SGV/Whittier Prep Sports Zone: Escarcega on Preps - One Year In: CIF Southern Section’s New Playoff System Proves Promising but Imperfect

Our unique perspective on Competitive Equity model and the many different perspectives.

Photo: Arnold Leos Graphics

On May 28th and 29th, the CIF Southern Section calendar for the 2024-25 season ends with the Boys Individual Tennis Championships, which will take place at Claremont Mudd Scripps College at the Biszantz Family Center. That’s 14 to 15 days if you are counting (and you can be sure every CIF Southern Section office staffer is counting).

It will also mark the end of the section’s first year of implementing the new postseason divisional playoff system, which places teams into divisions based on their current records. As we mentioned in our November 8th story, which has been updated several times, “In today’s world, it’s not about where you are in the league standings but about your power rating and position compared to your fellow membership schools within the section.”

This was the system that former commissioner Rob Wigod conceived when he was the section commissioner. He has reminded me over the years, “We wanted to roll this out in 2021, but COVID got in the way.” The section did the slow roll out and started with football first, and then the section voted in the system in 2023-24.

It wasn’t the smoothest of rollouts for football, with many coaches going on Twitter, now X, to complain about the system. However, time heals most wounds, and the coaches began to understand the playoff system. Thanks to Calpreps, now HSratings.com, teams can see in real-time where they stand regarding the playoff divisions.

We were the first media outfit to make divisional projections, and football coaches knew precisely where they stood each week. They may not have liked their position, but at least they knew, thanks to us. Remember that in that first year, several outlier teams appeared to be in divisional finals despite having no business being there.

The most significant mismatch was in Division 4, where St. Francis took on Long Beach Poly. This game looked like a mismatch on paper, game film, and other factors. At the football luncheon, we asked Commissioner Wigod about the game, and his answer was, “Let the game play itself out.” And we did play it out… with Long Beach Poly winning 38-7.

There were other factors that many had to consider. The biggest was that a team could win a league championship and then have a road game in the first round. In previous years, first-place teams always got a home game in the first round. When the new system was implemented for a division with 16 teams, the top eight seeds got a home game, and it didn’t matter if you were an automatic qualifier or an At-Large team.

As the years have progressed, the system has established itself on firmer ground. The games have become more competitive; teams that previously had no chance of winning a section title are now winning sectional titles or making deep playoff runs. Coaches, players, and fans have come to understand the system. You may not have agreed, but at least you could understand it. As the years have passed, more coaches have considered us the leading authority regarding projected divisions.

During the summer of 2024, we decided to look beyond football. We began in the winter with basketball and moved into the spring with baseball and softball, opting to produce divisional projections. In the fall, we immersed ourselves in the girls' volleyball brackets and examined how everything was organized. We reviewed the basketball preview manuals from the CIFSS and felt confident about the process we would replicate. We anticipated competition for this endeavor. Many people do it for March Madness and other collegiate sports. We didn’t mind the competition; in fact, we welcomed it.

A strange thing happened when we released our first projections in January: no one competed with us. It was quite the opposite; we faced a lot of criticism. One writer posted on X, “All this guy is doing is guessing and being a fraud. All he wants is your money.”

Seriously.

Another said, “It’s too hard to do. I welcome the effort, but it’s a waste of time.”

Ok.

Well, as we said, we made the impossible possible – but not without a lot of work. It’s one thing to do projected divisions in football with a 16-team division. It’s another thing to create a projected division when there is a 32-team bracket with an Open Division and nine other divisions that need to be filled out. It becomes a daunting task when you start examining leagues like the Mulholland League and discover schools you have never heard of.

Have you heard of Packinghouse Christian? I didn’t… until this year.

After spending a lot of time setting up spreadsheets that included league standings and records from the CIFSS website and trying to figure out how many Automatic Qualifiers each league had, we knew that we were set up for the basketball season's stretch run.

We were ready every Tuesday when the ratings were published on the CIFSS website. Let me give you a significant correlation. It's as if the CIFSS gives you a puzzle box with all the pieces—and it’s up to you to figure out where the pieces go… and there are a crap load of pieces. It took us hours, but we published our projections on Wednesdays. As each week passed, we gained more momentum.

