Could the KHSAA someday award 12 football champions?

It was not a formal proposal. It was not even a suggestion.

It was merely a possibility raised Wednesday morning by KHSAA Commissioner Julian Tackett during a Board of Control work-session discussion, one of several that will take place as the organization begins to draft the new football alignment that will go into effect beginning with the 2019 playing season.

The possibility? Bracketing the playoffs in a way that would, effectively, award 12 state champions in the sport of football. It was brought up in the context of attempting to allow the same number of teams to qualify for the postseason as do now but creating a more competitive system.

In the scenario Tackett mentioned, the 1 and 2 district seeds in each respective class would be paired with each other, and the 3 and 4 seeds in each respective class would be paired with each other. It would result in 12 brackets of 16 teams each that would produce two unique winners in each class — in a sense, a state champion and a consolation champion.

Such a form of bracketing would, on paper, appease people who advocate advancing only 1 and 2 seeds from each district to the playoffs while also creating a participation and advancement opportunity for schools that might otherwise have had short and/or embarassing postseason trips.

Tackett said the idea was floated when the KHSAA moved from four to six classes about a decade ago.

“Sometimes in this business you’ve gotta kinda be like the kid on the playground that’s trying to make up a game that everybody can play,” Tackett said. “We know, and our veteran coaches especially know, what would happen if you just bring two teams to the playoff, cause you would just have a whole bunch of football teams just fold; they don’t have any incentive. How can we bring (the four seed) and not have the 1 versus 4 games? Can you get both? Can you get the participation and the interest?”

Tackett said the average margin of victory in the first round of the playoffs is only about six points higher than games played in the regular season, which is “not that extreme,” but the perception exists that the first round is wrought with inequitability.

“What’s happened before, is you throw out these different things and everybody says, ‘Well, if that’s the option than let’s just stay where it is,’” Tackett said. “I don’t know what our people will think. But we’ve talked about it before and it just never really got legs. But, again, the one thing you keep thinking about is that 1 versus 4.”

Tackett isn’t concerned about outside opinions regarding the number of champions the KHSAA awards.

“Who cares about the number? That’s not a relevant issue,” Tackett said. “Because you’ve still gotta make it to where you’ve got physical equity — because you don’t want to put kids in a position to get hurt. Your job is not to make sure everybody gets a trophy. But it is ‘Can you get that equity so that risk minimizes?’”

If such a system ever went into effect, “It probably would be crazy to play 12 games at one venue,” Tackett said. But, he said, it could be possible to have the six “top-level” games at a large neutral site and the other six games could be held at local sites or smaller colleges around the state.

“I think you validate what you’re doing if you eliminate all other undesirable options,” Tackett said. “And that’s what we may be looking at. If this is not desirable, then kill it and start with something else. Who knows? But I do think we owe it, every four years, to look at our system and see. It’s such a unique beast.”

This story was originally published November 15, 2017 at 3:37 PM with the headline "Could the KHSAA someday award 12 football champions?."