The MIAA Football Committee took step one in hopes of convincing the state it had a greater playoff proposal.
Football Committee chairman Jay Costa and Milton soccer coach Steve Dembowski joined in on the two-hour MIAA Tournament Management Committee assembly Thursday morning and laid out plans for a revamped soccer construction. Costa stated the objective was to open some dialogue and create a sub-committee made up of soccer committee and TMC members to take a look at the proposal.
“We are here to propose some modifications,” Costa stated of the plan, which might go into impact for the 2025 season if accepted. “We’ve had the statewide system and after a few years of evaluation, we feel there can be some tweaks to it. We feel that, more from a regular season aspect, the sport is hurting a bit during the regular season.”
Among the main modifications are an 11-game common season, by which the common season would finish and the highest eight groups in every division qualify for the postseason. Schools might schedule as much as 11 video games, together with Thanksgiving throughout the common season, however should play a minimal of 9 to grow to be playoff eligible. The feeling is that energy rating system can be much more efficient if there may be an 11-game pattern dimension versus the present eight.
The quarterfinals can be on the Tuesday night time after Thanksgiving (5 days later), with the upper seeded faculty internet hosting until their area doesn’t meet established requirements. The semifinals can be performed Sunday (5 days later) at a impartial website, with the Super Bowls happening the next Saturday at a impartial website.
This would guarantee the highest 20 % of faculties in every division will qualify for the match. The argument being made for limiting the playoff groups from 16 to eight stems largely from the info displaying groups seeded 9-16 have received simply 16 of 128 video games. It would make it extraordinarily unlikely that groups with a shedding report would qualify.
Another motivation for the plan is that it might make Thanksgiving the top of the season. It would additionally present further motivation for potential playoff groups, opponents of potential playoff groups, and the communities of those colleges. Teams within the state finals would not have a purpose to not play their finest gamers on Thanksgiving.
Some committee members pushed again on the notion that comfort video games didn’t serve a goal. More than one coach has advised the Herald that their packages have benefitted from taking part in in comfort video games since they’ll truly compete in opposition to groups of comparable abilities.
“We’re talking about teams struggling right now,” stated TMC chairman Shaun Hart. “What happens if we go to an 11-game schedule and my team is 0-8, 0-9, 0-10? Isn’t that the same struggle?”
Others have been involved that extending the season an additional week would intervene with winter sports activities. Dembowski understands this can be a potential stumbling block however feels it will possibly minimized.
“We don’t want to impact other seasons, but there needs to be some discussions,” Dembowski stated. “We could extend the preseason or start the seasons a week later.”
The different main matter of concern was tinkering with the ability rankings, particularly looking for a strategy to put further emphasis on wins. MIAA energy rankings guru Jim Clark defined just a few attainable situations whereby a wins element may very well be added to fulfill those that really feel that ought to be a given in any rankings system used.
“We do need to take a step back and look at this,” stated Hart, who feels the system is sweet as is. “We have a system that is working more than 80 percent of the time and I don’t want to compromise that. You could have schools looking to get an extra five wins and that might drive some teams down.”
Hart obtained some pushback from athletic administrators John Brown of Wellesley and Dwayne Early of Springfield. Brown pointed to Everett being 7-1 in soccer and never making the playoffs, whereas Early expressed the issues of Springfield Central.
“Springfield Central started the football season with wins over Xaverian and Central Catholic (sandwiched between a loss to Iona Prep) and were No. 1 in the rankings after the third week,” Early stated. “We won the rest of our games and we dropped down to seven and had to play a quarterfinal game at Xaverian against a team we beat. We can’t control who we play in our league.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com