People trusted our work and wanted to know where teams were projected to be based on the most recent ratings from the CIFSS. We became the most trusted source for coaches throughout Southern California. One San Fernando Valley coach texted me, saying, “Right now, everyone is following you, buying your stuff, and posting it on their text chains. From the 805 to the 949, you are becoming the most powerful voice for basketball coaches, and we appreciate your hard work.”

It felt good because we provided information that couldn’t be found elsewhere.

Not the LA Times.

Not MaxPreps.

Not SBLive.

Not the LA Daily News

And sure enough, when the final week of the regular season was completed, coaches called wanting to know where I thought their team would be. I had no idea because the ratings for basketball differed from those for football. From our perspective, we hadn’t seen such volatility, with teams moving up and down by 50 spots or more. Seeing “Boss Man High School” drop 120 spots from one week to another was unusual.

We did our best, and when selection day arrived, we successfully projected the majority of teams into the correct divisions. Did teams move up and down on the final printout? You bet, and we’ll address that in a moment.

Our goal was to give coaches, players, and fans an idea of their team's divisional position. It was not to project the final standings but to provide them with a sense of which division they would be in and the teams within that division, which is what coaches want to know. As for the mainstream media, you can be sure they were looking at our stuff.

Our first clue came in the final week of the regular season in boys' basketball when we hit the tape with our latest Division 1 projections. We were the first to recognize that there would be a logjam, as many of the top teams would not be able to earn an Automatic Qualifier. Despite being eligible to be an At-Large Team (with a .500 or better record), they could not secure a spot in the field.

Hours later, mainstream media writers wrote about the situation as if they had discovered it themselves. We laughed!

And sure enough, on Selection Day, those teams that knew they were on the bubble saw that they wouldn’t make the playoffs.

It happened again in baseball. We were the first media outlet to draw attention (thanks to a friendly tip) that Division 1 would have between 4 and 5 byes due to the first 27 teams in that division being automatic qualifiers. With Servite projected at the time as an At-Large team in D1 as the 28th-ranked team, we knew that byes would be implemented.

A funny thing happened several hours later: Everyone on X was posting that there would be byes in the first round as if it was some type of “breaking news.” It's funny how that works.

As was the case in basketball, when selection day came, most of the teams that we had slotted in divisions based on the final in-season report, stayed in those divisions on the final printout. One baseball coach texted us, “I have to tip my hat to you. You knew exactly what was going to happen, and it did. Great job.”

Let me make one thing clear: the process is not easy, and I understand why most people wouldn’t do it. You have to be detailed in your work, ensure that the teams have the correct league records, and, most importantly, verify that you have the correct number of total Automatic Qualifiers. Once you have that number, it’s game on!

Then, when the regular season is over, the CIFSS does an excellent job of transparency by publishing the Automatic Qualifier report. That is the holy grail for guys like me. It officially lists the teams that earned AQs. Once you have that report, you can easily copy, paste, and figure out where teams should be.

If you plan on doing anything like this next year, you'd better make sure you have reserved four to five hours because that’s the time it takes to assemble everything.

But it is a rewarding feeling when the final brackets come out. You know who moved to where, who made it into the playoffs, and who didn’t.

If there is anyone qualified to speak about the rollout of the new playoff system, it is yours truly. (Oh, and for all of you volleyball and soccer fans, please don’t email me about doing your sports; I value my time, sorry.).

Let me start with this premise: I think the new system will be a work in progress and will be successful in a short time. But there needs to be some changes. The great thing is that officials from the CIFSS know that several changes need to be made, and they will be addressed before the season starts in August.

The first thing is that some of the system's fault resides with many coaches in the CIFSS—they do not regularly report scores to the CIFSS Home Page. My guess is that teams are jumping as many as 100 spots in basketball because coaches are lazy in reporting scores. It’s easy to go to the CIFSSHOME page and input your score. I think the baseball and softball coaches did a much better job reporting scores than the basketball coaches, and that’s a shame.

