Watch Volleyball, Football LIVE
November 4, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
District and Regional Volleyball action will be featured over the next two weeks on MHSAA.tv, while Football Playoff coverage moves into its second round and will be available live via multiple online channels this weekend.
Coverage of Girls Volleyball includes District Quarterfinal/Semifinal Matches each evening for four straight. Football this weekend can be viewed Friday from Fox Sports Detroit and Saturday from MHSAA.tv.
Volleyball
Here’s the complete District schedule, with links to each game's page on the MHSAA.tv site (all coverage available with subscription):
Monday – Class C Quarterfinals at Hanover-Horton
East Jackson vs. Michigan Center, 5:30 p.m.
Napoleon vs. Vandercook Lake, 7 p.m.
Tuesday – Class C Semifinals at Calumet
Ironwood vs. L’Anse, 6 p.m.
Calumet vs. Hancock, 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday – Class B Semifinals at Frankenmuth
Frankenmuth vs. North Branch, 6 p.m.
Caro vs. Mt. Morris, 7:30 p.m.
Thursday – Class A Semifinals at Hudsonville
Jenison vs. Grandville/Holland West Ottawa winner, 5 p.m.
Hudsonville/Holland winner vs. Wyoming/Zeeland East winner, 7 p.m.
Regional Semifinal coverage takes place next Tuesday (Nov. 11) at two locations:
Class A at Mason
Okemos District winner vs. Dexter District winner, 5 p.m.
Holt District winner vs. Portage Central District winner, 7 p.m.
Class C at Morley-Stanwood
Shelby District winner vs. White Cloud District winner, 6 p.m.
Muskegon Western Michigan Christian District winner vs. Pewamo-Westphalia District winner, 8 p.m.
Football
It’s the fourth season for the popular PrepZone on FoxSportsDetroit.com, which will provide free live coverage of four Football Playoff games each week for the first four weekends of the tournament. Games to be covered this week are:
Division 1 – Lapeer at Clarkston
Division 4 – Saginaw Swan Valley at Lansing Sexton
Division 5 – Clare at Freeland
Division 5 – Almont at Marine City
All games will take place Friday at 7 p.m., with short-term archives available on FoxSportsDetroit.com and long-term archives and DVDs available through MHSAA.tv.
Football Friday Overtime is in its fourth season on FOX Sports Detroit, airing at Midnight each Friday and running for 13 weeks. Mickey York and Rob Rubick host this 30-minute highlights show. The show re-airs Saturdays at 11 a.m. and Sunday mornings – check your local listings (this week at 7 a.m.).
The following games are scheduled to be highlighted this week:
- Wyandotte Roosevelt at Brownstown Woodhaven
- Trenton at New Boston Huron
- Southfield at Oak Park
- Walled Lake Central at West Bloomfield
- Detroit East English at Warren DeLaSalle
- Detroit Cass Tech at Dearborn Fordson
- Plus coverage from the Prep Zone games
MHSAA.tv also will cover two Football Playoff games live each Saturday the first three weeks of the tournament, and 12 Semifinal games on Nov. 22. Here’s this week’s District Final schedule (all coverage with subscription):
Division 1 – Grand Ledge at East Kentwood, 1 p.m.
Division 7 – Pewamo-Westphalia at Hudson, 1 p.m.
A Day Pass subscription to MHSAA.tv is $9.95. A Month Pass subscription is $14.95, enabling purchasers to watch all of this week’s action plus two more weeks of coverage of the Girls Volleyball Tournament, weekly Football Playoff coverage, and the Preliminaries and Finals of the Lower Peninsula Girls Swimming & Diving Finals. All events become available for free on demand viewing three days after the date of the contest.
MHSAA Highlights: This week's package includes clips from the Okemos/East Lansing volleyball match and the Plainwell/Battle Creek Harper Creek and Watervliet/Niles Brandywine football games.
Playoff Proposal Pauses
May 10, 2013
During the MHSAA Football Finals at Ford Field last November, I was approached by representatives of the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association with a request to have the MHSAA’s computing capabilities crunch the numbers for a concept that a couple of the coaches association’s members had for revising the MHSAA Football Playoff point system.
Within a few weeks the MHSAA hosted a meeting that brought together the coaches who introduced the concept with our numbers crunchers; and within a few days our staff had outlined the principles, revised the point system and retrofitted it to show how the system would have affected the 2012 playoffs.
There was initial excitement that we might be onto something, but that brief infatuation began to wane as we dug deeper and discussed the plan more widely.
The key ingredients of the proposal are (1) that a school would gain playoff points for every game its opponent wins, whether or not that school defeated that opponent, and (2) that the number of automatic qualifiers would be reduced in favor of a larger group of additional qualifiers based on a revised playoff points system that would favor schools which schedule larger and more successful opponents.
In spite of our staff’s helpfulness in bringing this proposal forward, we’ve lost optimism that it will accomplish what is hoped. Rather than making regular-season scheduling easier, it could make it harder as the “six-wins-and-in” mindset is replaced by the even worse “seven-wins-and-in” mindset. And any system that ignores a minimum number of wins and relies entirely on playoff points is even less fair than the current system to schools in the less densely populated areas of Michigan.
From our retrofitting of the proposed concept to the 2012 season, we know that teams with 6-3 records would be displaced in the playoffs by teams with 4-5 records, which is certain to go down badly and be difficult to explain to those communities. The revised point system would make it even more difficult than the current system for schools in less populated areas to find opponents of the size and strength to generate high playoff point averages without these schools driving 100, 200, 300 or more miles, one way, several times each season. For individual schools and some entire leagues, this will make football scheduling tougher, not easier. It is likely to add stress to those league affiliations, and to football scheduling generally.
In any event, there is no need to rush to 2013 or 2014 a proposal that’s called “Enhanced Strength of Schedule System” because schedules are 99 percent set for 2013 and nearly so for 2014. Even if adopted today, few schedules would be impacted before 2015. If a change like this one is to be implemented, schools must have ample notice, and our technology department must have enough time to program the new point system and then test it through an entire season.
The Representative Council acted wisely on May 6 when it paused the progress of this proposal. Some elements of it may be discussed at the MHSAA’s scheduled meetings this summer and fall.