Going nowhere fast, NCS playoffs need to be fixed
I often heckle in my head motorists who punch the gas from a stopped traffic light only to screech to a halt before the next red light.
“Way to beat everyone to that stoplight,” I think.
On Sunday, I had to heckle the North Coast Section after looking at its football brackets, sort of for the same reason.
With 19 teams receiving firstround byes, including six of the 10 in Division 1, what was all the rush about?
The season started earlier than it ever had — Aug. 18 — and now roughly 25 percent of the field is sitting around an extra week waiting to play again. This after every team had a bye week in the regular season.
Part of the explanation is that the California Interscholastic Federation is finishing its state bowl championships earlier this season, with championship games Dec. 1, about two weeks earlier than normal. So why all the extra byes? It comes down to the fact that the NCS runs 16-team brackets, opposed to the Central Coast Section, which has eight-team brackets. The CCS will finish its regular season this week, giving teams three weeks to complete playoffs before CIF regional bowl games.
There are more schools in the NCS (171) than in the CCS (140), thus the NCS wants to reward more teams. The CCS, which started a week later than the NCS, has five eight-team divisions.
The NCS has six 11-team divisions, including a fourteam Open Division (best teams), with the other five divisions able to support up to 16 teams each. This season only D2 filled its brackets. The others fell short: D1 (10), D3 (14), D4 (12) and D5 (13).
With its clunky format, multiple byes and 19 teams with .500 or worse records, there seems to be a better and easier solution, like the eight-team bracket.
“I just don’t think we need 16-team brackets,” De La SalleConcord coach Justin Alumbaugh said.
The NCS added its Open Division in 2016 in reaction to De La Salle’s domination of the top division.
The Spartans, ranked 11th nationally, have won 26 straight NCS titles — by an average score of 41-8 since 2006.
Other top D1 (biggest schools) teams didn’t have a chance to advance to the state tournament, thus the Open was created. The Open winner and runner-up advance to CIF, but no team from the D1 bracket does. That seems unsatisfactory and needs fixing as well.
“I love the Open concept, but there’s got to be a simpler, better way to implement it,” Alumbaugh said.
The four-team Open has created another problem: inactivity.
First-round games this year open in two weeks, and the semifinal winners will wait another two weeks until the championship. That’s two byes in three weeks.
If the NCS Open champion is picked as the Northern California Open representative, then there is another week off until the Open state championship against the Southern California representative.
That means three games in six weeks.
It’s something De La Salle has experienced the past two seasons. Though the Spartans have been well rested, it’s clearly not ideal. It’s seen as either an advantage for extra rest or disadvantage for losing an edge or continuity.
“Games need to be played,” Alumbaugh said. “Our guys have been great practicing during bye weeks. But these are teenagers. We started July 30. Football practice is hard. It’s not dodgeball or jumping rope. Kids should be rewarded by playing the game.”
Ultimately, the extra rest hasn’t worked for De La Salle, which has lost to St. John BoscoBellflower (56-33) and Mater Dei-Santa Ana (52-21) in the state final the past two seasons. The Spartans, who won six state titles with sharp execution of their veer offense, fumbled 14 times in the past two state-title games and committed nine turnovers.
“We didn’t lose because of the extra time off,” Alumbaugh said. “We lost those games because they were better teams and we didn’t play well. That said, without playing games every week, it’s a challenge to be as crisp as you need to compete against those teams.” MaxPreps senior writer Mitch Stephens covers high school sports for The San Francisco Chronicle.