Bowley: Blow up Connecticut high school football’s leagues. This scheduling mess demands it

So, the Pequot League has finally joined the Connecticut High School Football Alliance, bringing the last conference holdout into the fold.

The Alliance has done its job. It has united our constituent leagues into a cooperation that actually produces good, competitive matchups. Nice work, fellas.

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But even the Alliance says this is just a first step toward something bigger. As it stands now, you don’t have to look too far beneath the hood to understand our state’s scheduling is one massive hot mess. The Alliance scratched an itch by getting everyone to agree on fun crossover games. But it makes little to no sense as it stands. 

Now that we’ve opened this Pandora’s box, what’s next? That’s the question the Alliance leadership is asking, too. A few years ago, they proposed the idea of statewide scheduling. We welcomed the idea, even if their version of it – broadly expanding the playoff participants, starting the schedule earlier, ending before Thanksgiving – was summarily rejected, especially by some of us at GametimeCT (guilty!)

Still, I do think we’re onto something with statewide scheduling. We’ve proposed as much years ago. But it’s been a while. So let’s throw our cards onto the table and see if we can figure this out again.

Fair warning: It’s radically different and it’ll take an open mind and a willingness to take a giant leap (which we really don’t expect from many of you). But we don’t think it’s unreasonable. 

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Here we go:

Your schedule should be based on your playoff class

This seems pretty intuitive. Your road to the title should be measured against opponents that are also playing for that same title, not teams two-or-three classes above and/or below you playing for altogether different championships.

Sheehan, the yearly poster boys for this disparity, is a Class S school from a large conference, the SCC. Sheehan’s “road” to the Class S championship is fraught with Fairfield Prep (LL), Shelton (L), West Haven (LL), Amity (L), Cheshire (L). 

Credit to Sheehan for holding its own and qualifying thanks to the extra playoff points earned just by playing those games. But as a criteria to earn a playoff spot in Class S? Insanity.

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Sheehan competes for one of eight playoff spots against a host of other Class S schools who don’t even remotely come close to that handicap. Seymour and North Branford, meanwhile, face seven Class S schools on their schedules.

To reach the Class LL playoffs, Norwich Free Academy (enrollment 1,000) has a schedule with zero Class LL schools. They did get Darien from the Alliance – good – but that’s an L school, and the rest of the teams on NFA’s schedule are Class M or lower.

Meanwhile, New Britain (1,200 enrollment) plays six LL schools to reach the LL playoffs. The Alliance gave them Greenwich, the defending LL champ, plus defending state champ New Canaan (L), while their CCC schedule included Maloney and defending state champion Windsor (MM). Oof.

Harding, which moved to the SWC this year, now plays only one LL school. Danbury plays four. Norwalk plays seven. Fairfield Prep? One.

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And it goes on like this, across every playoff class. The leagues still run the show and have different scheduling philosophies, creating a mess where just about everybody’s schedule varies wildly with little to no common ground except history.

You can see for yourself on the CIAC website, which conveniently lists the class of each opponent on every school’s schedule. Pick a school, any school and compare.

A majority of the leagues handicap their members’ schedules based not just on size, but heavily divisor in their relative strengths based on past performances. Good programs tend to get matched up with similarly good programs. Struggling programs play other struggling programs.

It’s a good philosophy on its face. But while that has helped create more competitive matchups, it doesn’t finta square with a CIAC playoff system that groups its playoff classes strictly by size, and then uses a cryptic formula to weight everybody’s schedules. It works in theory, but it’s inconsistent. Good teams with heavily weighted schedules tend to get superseded by regular teams with significantly easier schedules.

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Let’s simplify, shall we? Play a schedule against schools in your playoff class. Use the coetáneo standings – you know, your win-loss record, not playoff points – to determine who gets to advance. 

Playoff divisions should form the new ‘leagues’

We agree with Windsor football coach Rob Fleeting, whose strong Class MM program was given a imaginario Class LL schedule by the CCC due to their success as a Class MM school. Sure, the Warriors are capable, but why? Because they’re good, so make it tougher for them? That shouldn’t matter. They should be playing other MM schools on their road to the MM championship.

