I keep writing about the NJSIAA and committees and football, because, if you are paying attention, this is where significant change to the structure of HS football in New Jersey is going to come from.
Today, a rather important group of coaches met down in Robbinsville at NJSIAA Headquarters. They are the NJSIAA Football Committee, and they make suggestions or recommendations to the NJSIAA for changes in the sport. Although the suggestions still have some hurdles to clear, it is very likely what they proposed today would be/could be enacted in time for the 2015 season. Again, it still has several committees to go through, so don’t send me emails saying that all this is set in stone. It’s not.
So what did they discuss? And why does swimming matter in all this?
- 3 groups instead of 4 for non-public football playoffs
- No more geographic sections for public school football playoffs, sort of
- enacting punishments for teams that forfeit scheduled games
- opening day of practice; first day of scrimmages
- how much contact a team can have in practice
So where do you want to begin?
I will start with what I think was the most significant, which is the public school idea.
Currently, we have 5 public school groups that play in 4 different sections (North 1, Group 1 for example) and we finish with – gulp – 25 sectional champions in public school football in New Jersey.
(Reminder: New Jersey is the only state in America that plays HS football this way. This is also why none of New Jersey’s football records can be considered national records. Just saying).
So what the committee proposed and approved today is essentially saying, no more sections in pre-season.
The way it would work is in each of the 5 groups 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The Top 32 teams regardless of geographic location based on power points would qualify for the state playoffs.
Those 32 teams would then be divided into 4 sections of 8 by their “Northing” number. What is a Northing number? Essentially, the state numbered every school based on its location. Cape May, for example, is like a 1, because it’s the southern most tip. High Point then would be like 1000. (It’s not really like that, but you get my drift, the more north you are, the higher your number).
The 8 most northern schools would play in 1 section (Call it Section 1, Group 1), the next most northern schools in the next section (Call it Section 2, Group 1) and the next 8 (Section 3, Group 1) and the southern-most would be in the final section (Section 4, Group 1).
I was told the sections would retain their current names, North 1, North 2, Central and South, but we will see.
And what sport was one of the first to do this? Swimming. This kind of thing was created in swimming as a pilot program several years ago, and has stuck around. The idea in swimming was the bulk of the better teams in the state were centered around 1 geographic area, and it wasn’t fair to have those teams meet in a sectional final and not a state final.
I asked Drew Gibbs, Ramapo coach and member of the Football Committee, and he said that they took a survey in the New Jersey Football Coaches Association and this idea got tremendous support. He said the idea was to not keep a 5-3 team that was in say, North 1, Group 1 out of the playoffs, over a 2-6 team in Central, Group 1.
He also said they did a study over the last 2 years, and only one time did the chips fall where two teams that eventually were sectional champs would have met in the playoffs.
So, maybe this is a big change, maybe it’s not.
But I’m seeing it as another step toward, ahem, playing down to Group state champions in football. I mean, this way, you truly have a final four kind of set-up. And what happens if, next year….let’s take public Group 3 from last year.
By power points this would be your top 12 if you combined all 4 sections.
1. Cranford (North 2)
2. Sparta (North 1)
3. Ramapo (North 1)
4. Allentown (South)
5. Summit (North 2)
6. River Dell (North 1)
7. Delsea (South)
8. Hopewell Valley (Central)
9. Long Branch (Central)
10. Bridgeton (South)
11. Par Hills (North 2)
12. Carteret (Central)
So let’s play it forward, Carteret ended up playing in the Central Group 3 final (they lost). But were they one of the truly best 4 Group 3 teams in New Jersey? I don’t know. I don’t anything about them. Matawan won the section. If Matawan had been in North 1, they would have been the 8 seed. They had fewer power points then Bergenfield. So, like you could end up with a situation where in a certain group, the winners are like your overall No. 1 seed, No. 6 seed, No. 15 seed and No. 22 seed. Is that good or bad?
You know what would settle this all? A real public school state champion playing it all the way down, but Darren is dreaming.
Now, the non-public school format.
As of now, there are like 39 non-public football schools in New Jersey. For some reason they play in 4 groups, so like 7 teams don’t make the playoffs, and it’s actually even less than that. And then, lately, we have had a couple of teams back out of playing their first round playoff game because they feared for their teams health and safety. The NJSIAA allowed them to back out, but I think regrets it now, because it opened up a big can of worms (and gave me plenty to write about).
In fact, the committee changed the date on that, saying that if a team is going to participate in the playoffs it has to let the NJSIAA know by Nov. 2nd, not after the regular season is over.
