KHSAA to survey schools about controversial football playoff system
After two years playing through an intra-district playoff system that sends some of the state’s best football teams home after only two rounds of the postseason, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association on Wednesday agreed to survey its schools on the matter and possibly reconsider the format as soon as the coming season.
The board of control’s decision came at the request of the Kentucky Football Coaches Association, who fought the format change when it was implemented in 2019 and presented the KHSAA with a new survey of its membership showing that 76.7 percent of the 193 coaches responding would prefer another format. There were 223 football-playing schools listed by the KHSAA last season. Forty-five coaches surveyed supported the current intra-district format.
“This is a survey of coaches, not administrators, but with coaches,” KHSAA Commissioner Julian Tackett said as he presented the KFCA’s request to the board. “And there is overwhelming support for revising the first two rounds to go back to playing outside of their district for the first two rounds and then leave the third, fourth and fifth round as they are.”
The controversy
Intra-district play was used for two years in the mid-2000s and quickly abandoned as critics fought it off, preferring a playoff system that mixed up the first two rounds of playoffs around a particular region (called cross-district) rather than strictly within the district.
It re-emerged in 2019 as a potential travel cost-saving measure.
Critics of intra-district play argue that plowing back through the same district opponents recently played in the regular season creates both monotony and strategic issues in the postseason.
The monotony comes from having to replay common foes that are sometimes hopelessly overmatched. The strategic issues come from having to deal with a heated district rival earlier in the postseason than one might have under the old system — a rival it might have taken every ounce of ingenuity and effort to compete with in the regular season.
“We have played 20 games the last two seasons — seven have been against (Christian Academy-Louisville) or Henry County,” said Mercer County Coach David Buchanan, president of the KFCA. “And that’s not good for Kentucky high school football. If we played some other opponents, that would be better. Now, if we played CAL or Henry County for a region championship, that’s a different story.”
Proponents of intra-district play, including KHSAA board member Scott Hawkins, Woodford County Schools superintendent, cite travel costs savings among other reasons for sticking with it, especially given that it’s only been back in effect for two seasons.
Since the KHSAA widened the football postseason to include almost every team several years ago, many first-round games have become notorious blowouts as top-rated teams demolish lesser foes. At least with intra-district play, proponents argue, an overmatched team doesn’t have to travel as far or pay as much for the beating.
Hawkins said he also thinks intra-district play creates more excitement because of the rivalries developed and that playing within the district in the opening rounds of the postseason is paralleled in most of the KHSAA’s other sports.
“This would treat football differently than we do any other sport that has postseason play in district and regional competition,” Hawkins said as the motion to consider surveying schools was discussed. “We would not consider this in basketball, in baseball, in softball, or in volleyball. It wouldn’t even be a consideration to think that we would play cross-district in regional competition.”
But is that true?
Apples and oranges
While all the other sports Hawkins named do indeed begin their postseasons with a district-only round, they also have a double-elimination element to them that pushes both district finalists — a champion and runner-up — onward in the postseason.
Football does not.
So, two teams from every district in all those sports (64 districts in basketball, for example, as compared to 48 in football) move on in postseason play.
Scott County, the 2020 11th Region boys’ basketball champion, was a 42nd District runner-up.
Henry Clay’s 2018 run to the state soccer finals came after a loss in the 42nd District championship game.
In 2019, Hopkinsville lost its 8th District baseball title game and went on to win the 2nd Region and its bid to the state tournament.
Where do those teams go? They play in a “cross-district” regional tournament for the right to move on.
Meanwhile in football, single-elimination district championship games have meant teams like Class 5A’s Scott County, No. 2 in the KHSAA’s 2020 RPI rankings, got eliminated from the postseason by a top 10 district rival in Week 2. So, too did Class 4A’s No. 3 Central and Class 3A’s No. 3 Russell. And the list goes on.
In 2019, the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in Class 2A, Lexington Christian and Somerset, both of District 4, had to play each other in the second round of the playoffs thanks to intra-district play. No. 1 LCA went home and No. 2 Somerset went on to win the state title. In other sports, LCA might have gotten another shot at the Briar Jumpers.
But the KFCA isn’t asking for a double-elimination format or another round of playoffs. And though the KHSAA also began using its RPI ratings in 2019 to partially seed later rounds after the district finals, the KFCA’s membership largely supports that change, Buchanan said.
“All we’re saying is overwhelmingly, 77%, we do not want to play in the same district for the first two rounds,” Buchanan said. “That’s all we’re saying.”
The survey
The KHSAA board agreed to send out a survey to each football playing school to gauge sentiment from other stakeholders on the issue, such as principals, athletic directors and superintendents, who might have cost or other concerns their coaches might not.
Each school will get only one vote, meaning the various interested parties at the school will have to agree to vote on whether they support the current system or changes. Such surveys sometimes lead to new KHSAA policies.
“Let’s give the coaches the opportunity, if they feel this strongly, to get with their superintendents and get with their principals, get with their ADs and have a voice one way or the other from each school,” said board member Mark Evans, Mercy Academy’s athletic director. “And then, from there, I don’t think we rule out making a change in 2021. I think we just wait to see what the survey says.”
The results of the survey are planned to be discussed at the board’s next meeting in May.
