Welcome to the ‘competitive-equity’ era of CIF sports

Editor’s note: This column is part of a continuing series examining how the current CIF playoff seeding system came to be and how that formula is applied to athletic programs in Imperial Valley.

Last week, we examined the 2019 season mass transfer of baseball players from Calexico High to Southwest and, in doing so, identified the state CIF as the state’s ultimate authority over student-athletes and noted the CIF San Diego Section’s authority, given certain circumstances, to place teams in any division regardless of power ranking.

I ran into an acquaintance the other day who commented that he looked forward to reading this series every week. Then he hesitated, adding that “it actually hurts my head sometimes … not by how you write or anything, but that CIF is so complicated now.”

Judging from his looks, he appears to have played in the days of the simplicity, when the first, second and third place teams in CIF’s Southern Section went to the playoffs, so I feel his pain with the current system.

I understood where he was coming from as every week the goal is to show how the “new normal” of the CIF’s competitive era works, and the bottom line is that it is indeed complicated and, because it is really just in its infant stages, ever changing.

And there has been a lot to digest. Still, I believe that we have demonstrated that certain CIF processes are consistent and predictable while demonstrating some of those processes have flaws, flaws that specifically hurt Valley teams.

Throughout the series, we have also suggested that what might appear to be intangible and non-quantifiable elements that affect a team’s power ranking are actually key elements, again, especially to Valley teams.

Often I have indicated that some of these issues are complicated in themselves such as the dynamics of scheduling non-league games when you are two hours and sometimes 50 degrees different from most teams in CIF.

After illustrating throughout the series the impact that strength of schedule has on Valley teams, scheduling will be a major topic for the series this summer as I will examine the schedules of the Valley football teams.

I have also indicated numerous times how coaching impacts a team’s success, noting that teams with longterm successful coaches have solid power rankings. Therefore, coaching, too, will be on the summer radar as the upcoming fall sports of football and volleyball offer great examples of how coaching impacts a team’s success and equals great season records but how that success actually becomes a handicap with rising CIF divisional placement.

As fall sports begin in August, hopefully we have laid the background to make predictions and see how they play out in real-time over volleyball and football seasons and CIF.

One caveat to that last statement is that while I am willing to make predictions, things often can and do shake out differently than expected.

Other unresolved issues include a more in-depth look at student-athlete transfers and also the impact of forfeits on power rankings, especially in football.

Oh, and after almost an entire CIF calendar of sports and looking at how competitive realignment has impacted division assignments and playoff seeding in recent years, we have a new mantra going forward.

In a conversation with assistant CIF commissioner John Labeta a few weeks ago, he used a term multiple times that I have found myself embracing. Welcome to the “competitive-equity” era.