Seasons don’t conclude with section titles
On Sunday, the California Interscholastic Federation will announce its lineup of 24 regional football games and two finalists — one north, one south — in the state Open Division.
In the previous five-division format, there was much more drama and pressure on the CIF commissioners, who handpicked the teams.
Now, with a few exceptions, if a team wins a section championship it automatically advances to a regional game. The exceptions are if individual sections have Open divisions, then multiple teams from those sections can advance.
That is the case with the North Coast Section, which sends two from its Open Division, and none from Division 1. The Central Coast Section takes five teams from its top three divisions — all labeled Open — and none from Divisions 4 and 5.
Once those teams are determined, the CIF then places teams in divisions not based on enrollment, but what it calls “competitive equity.” Simply put, that means it puts the 25 qualifying teams from the North and South and ranks them 1-25.
The No. 1 North team skips the regional and goes directly to the State Open championship game to face the No. 1 team from the South.
That game is scheduled for Dec. 16 at Sacramento State. De La Salle-Concord has been the NorCal Open representative for eight straight years and — with an NCS title-game defeat of Pittsburg on Saturday — almost assuredly will be picked again, although Sac-Joaquin Section power Folsom (13-0) is having another phenomenal season.
Based on computer ratings from MaxPreps, if all the favorites win this weekend, here is a projection where each Bay Area team will land in the regional games. Home sites are decided for a variety of reasons by the CIF. Open Division: De La Salle (10-1) vs. Mater Dei-Santa Ana (13-0) 1-AA: Pittsburg (8-1) vs. Folsom (13-0) 1-A: Granite Bay (11-2) vs. Central-Fresno (11-1) 2-AA: Serra (10-2) vs. Tulare Union (13-0) 2-A: St. Francis-Mountain View (9-3) vs. Oakdale (12-1) 3-AA: Shasta-Redding (11-1) vs. Milpitas (12-0) 3-A: Sutter (12-1) vs. Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa (10-2)Marin Catholic-Kentfield (11-0) winner (Newman and Marin Catholic have the same power rating) 4-AA: Placer-Auburn (12-1) vs. Half Moon Bay (12-0) 4-A: McClymonds-Oakland (12-0) vs. East Nicolaus (13-0) 5-AA: Campolindo-Moraga (9-4) vs. Salinas (10-2) 5-A: Fortuna (10-2) vs. Bear River-Grass Valley (10-3) 6-AA: St. Patrick-St. VincentVallejo (10-1) at Hilmar (8-5) 6-A: Mission (8-3) at Rio Vista (9-3) Oddity: If Pittsburg does play Folsom, it will have played four fewer games. Two of its games during the regular season were canceled — one by excessive heat and the other by air quality because of the Wine Country fires — and then, because there were only four teams in the NCS Open playoffs, it had two byes. Folsom’s SJS D1 playoffs is a 16-team, four-week bracket. Monkey wrench: If Terra Nova-Pacifica upsets Half Moon Bay in the CCS D3 Open final Saturday, St. Francis, ranked fifth by The Chronicle, would be out if it loses to Serra. By CCS rule, five of the six finalists in D1, D2 and D3 advance — the three winners and two of the runner-ups. Unless all three runners-up played head-tohead, the section’s season-long point system determines the two at-large teams. The one with the fewest points is out.
Via the point system heading into the postseason: D1 game — Milpitas (31.5 points) vs. Salinas (30.5); D2 — Serra (30) vs. St. Francis (27); D3 — Half Moon Bay (29.5) vs. Terra Nova-Pacifica (20).
Terra Nova beat Salinas during the regular season, but it will not come into play because there would be no other previous head-to-head games between losing teams.