This week figures to be an interesting one for high school football.
Week 10 of the season always is entertaining as teams fight for spots in the state tournaments. But this year will have an extra wrinkle.
In past seasons, it would be possible to take this week’s district and multi-district playoff games and basically put together a 32-team state tournament bracket. The official state tournament bracket is 16 teams.
And that meant that most teams would know if they win this week, their opponent to open state would be one of two possible teams.
But not this year.
This is the first time the WIAA is using committees to seed teams into each of the six state football tournaments.
These seeding committees are made up of coaches and athletic directors — both past and current — as well as some media members and other prep football aficionados. These committees will meet next Sunday after all Week 10 games are completed and assemble the 16-team brackets.
And I applaud the WIAA for this experiment.
I have confidence that the committees will set up brackets that will be better than the largely random draw that was used previously.
Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone will be happy with how their favorite team gets placed.
But there is no perfect solution.
Ideally, the WIAA would rather come up with some analytical ranking system that could set a fair bracket without any human input.
But every ranking system has its flaws.
RPI, which has been used to seed basketball tournaments the past two years, depends heavily on strength of schedule.
With just 10 games in a football season, that factor grows larger, meaning that teams which play in a weak league would be heavily penalized for something they can’t control — the strength of the other teams in their league.
Other ranking systems use score differential. But often scores don’t tell the whole story.
For example, Mountain View has a 49-7 win over Kelso. The Thunder also have a 49-7 win over Heritage.
So, purely by comparing scores, you might deduce that Kelso and Heritage are similar teams. However, Kelso played Heritage this season and won 37-14. So something doesn’t add up there.
The best way to judge teams is by watching them play. And that’s what these committee members have been charged to do.
But even the most dedicated committee member can’t get to every game. But as a group, the 12-person committee can see a lot of games. And working together, along with looking those other metrics, they should be able to put together good pairings.
But like I said, they may not be perfect. And there will be someone who will be unhappy.
I guarantee you next Sunday, after the seeds have been set, there will be complaints on social media that go something like “teams from (insert an area of the state) do not get any respect.”
Of course, there’s only one way to prove that. Go out and win games.
In the end, Sunday should be an exciting day, as everyone waits with anticipation for the release of the state brackets.
And that’s a step in the right direction.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep editor for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart.