It’s pretty easy to see that the Non-Public football pie should be cut differently, and that’s just what the football committee recommended. Instead of 4 groups, only have 3.
The top 10 teams (based on enrollment) will be in Group 4 (I bet they call it A-B-C). The next 10 will be in the middle group (Let’s call it Group B) and the final 14 teams would be in C. My info was that there are 34 schools playing football total.
8 teams would make the playoffs in the 3 groups. So 24 of the 34 get in. That’s still a lot, but Ok.
So as it stands right now, to get to 10 schools in the biggest group, someone would have to move up from 3 to 4. Had we gone with this plan this year. Non-Public 4 (Ok, Non-Public A) would have included St. John Vianney. They are the biggest of the Group 3s.
However, it’s pretty close with Vianney (748 students), St. Joes (722) and Red Bank Catholic (721). So it is possible should this pass all the various committees, then suddenly, your Non-Public A classification could include Bergen, Bosco, Paramus Catholic, St. Peter’s and, St. Joes.
Also, if you re-slice the pie this way, guess what team is the biggest Non-Public Group 2 school and would now have to play up into Group B?
DePaul. The two-time defending Non-Public 2 state champs are the biggest by enrollment and would then play in the middle class along with Pope John, Delbarton and maybe St. Joes.
So, next year, 2015 state finals at MetLife Stadium? Bosco-Bergen in Non-Public A, St. Joes-DePaul in Non-Public B? It could happen.
Hmm, just saying.
By the way, the guy I talked to about this was St. Joe’s AD/Former coach Tony Karcich, and he said while he resisted for a while, he understands that yes, his team can and would compete in the biggest non-public classification.
Tony also mentioned a novel idea, one that many states use (including my home state of Louisiana) allowing teams to “play up” meaning if a team desired it could ask to play up in to Non-Public A, or Non-Public B, and a corresponding team could ask to bump down.
And listen, I know this all sounds complicated but I’m going to quote a very smart person, Denis Nelson from River Dell, who explained this to me a long time ago. The best way to build a system that works is to have “built-in flexibility.” I know that kind of sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it’s very true.
Ok, about forfeits. This is an issue that is not going away, trust me. I may have more to say on this tomorrow, because Eastside isn’t the only school actively considering a forfeit next year.
So, the football committee talked about that as well, and what they passed was that a school that forfeits a game willingly must then accept that number as part of their power point total. In other words, let’s say Eastside forfeits to Bosco….right now the system says that teams play 8 regular season games, and counts their best 7 power point results. You can get a surprising number of points even losing. For a school thinking they would forfeit, it’s almost like, who cares? We wouldn’t get many power points anyway, now they would get even less.
So if Bosco is 6-0 and Eastside forfeits this fall, the Ghosts would have to use the 6 points they got from that Bosco forfeit toward their power point total. Also, they wouldn’t get any of the Bosco ‘residual’ power points. Meaning they would be kind of capped as how many they get if they forfeit.
(I’m not a power point expert, but I think you get my point).
Would this hurt a team trying to make the playoffs? It certainly would. Would it be enough to prevent them from forfeiting? Probably not. But we will have to see how it plays out. There are a lot of moving parts here.
The committee also approved the measure that teams can only have up to 90 minutes of contact per week in practice. There was much discussion about just what “contact” was. The way it was explained to me was basically, any situation where there is no pre-determined outcome. Hit a sled. Hit a tackling dummy…that’s pre-determined. Nutcracker drill? Live 11 on 11 in pads. That’s not. That’s contact.
A few other tidbits.
First official day of fall practice is August 10th. First day teams can scrimmage, August 17th. My first blog about a scrimmage – August 18th. (Ok, I made that last one up)
They have changed the name of consolation games to “regional crossover” games. Lipstick on a pig, but whatever. It does sound better.
They are fixing that power point snafu that knocked Pal Park/Leonia out of the playoffs last year. But that’s way too complicated to explain all over again here. Let me find the link to that story.….Ok. There you go.
One last very interesting item, my friend Carmine Picardo was also at the meeting. Carmine was one of my Top 40 Power Players in North Jersey athletics. He is the head of officials and assigner for NJSIAA playoff games. Carmine expressed to the committee how since there are so many games on Friday nights now, there just aren’t enough officials to go around. There aren’t enough crews. Carmine would like to see more games moved to Saturday afternoon, or have leagues maybe switch one game a week to Thursday night to ease the crunch. This wasn’t anything the committee acted on, but it is something to be mindful of.
