Past success leaves Southwest odd man out in 2018

Editor’s note: This is the fourth article in a series intended to keep readers updated on where the Valley teams stood in the race for 2018 football playoff positions by examining how they are ranked week-to-week and to look back at how the playoff seeding formats and criteria have evolved over the years.

Last week we examined how Calipatria, Holtville and Imperial were impacted by the SD-CIF 1993 realignment of schools and how resulting problems continued when Brawley, Calexico, Central and Southwest joined the SD-CIF in 1998.

The article also gave an update on the 2018 Maxpreps.com and calpreps. com power-rankings for some of the Valley’s teams and explained how both sites derive their rankings from an independent company called Freeman Rankings.

We’ll resume this week first by continuing the narrative on the evolution of playoff seeding because elements of the abandoned systems still are very much alive.

An example of previous systems influencing the current one: In a previous article, it was discussed how all sports coaches committees held “seeding meetings” for each division in the SD-CIF to determine bracketing the day after the end of the regular-season.

Such a meeting was held this past Saturday as the coaches committee sought to verify the Freeman ratings and to adjust them to account for issues such as a team being rated lower than a team they defeated.

We also previously noted the criteria for the seeding remains the same today as it was in the past: Teams are ranked based on their win-loss record, strength of schedule and margin of victory or defeat.

Recall, too, that problems arose for Valley schools in the past that still exist now, including difficulty in scheduling San Diego area teams — although with Freeman Rankings being a national service, Arizona and Southern Section schools are now easily rated whereas before they were ignored.

Other problems with the committee system that found Valley teams at a disadvantage were that they were made up of coaches from San Diego and the inevitable “human factor” in evaluating the criteria going against local teams.

In the 2000s, the powerful coaching-committee seeding system seems to have fell out of favor. As younger coaches and new schools joined the section, there was an administrative changing of the (old) guard, which bore major changes in 2013.

In 2013, the section revised the coaches committee system and divisional format it had used since its inception in 1960.

It began organizing playoff divisions based on team strength not school enrollment, adding an open division created for the top eight teams and using a power-ranking system it developed to determine both divisions and most playoff seeds.

The impact of the move from placing teams in divisions based on population to strength — which does consider school population and allows schools to appeal where they are placed — has had major implications for teams in all sports. But in football, a contact sport, the results have been potentially staggering at times.

For example, based on population, Calexico High, with the highest population in the section, competed in Division I, but in 2016 found itself in the CIF’s “new” system in the Division V football playoffs based on their five-year record and ranking.

The power-ranking system is available at the section website, cifsds.org which is fairly easy to navigate and contains a wealth of information.

The move from population to strength to determine divisions and playoff seeding, as you might have guessed, will be the topic of the next article in this series, as its quest to be “fairer” has proven at times to appear anything but.

Time to compare the Maxpreps.com power-ratings of our local teams as the CIF’s seeding meetings were held on Saturday and most of the local teams ratings held true.

No. 2 seed Central Union was power ranked at 23.5 last week before beating Brawley in the Bell Game 14-10, a victory that moved it to a 25.0 rating, but still well behind Division III leader Christian at 36.1. Brawley fell from 20.6 to 19.3 but held on to the fourth seed.

Imperial, with its win over Palo Verde, moved from 10.3 to 11.6 and garnered the seventh seed in D-III. All three Valley teams in the division were seeded where they were power-ranked the past few weeks.

Calexico is the only Imperial Valley League representative in Division IV, where it is seeded 10th with a minus-6.8.

Local Manzanita League teams saw a literal flip of two teams based on head-to-head competition as Mt. Empire wrapped up the league title defeating Vincent Memorial 45-16.

Last week Holtville was ranked fourth, Vincent fifth and Mt. Empire sixth in the Division IV rankings but Mt. Empire’s win saw it vault over Vincent to get the fifth seed as Vincent fell to the sixth seed.

Holtville, meanwhile, with a 42-7 win over Calipatria, stayed at minus-6.7 and was the fourth seed despite having lost to Mt. Empire, something we will try to clarify.

An earlier article in this series reported that Division V took only eight teams because that was the case until this season. However, the CIF office is telling us the division was expanded to 12 teams last May.

That was great news for Calipatria (minus-36.3), which has been hovering around the 12th ranking position in D-IV all season. Now they are in the playoffs at the 10th-seed after three teams traded places after Friday night’s games.

The Southwest Eagles, who struggled after an outstanding season in 2017, ended up 4-6 and had a minus-10.6 power-ranking. They finished 16th in Division II and out of the playoffs.

How that three-way Division V switch took place, how Calexico benefited from the teams it lost to in IVL and a look at the fate of Southwest High, Imperial and Brawley being determined by a new criteria, will be discussed in our next installment of the series.

Meanwhile, good luck to Calipatria, Imperial and Vincent Memorial Catholic as they play opening-round CIF games this Friday.