Proposal Addresses Football Transparency, Sportsmanship Concerns

In about a month, the state governing body that oversees high school sports will decide whether to modify the procedure for selecting teams to participate in the high school football playoffs.

It is the second time in as many years the New Jersey Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) is entertaining a proposal concerning the football playoffs, and at least one South Jersey athletic director thinks it’s too much.

“It’s the second year of the cycle,” Paul VI Athletic Director Anthony Mitchell said. “You don’t change the rules in the middle of the cycle.”

Mitchell was one of two athletic directors to vote against a proposal that was introduced before the NJSIAA Executive Committee on first reading last week.

The other was Mike Pellegrino, of Egg Harbor Township, according to nj.com. The vote was 35-2, with the final vote scheduled for June 5.

The proposal calls for more transparency and less reliance on point spreads, two things football coaches were most bothered by under the Born Power Index (BPI) that was used last season.

Read more here: Football Coaches Desire Transparency, Sportsmanship In Rankings

The new system will incorporate the traditional power points system to account for about 40 percent of the formula. The other 60 percent will rely on Opponents Strength Index (OSI), according to Westwood Regional High School Athletic Director Dan Vivino, who introduced the legislation to the committee.

Teams will get points based on the strength of their opponents, and ranking will be released each week. They will be available online to anyone who’s interested, Vivino said.

A team’s winning - or losing - tradition won’t matter because teams will start with about the same value, around 60. That number will fluctuate as the season goes on, depending on how a team fares.

It actually won’t help a team to “run up the score” on an opponent because a team’s value will be downgraded based on how badly they are defeated. So if Team A blows out Team B, Team B’s value will go down and the win won’t be as valuable for Team A, according to Vivino.

He also said the OSI will be turned off for the final game before the playoff cutoff, so that teams will only be motivated to win their game and not worry about the value of the victory.

“Your head’s probably spinning,” Vivino said after explaining the system. “It will make more sense once the season starts.”

But Mitchell doesn’t see a need for a change. He said the system worked last year, with some teams that didn’t have great records making the playoffs and ultimately winning titles.

One example is Shawnee, which was 2-6 going into the playoffs and ended up capturing the NJSIAA South Jersey Group 4 championship.

He also said more data is needed for coaches to make informed decisions about the system, and that the schedules for the 2019 season were made with the BPI system in mind.

Football schedules are made for two-year cycles, allowing teams to play home-and-home series with the opponents on their schedule. The 2019 season will be the second half of the current cycle.

More importantly, though, Mitchell doesn’t see this as the biggest problem facing the sport.

“We need to worry about how to save football,” Mitchell said, pointing to a smaller number of kids signing up to play the sport. “ … There are 3 to 4 non-public schools I can think of that lost about 100 players between us.

“I think it’s all over that participation is down.”

In 2017, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North and Pitman were among the programs that suspended their seasons, with Pitman fielding only a junior varsity squad. It played four varsity games last year, according to nj.com.

Mitchell said recently passed safety standards are good because teams were seeing injuries pile up in practice, well before the first snap on Friday night. Read more here: NJSIAA Football Rule Puts Historic Limit On Contact In Practice

“We used to start (practice) in September, play our first game at the end of September and play our last game on Thanksgiving,” Mitchell said. “There were no playoffs, no one was concerned about winning a state championship. I think the focus is in the wrong place. We need to worry about saving 11-man football.”