MSHSAA playoff football change?

Next fall is the final year of a four-year trial for the current football playoff system and MSHSAA is considering to keep it, scrap it or come up with a new plan.

The MSHSAA Board of Directors will choose from one of the following three choices:

-- Return to the previous system in which only one team qualifies for the playoffs and all playoff games will be on a Friday or Saturday.

-- Keep the current system in which two teams qualify for the playoffs and follow the same schedule as this year.

-- Or try a new proposal which will feature a nine-game regular season before the start of the playoffs in which teams will be seeded in an eight-team district. You can read the entire proposal here.

In a nutshell, the new proposal will place every school into eight-team districts as they are now, by class and location. All teams will schedule their first nine games of the season and based on those results will be seeded within their district. A point system will help determine the seeds for the district and basically Week 10 will be the start of the state tournament with the higher seeds hosting the first round game.

As an example, Valle Catholic, Thayer, Hayti, Chaffee, Portageville, Cabool, St. Vincent and Cleveland were placed in a Class 1 district and based on their 2010 results, Valle was the top seed and would host Cleveland in the first round on a Friday. The winner would play the winner of Chaffee-Portageville, the fourth and fifth seeds. in the district semifinal the following Wednesday. The district final would be Monday with the winners advancing to the state quarterfinal that Saturday.

This may be the best proposal I've seen yet.

Lets face it, the old way lacked drama of a championship game and early-season games ended up being meaningless. The current system didn't fix the problem, just let in more teams.

No school official wants MSHSAA to schedule their games for them for fear of long travel and lost revenue. Nobody wants to break up long-time rivalries or conferences. This way allows schools to have freedom to their schedule and gives football the same playoff system in place like other MSHSAA sports.

The proposal still has kinks to be worked out. The point system, for example, may or may not use the current 13-point system for all games and teams could be rewarded for strength of schedule or playing bigger schools. The Week 10 gate will be split 60-40 between the teams since there's an uneven amount of games (usually teams schedule five home and five away).

It would be nice to see the playoff games return to a Friday-Saturday schedule but with MSHSAA locked in a post-Thanksgiving weekend date at the Edward Jones Dome, that pushes the start of the season well into August. One change that MSHSAA needs to look at is opening up preseason camp earlier so athletes can adjust to the early-season heat and prepare for the season.

For a school like Poplar Bluff, this could be both good and bad from the standpoint of scheduling. The Mules have to play three conference schools that are in small classes (Sikeston, Cape Central and Farmington) which will take points away right off the bat. That leaves five games left to schedule instead of four the school needed to fill out this year, which most likely means another long trip. Poplar Bluff has had to travel to Webb City, Hannibal, Union, Jefferson City, Sedalia, St. Louis, Ozark, Gosnell, Ark., Blytheville, Ark., and Forrest City, Ark. in the last 10 years. During that time, Poplar Bluff has had just three winning seasons and one playoff appearance.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the near future.

UPDATE: To expand on the scheduling aspect, there are no district games and non-district games. The only "district" game is Week 10 when the playoff start. Teams (as I understand the proposal) do not have to schedule other teams in the district.

I'll use Cape Central as an example. The Tigers would have to schedule Jackson, Poplar Bluff, Farmington and Sikeston only because those are conference opponents, but their other five games could be anybody. Their district would include Sikeston, Perryville, DeSoto, Potosi, Hillsboro, North County and Farmington. The seedings for the district are based on the entire schedule Weeks 1-9. A win would earn a team points and a loss would take away points (here's where the 13-point total could be factored in). Games against bigger schools would earn bonus points while playing smaller schools would take away points. The strength of a team's schedule would also be factored into a bonus point system.

At the end of Week 9, the district is seeded based on the points (which MSHSAA would track all season).

This past fall, Central would be the No. 2 seed, hosting North County in the first round (or Week 10). The winner would play the Potosi-Hillsboro winner in the district semifinal. On the other side of the district, Sikeston, the top seed, would host Perryville while Farmington would host DeSoto. The district champion advances to the state quarterfinal.

ANOTHER THOUGHT: I really like the idea of a district championship game, unfortunately it would be played on a Monday night. Also, I'd like to see four quarterfinal sites around the state and those games played on Saturday afternoon followed by two bigger semifinal sites leading up to the Dome.