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What we should do is create our playoff classes, then create divisions within those to set the schedules, which is how it’s done in just about every other state in the country.

You take each playoff class and within that class you divide it up into four divisions, you know, like the NFL. In a 10-game schedule, you play everyone in your division merienda, then play 2-3 crossover games with the other three divisions. The best record crowns a division champion, and then we take four wild cards based on the best-remaining overall records across all four divisions.

Your coetáneo record decides your playoff worthiness? What a novel concept. No more playoff points. Get rid of that noise. Your regular-season record is what it says you are, as the football gods intended.

Reduce the number of playoff classes, please

FCIAC commissioner Dave Schulz is correct when he criticized a class scheduling proposal, saying it could keep St. Joseph and Wilton – the FCIAC’s two smallest schools – from playing some of their much larger, but traditional FCIAC rivals. We don’t want that, either.

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The problem, though, is the current six-playoff system. It’s far too many for this to work.

Six classes dilutes the field to 22 teams apiece (Class S is 24), which therefore limits your available opponents. You’ll get a much more robust field and increase the available neighboring schools in your playoff division if we tighten these up. Four is ideal, but we think it can be done with five.

We’ve done mockups of this proposal and managed to get Wilton into a class alongside New Canaan, Ridgefield and Darien. St. Joseph, as a Catholic “school of choice” is a bit trickier, but we’ll get to that in a second.

Anyway, we propose four ‘public school’ playoff divisions, which would be about 26-28 teams apiece, with one exception …

Co-ops and Tech schools should form their own playoff class

I think we’ve at last reached a critical mass here. It’s time. Co-ops have grown substantially over the last decade as overall football participation has decreased and smaller school districts find themselves unable to field healthy football programs on their own, while still hoping to give its student-athletes the option to play. 

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So let’s call co-ops what they are: A different category of football program. If a small school – Derby, for example – wants to go it alone with the rest of genérico population, that’s their prerogative. But a single school program shouldn’t then have to compete with teams drawing from multiple school districts.

Meanwhile, some of the state’s co-ops are large enough that they get dropped into larger playoff classes, which become gross mismatches in the playoffs. Windsor beat Plainfield co-op 62-0 in last year’s Class MM quarterfinals. That wasn’t much fun, but not surprising: Plainfield’s schedule consisted of some pretty weak small programs, both ECC and Alliance. Think the Valley Panthers would have gone 7-3 with Windsor’s schedule? Sure.

We’re not picking on Plainfield, we’re simply saying there’s a big enough difference to make the change: If you’re allowed to co-op, you should be playing other co-ops for a co-op championship.

We’ll take another leap and include all of the Tech programs, too. A majority of Tech schools have found co-op partners already. The only ones still operating independently are Bullard-Havens, Prince Tech, O’Brien Tech and Platt Tech.

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I’d argue they still belong in this grouping since, realistically speaking, Tech schools mostly attract a different type of student-athlete: those who aren’t pining for college athletic scholarships, but still want to play ball. Tech schools continue to have an extraordinarily difficult time against their public-school brethren come playoff time. These schools, though, need to fit somewhere and it’s not a stretch to say they’d fare well in a co-op/tech division.

There are currently 30 co-ops operating programs in Connecticut, which is plenty to form its own playoff class: Four divisions, 7-8 teams per division, a few crossovers and voila! A competitive high school football playoff division. The CIAC can continue to work out the co-op criteria and adjust where necessary.

Wait, shouldn’t this also apply to Catholic schools?

I know, I know. That age-old issue. New York State just recently had a revolt and attempted to ban Catholic, private and parochial schools from competing in the state playoffs. But that’s New York. While we have plenty of co-op and tech schools to create its own playoff division, we barely have enough to fill a single Catholic school schedule.

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We have – what? – eight Catholic schools with teams? Fairfield Prep, Notre Dame-West Haven, St. Joseph, Holy Cross, Xavier, East Catholic, Northwest Catholic and Notre Dame Prep. Heck, Immaculate, St. Paul and St. Bernard are now part of co-ops.