No coach should see their team move more than 50 spots on selection day because other coaches are lazy in reporting scores. I had nothing but total empathy for San Marino boys basketball coach Mihail Papadopulos, who saw his team jump TWO divisions in the final printout and went from a team that was going to draw into the field as an At-Large to another division in which they had no chance to draw into the field. That is unacceptable.

It happened in baseball. Servite was the 28th-ranked team in the final in-season report on Tuesday before selection day. Servite played Arlington that day and won big. Yet in the final report, Servite DROPPED several spots to D2 and literally stole an At-Large bid away from Corona del Mar. You could understand how those at Corona del Mar were crushed on selection day. The reason was simple: not all results were reported promptly, which made everyone apprehensive about the process.

And there were others. Damien lost two out of three games to Rancho Cucamonga in the season's final week and MOVED UP more than 10 spots from a projected D3 At-Large spot to D2, never having a chance to draw into the tournament. South Hills mysteriously dropped seven spots and has to play Mater Dei on the road instead of securing a home game. You can understand Darren Murphy’s frustration.

We could go on and on. The first thing that needs to be done is for coaches to please report their scores on the CIFSS Home Page regularly. That helps with everything, making the process more seamless. I know it can be done because I looked at the softball divisions, and there was not much movement from the final in-season report to the final printout. It’s funny; I haven’t received one complaint from a softball coach in the past three days.

Another factor I feel needs to be addressed is the head-to-head factor. It has to matter. There are countless examples of a league champion being rated lower than the second-place team from the same league. In my opinion, that can’t happen. Winning a league title has to mean something, and when you slot teams inappropriately, it has a bad look. The same goes for instances where one team beats another but is rated lower on the printout. You don’t have to look any further than D1 baseball, where La Mirada beat Arcadia in the season's final week. Still, Arcadia is rated higher than La Mirada when the final printout is published. That can’t happen. Head-to-head must mean something.

I know that many frustrated basketball and baseball coaches surfaced when the final brackets were laid out, and most complaints regarding the process originated from D1 or D2 coaches. I understand their concerns. However, for every complaint, a significant number of coaches in lower divisions are thrilled with the process.

The reason is simple: the current system gives them a realistic chance of winning a sectional title. For years, they’ve had to sit on the sidelines and watch lower-placed teams from leagues such as the Mission and Baseline League win lower division titles or make the finals (i.e., St. Francis in D4 and Chino Hills in D5 in baseball last year). With the new system, those occurrences will happen less frequently. As one baseball coach told me this week, “for those coaches in D1 or D2 that are complaining, I have one thing to say, ‘Payback is bitch.’ Lower division teams have a chance to win, and that’s all we want.”

And many basketball coaches feel the same way. San Dimas boys basketball coach Jeremy Ketterling said, “... Things were done fairly.” California High School boys coach Joel Simonds said, “This system allows for every game to be much more competitive, and therefore, you have 32 seeds winning first-round games.” Keppel boys basketball coach Hung Duong told me, “All we want is a chance. And I believe that wasn’t the case the past two years. This year, I thought this was the right division for us.”

As I wrote in my March 4^th column, it's all about perspective. If you are a team from D1 or D2, you probably don’t care for the system, and I understand your point of view. You want to know the algorithms that go into a rating, and you have every right to know.

From the CIF Southern Section’s perspective, they are thrilled with the system. They see headlines such as the D1 Baseball Bracket, “the toughest bracket in the United States,” and the D1 boys' basketball final, “A Championship Game for the Ages.” And they’ve seen ticket sales skyrocket in sports such as football and basketball.

Remember that even though the Trinity and Mission League are among the most powerful leagues in the Southern Section, they aren’t the holy grail. Most of the public-school leagues voted for this system and are more than happy with the way things are going. So don’t expect the section to return to the previous system. It is here to stay.

Do we need to make tweaks in the system? Absolutely, and the section has promised to look into those changes for the 2025-26 season. And the system was never meant to be perfect in its first year. In the meantime, sit back and buckle up, baseball and softball fans. Because if the basketball playoffs were any indication, expect the unexpected. After all, in the boys basketball Div 5A final, a #32 seed (Arroyo) defeated a #31 seed (Rosemead).

Only in competitive equity.

Enjoy!