You can call it super. I call it potential kryptonite for high school football in Massachusetts.
The MIAA’s Board of Directors voted Wednesday to radically change the playoff format for football beginning next fall. The highlight is the addition of a new Division 1A ‘Super 8’ championship. The lowlight is drastically reducing the number of playoff qualifiers across the entire state.
Starting in 2027, the high school football season will have nine regular season games rather than the current eight. Playoff brackets will then be filled by eight teams instead of the current 16 in each of the eight divisions (plus the new Super 8).
To simplify matters, that means thousands of student-athletes will not get the opportunity to play in a high school football playoff game.
As things stand, 128 teams in Massachusetts make the football playoffs. Next fall, the number goes down to 72. For reference, that’s fewer than the 74 that made it in 2012, the last year of the old format before a statewide vote of nearly 300 schools declared that number far too small in approving real playoffs for the first time.
What’s driving the desire for change? It boils down to the MIAA’s unwillingness to place Catholic Memorial in Division 1, where it belongs. CM’s presence in D2 caused an exodus from the division via appeal, leading to last year’s embarrassing instance of having fewer than 16 qualifiers for the D2 tourney.
Knight supporters say that by enrollment, CM belongs in D4 and is already playing up. Funny, I don’t recall CM legend Bill Hanson or Malden Catholic’s Christie Serino making such arguments about not being in D1 for hockey based on enrollment. They wanted to beat the best of the best.
Creating a Super 8 is a way to remove CM from the D2 playoffs without forcing them into Division 1. It unfairly punishes dozens of other schools.
The best eight teams from the Division 1 and 2 power rankings will be seeded into the new Super 8. Then, the next best teams from those divisions will fill the ‘regular’ D1 and 2 playoff brackets. That means a team seeded No. 10 in Division 1 will probably be favored to win a Super Bowl as top three seed (once those ranked 1-6 or so are removed for the Super 8).
Meanwhile, a team ranked No. 10 in Divisions 3-through-8 is told it does not deserve to make the new eight team playoff.
This is supposed to be fair and equitable for football players across the Commonwealth?
There is no question that good football teams will be left out of the playoffs under this new format. In each of the last four years, at least one undefeated team was seeded below 8th in its division … which means, starting in 2027, they’d be both unbeaten and out.
Some say too many teams make the tournament as is, but that is out of line with the rest of high school sports. More than 60 percent of teams in boys and girls lacrosse, baseball, softball, boys and girls hockey and field hockey made the state tournament last year. The new proposal brings the percentage of football teams making the playoffs down to 23. Again, neither fair nor equitable.
Others argue eliminating teams ranked 9-through-16 will end non-competitive first round blowouts. But football has more first round upsets, and far more competitive games, than hockey and lacrosse. No one is advocating cutting the hockey playoffs in half because of non-competitive first round games, so why do so for football?
Xaverian head coach Al Fornaro suggested that the creation of the Super 8 is a way to remove private schools from the tournament. I don’t see it that way. Nothing is going to change for St. John’s Prep, which already plays the iron like the rival Hawks and Springfield Central in the D1 playoffs.
Whether the Agganis Trophy St. John’s hopes to hoist in December reads ‘Division 1’ or ‘Division 1A’ doesn’t really matter. The current D1 field is already the de facto Super 8 … save for Catholic Memorial. Simply realigning CM into D1 would cause a domino effect of teams like King Phillip and Reading returning to D2, solving every problem without cutting the playoff field in half.
Extending the regular season to nine weeks does remove one ‘consolation’ week for teams that don’t make the postseason. Folks say these games have no juice, but I’ve found they can help struggling programs find some confidence in an even matchup … and they don’t lack any more juice than mid-November games between bottom dwellers did prior to 2012.
Who benefits from this new format? Probably a half dozen Division 1 schools that can never compete with the Prep, are too large to option down to Division 2 or 3, and may now advance in the watered down D1 bracket.
Who gets hurt? Almost everyone else throughout Divisions 2-through-8. In every other high school sport, being in the top ten of the power rankings in your division is something to celebrate.
In football, finishing No. 9 or No. 10 is now like being fourth in the Olympics: First loser and a lifetime of ‘What If?’
The Super 8 was amazing for boys hockey in Massachusetts and cool for baseball. At first glance, it looks like an exciting thing for football too.
Coming with the condition that 56 fewer teams make the playoffs, and some 2,800 kids (guessing 50 or-so per team) are denied the state tournament experience? That’s a tradeoff I can’t get behind.
The state’s football coaches and the MIAA’s Board of Directors shouldn’t have gotten behind it, either.
Matt Williams has covered Massachusetts high school football for the past 20 seasons. You can contact him at MWilliams@salemnews.com and follow along on Twitter/X @MattWillaims_SN