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

Football Scheduling

December 23, 2014

The major complaint about the MHSAA Football Playoffs is not that too few teams qualify or too many, or that a five-week playoff is too long or should become six weeks, or that some worthy teams miss out while some less worthy teams get in. No; most people find a five-week, 11-player tournament after a nine-game regular season is the best that our late start to fall classes and our early start to winter weather will allow us in Michigan.

Many people appreciate being able to complete our 14-week season in the warmth of Ford Field on the Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Most people think that nearly 45 percent of 11-player schools is a sufficient tournament field. Many people like the excitement that the six-win threshold creates for teams that had been eliminated earlier from league championships.

The most serious and legitimate complaint about the season-ending playoffs is the stress it has placed on conferences and the struggles many schools have in building nine-game regular-season schedules. Some critics want to mess with the Football Playoffs because of the mess they believe it makes for regular-season schedulers.

Having the MHSAA provide every school a nine-game regular season schedule of the most nearby teams of the most nearly equal enrollments would shift scheduling headaches from the local level to the MHSAA.

I’m not suggesting that this solution to local problems doesn’t create new, large headaches for the MHSAA. But in fact, that is the tradition of school sports: when an issue is large enough in scope and common enough among member schools, the state high school association is asked to be the problem-solver. That’s how we got transfer rules, defined sports seasons and competitive cheer tournaments, for example. Just about every policy and procedure and program of the MHSAA arises from a common local problem looking for a statewide solution.

The 2014 Update Meeting Opinion Poll indicates that 70 percent of responding administrators do not favor the solution of the MHSAA making all schools’ regular-season varsity football schedules. Maybe the question should be narrowed to having the MHSAA complete member schools’ non-conference scheduling.

Meanwhile, we will keep watching as high school associations in other states move to statewide scheduling. For if scheduling is the problem, then scheduling itself needs to be the focus of the solution.

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