairings, etc. also DO NOT come into play.
The 8-player process is different for team selection and similar for designation of Regionals. We take the top 32 teams in 8-player based on playoff point average as our field, then re-sort those 32 by enrollment – the 16 biggest make up Division 1, followed by the next 16 in Division 2. There are no automatic qualifiers by record for 8-player, and those fields remain in flux right through the last Week 9 games. For example: Colon as recently as after Week 7 was slated for Division 2. But the Magi after this weekend ended up in Division 1 with the second-highest playoff-point average but the 16th-highest enrollment – meaning Colon (160 students) and Cedarville (154) were the line between Divisions 1 and 2 this year.
Our future: 11-player divisions determined in March. More bonus points awarded in losses. Read all about it: Comparison of old and new playoff formats
Geography rules: This long has been rule number one for drawing MHSAA brackets in any sport. Travel distance and ease DO come into play. Jumping on a major highway clearly is easier than driving across county-wide back roads, and that’s taken into consideration. Also, remember there’s only one Mackinac Bridge and hence only one way to cross between peninsulas – and boats are not considered a possible form of transportation. When opponents from both peninsulas will be in the same District, distance to the bridge is far more important than as the bird flies.
Tradition doesn’t reign: Every group of 32 (or in 8-player, 16) dots is a new group – these 32 teams have not been placed in a bracket together before. How maps have been drawn in the past isn’t considered – it’s hard to say a division has been drawn in a certain way traditionally when this set of 32 teams is making up a division for the first time.
Observations & Answers: 2019
We always start with CONGRATULATIONS: Detroit Leadership Academy, Detroit Communication Media Arts, and Pellston will be making their debuts in the MHSAA Playoffs this week, taking the list of teams that have never qualified for the postseason down to 11. Beal City and Crystal Falls Forest Park will make their MHSAA-best 35th playoff appearances. Five teams will be playing in at least their 17th consecutive playoffs – Rockford (25), Forest Park (23), Jackson Lumen Christi (22), Macomb Dakota (20) and Climax-Scotts (17).
Head-to-head rules: As noted above, it’s the first tie-breaker and comes into play immediately this week. In Division 3, East Lansing and DeWitt have identical playoff point averages, and East Lansing will host their first-round game thanks to a 21-2 Week 5 win. If Portland and Lansing Catholic both advance to an 11-Player Division 5 District Final, Portland will host thanks to a 21-20 Week 5 win over the Cougars. Same in 8-player Division 2, where if Powers North Central and Pickford meet in a Regional Final, the Jets will host thanks to their 20-14 win when the teams met in Week 3.
Traverse City traveling: Many years, we have to pay special consideration to ease of travel when we have one of 32 teams from a division in the Upper Peninsula. This year, we spent a lot more time discussing Traverse City schools – notably how to position Traverse City West in Division 1 and Traverse City Central in Division 2. There are three main north-south highways in the Lower Peninsula, with U.S. 131 the thoroughfare out of Traverse City. We also used it as the defining line in Division 1, with West going west with Grand Haven, Grandville and Hudsonville instead of staying with a more northern group that would’ve included Rockford and split Grandville and Hudsonville – which are six miles apart down I-196. In Division 2, we brought U.S. 127 into the mix, figuring it made more sense for travel to use that and 131 in grouping Traverse City Central with Muskegon Mona Shores, Midland and Midland Dow instead of creating a western District stretching from Traverse City to south of Kalamazoo.
Avoid the crisscross: Sometimes Districts drawn on the maps look perfect – but we run into trouble putting them together for a logical Regional. Sometimes we know eight dots should be a Regional, but there’s no reasonable way to split them into two four-team Districts. We do everything possible to keep a team from driving past a different District (or in 8-player Regional) on the way to its first or second-round game. The 8-Player Division 1 map probably looks a little odd with Deckerville possibly playing Morrice in the second round and the Orioles driving past Mayville or Kingston from another Regional to get there. However, there is a distinct northeast-to-southwest line separating those four schools – and if the Regional had been drawn to keep Deckerville with Mayville and Kingston, it would’ve meant Regional champs “jumping” over each other for their Semifinal matchup.
North/South vs. East/West: There isn’t one guiding directional when creating these Districts and Regionals. The 11-player Division 7 map has a little bit of both, with a pair of Districts along I-94 on the south side of the Lower Peninsula, but then Madison Heights Bishop Foley grouped with three Thumb-area teams for a north-south grouping. The other option was sending Bishop Foley northwest toward Flint and Lansing, but that would’ve left the Thumb schools and Beaverton maneuvering around Saginaw Bay.
At the end of the day …
Here’s my annual reminder: We draw these maps not knowing which schools are represented by the dots. The Division 5 and 6 maps were so easy to draw, I had no idea which schools were matched up until checking out the brackets hours later to put together this report.
But with all of that in front of me, here’s a glance at what jumps off the page:
• The Division 1 District made up of unbeaten Belleville and Brownstown Woodhaven, Saline (8-1) and Ann Arbor Pioneer (5-4) is obviously loaded. Belleville and Saline both made the Semifinals last season, and Saline’s only loss this fall was to reigning Division 1 champion Clinton Township Chippewa Valley. Woodhaven finished the regular season unbeaten for the second time in six years and its seeking its first District title.
• Last season’s Division 4 champion Edwardsburg has won 23 straight games and is back in the Division 3 bracket – the Eddies played in Division 4 the last two seasons and most recently in Division 3 in 2016. A possible return to Ford Field starts this week with St. Joseph and could include a trip to Zeeland West and matchup with also-unbeaten Mason.
• Hudsonville Unity Christian is another reigning champion in a new division, moving into Division 4 after winning the championship in Division 5 last fall. Unity begins with Otsego and would play either Grand Rapids Christian or South Christian with a win.
• Make way for Division 7. Unbeaten New Lothrop is the reigning champion and shares a District with undefeated Beaverton and a Regional with also-undefeated Pewamo-Westphalia. Iron Mountain, Lawton, Jackson Lumen Christi and Clinton also have yet to lose a game this season. Lumen Christi has won the last three Division 6 championships and 31 straight games.
• Math can lead to some unpredictable situations, including the occasional undefeated road team during the first round. Almont defeated Richmond 28-10 in Week 7 on the way to the Blue Water Area Conference title and a perfect regular-season record. But the Raiders will travel this week back to Richmond because the Blue Devils finished with a better playoff point average – Almont’s two nonleague opponents finished a combined 1-17, and Richmond’s both made the playoffs with a combined 13-5 record. That difference made the difference in playoff point average by about nine-tenths of a point in Richmond’s favor.
• This year’s 8-player brackets are loaded with intrigue, especially with 2018 Division 2 champion Rapid River not in the field and last year’s Division 1 runner-up Pickford in Division 2 this time. Morrice is the reigning Division 1 champion and could see undefeated Deckerville in a Regional Final. Pickford has to get through another 8-1 team in Engadine this week but could see undefeated Powers North Central in a Division 2 Regional Final.
• And it should shock no one if a team entering the playoffs 4-5 makes it to NMU. Gaylord St. Mary had to forfeit four victories but still made the playoffs with that record. Undefeated Suttons Bay is a possible Regional Final opponent, and St. Mary won their Week 6 matchup on the field 48-47 before later forfeiting that game.
That’s the start of what we’re looking forward to over the next five weeks. The steps taken today were just a few along the way as memories are made for thousands of Michigan high school football players this November.
PHOTOS: (Top) The Division 5 map, with clear-cut Districts, received quick support from the selection committee. (Middle) The Division 1 map split Grand Rapids-area teams along U.S. 131.