Week 6 Football Playoff Listing

September 26, 2012

Here is a list of Michigan High School Athletic Association football playing schools, displaying their win-loss records and playoff averages through the fifth week of the season. Schools on this list are in enrollment order. An asterisk (*) beside a record indicates that a team has eight or fewer games scheduled. A carrot (^) beside a school’s name indicates that a team is one win away from playoff qualification.

Those schools with 11-player teams with six or more wins playing nine-game schedules, or five or more wins playing eight games or fewer, will qualify for the MHSAA Football Playoffs beginning Oct. 26-27. Schools with 5-4, 4-3 or 4-4 records may qualify if the number of potential qualifiers by win total does not reach the 256 mark. Schools with six or more wins playing nine-game schedules or five or more wins playing eight games or fewer may be subtracted from the field based on playoff average if the number of potential qualifiers exceeds the 256 mark.

Once the 256 qualifying schools are determined, they will be divided by enrollment groups into eight equal divisions of 32 schools, and then drawn into regions of eight teams each and districts of four teams each.

Those schools with 8-player teams will be ranked by playoff average at season’s end, and the top 16 programs will be drawn into regions of eight teams each for the playoff in that division, which also begins Oct. 26-27.

To review a list of all football playoff schools, individual school playoff point details and to report errors, visit the Football page of the MHSAA Website.

The announcement of the qualifiers and first-round pairings for both the 11 and 8-player playoffs will take place at 7 p.m. on Oct. 21 on the Selection Sunday Show on FOX Sports Detroit. The playoff qualifiers and pairings will be posted to the MHSAA Website following the Selection Sunday Show.

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11-Player Playoff Listing

1.

Utica Eisenhower

2772

3-2

62.000

2.

Sterling Heights Stevenson

2766

4-1

75.800

3.

Clarkston ^

2721

5-0

94.400

4.

Grand Blanc

2644

3-2

57.600

5.

Macomb Dakota

2608

4-1

80.600

6.

Lake Orion ^

2565

5-0

96.000

7.

Rockford

2526

3-2

57.400

8.

Troy

2502

3-2

57.400

9.

Clinton Township Chippewa Valley

2462

4-1

77.000

10.

Dearborn Fordson

2442

4-1

83.400

11.

Holland West Ottawa

2262

4-1

71.000

12.

Northville

2220

3-2

60.400

13.

Detroit Cass Tech

2200

4-1

77.400

14.

Canton

2166

3-2

51.200

15.

Monroe ^

2154

5-0

83.200

16.

Detroit Catholic Central

2060

3-2

47.800

17.

Plymouth

2050

4-1

71.200

18.

Salem

2039

4-1

75.600

19.

Livonia Stevenson

2005

4-1

77.200

20.

Holt

1992

3-2

57.200

21.

Hartland ^

1932

5-0

91.200

22.

Warren Mott ^

1879

5-0

86.400

23.

Livonia Churchill ^

1877

5-0

100.800

24.

Walled Lake Central

1857

3-2

52.200

25.

Macomb L'Anse Creuse North

1853

3-2

58.400

26.

Saline

1849

4-1

72.400

27.

Grandville

1846

3-2

53.600

28.

Flint Carman-Ainsworth ^

1772

5-0

88.000

29.

Grand Ledge

1743

4-1

70.600

30.

Rochester

1725

4-1

72.800

31.

Traverse City West

1720

4-1

72.200

32.

White Lake Lakeland

1700

4-1

72.400

33.

Harrison Township L'Anse Creuse

1680

3-2

Making Matters Worse

March 17, 2017

For many years there have been complaints that the MHSAA Football Playoffs make it difficult for some teams to schedule regular season football games. Teams that are too good are avoided because opponents fear losses, and teams that are too small are avoided by larger schools because they do not generate enough playoff point value for wins.

Recently the MHSAA has learned, only indirectly, that some among the state’s football coaches association are recycling an old plan that would make matters worse. It’s called the “Enhanced Strength of Schedule Playoff System.”

Among its features is doubling the number of different point value classifications from four (80 for Class A down to 32 for Class D) to eight (88 for Division 1 down to 32 for Division 8).

What this does is make the art of scheduling regular season games even more difficult; for the greater variety of values you assign to schools, the more difficult it is to align with like-sized schools.

The “Enhanced Strength of Schedule Playoff System” makes matters even worse by creating eight different multipliers depending on the size of opposing schools. Imagine having to consider all this when building a regular season football schedule.

When this proposal was discussed previously statewide in 2012, it was revealed that it would have caused 15 teams with six regular season wins to miss the playoffs that year, while two teams with losing records would have qualified. How do you explain that to people? It was also demonstrated in 2012 that larger schools in more isolated areas would have to travel far and wide across the state, week after week, to build a schedule with potential point value to match similar sized schools located in more heavily populated parts of our state and have many scheduling options nearby. How is that fair?

The proposal is seriously flawed, and by circumventing the MHSAA Football Committee, its proponents assure it is fatally flawed.