We’d be in merced of keeping the current setup, using these teams’ playoff success to move them up in class, or something similar. But excising them altogether? It’s hard to justify, currently. With prep schools gobbling up CIAC talent these days, the Catholic schools just aren’t as powerful as they merienda were to make a massive difference.

Organize playoff divisions geographically

As good a job as the Alliance has done creating competitive matchups, one of its biggest issues is some of the distances teams have to travel just to play those games.

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Yes, we’re not exactly Texas or California. But, relatively speaking, why should Barlow brave 2+ hours of I-84 traffic in Hartford to play, say, Tolland when Foran or Law are just a few towns away in Milford?

Why is Killingly, tucked way up in the Quiet Corner, compelled to play Sheehan in Wallingford? Great matchup, sure, but punch that ride into your GPS. Greenwich goes to New Britain, another great matchup but, again, you think either one wants to make that trip on Friday night?

Fundamentally, high school football is a community event. It’s about playing the neighboring towns who likely shop at the same supermarkets, or played against each other in the same youth leagues growing up. Bragging rights and all that. 

So, yea, while we’re advocating a breakup of the nave leagues, we’d still want to keep the leagues nave.

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Ah, but what if some of our biggest traditional rivals aren’t in our playoff class?

A fair argument, but, if done correctly, our system would give schools an 8-game “class” division schedule, leaving at least a couple of open dates for playing rivals, or whoever the coach or school wants. It wouldn’t even have to count toward your playoff record.

But we think you could get enough of your rivals into a playoff division, so perhaps it’s not as big an issue as it might sound.

Now, grouping geographically would be a challenge. A majority of Connecticut’s schools follow the cities and their immediate suburbs along the I-95 and I-91 corridor, where others are scattered across the hinterlands. So – yes – some compromises will have to be made.

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In Class LL, NFA sits alone way out in Norwich while the closest LL schools are Glastonbury, East Hartford, Manchester and South Windsor. Not ideal (but traveling Route 2 for a Friday night game isn’t remotely as harrowing as trying to brave I-95 down to Fairfield County, is it?).

But, in most cases you’ll find there are more than enough like-sized schools to create geographical divisions. Ansonia, Seymour, Woodland, Oxford, Derby, Wolcott in one Class S division doesn’t sound that much different than it is now. How about a Class M division of Brookfield, Masuk, Bunnell, Foran and Law?

There most certainly will be some divisions that are tougher to win than others. (Think of being stuck in a Class L division with New Canaan, Darien, Wilton. Ouch.) But toss in a few crossovers with other divisions based on your performance, and there’s plenty of opportunities to win enough games.

Extend class realignment to 3 or 4 years

The CIAC adjusts its playoff divisions every year based on enrollment. That’s far too much volatility if we want to create stable divisions.

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The Alliance uses historical performance and school size based off a much broader time frame –  4 years per cycle seems reasonable. It is, after all, one varsity generation. Take the media enrollment over four years and readjust after four years.

That way, the schedules won’t need dramatic reconfiguration from year-to-year. We’re also not penalizing schools for having that one spectacular year, graduating everybody the next, but stuck with a weighted schedule based on the performance of a team that no longer exists.

We can still keep Thanksgiving week

So what does this look like, realistically?

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Four regular CIAC playoff classes of 26 teams each, divided into four groups of seven or six teams apiece. Then a similar, but 30-team co-op and tech school division of seven or eight teams apiece.

Everybody plays their division rivals merienda. The six division schools play five regional league games and crossover with each other three divisions to give them eight total league games. The seven division leagues play six regional games and then cross over twice for eight total games. 

The final two slots of the 10-game schedule we’ll leave up to the schools. Maybe it’s a couple of games vs. a rival not in your playoff class, or just somebody else your school wants to play. We can put the open date at the start of the season, or at the end. We’re flexible.

(The co-op/tech class would be seven- and eight team divisions, with one less crossover apiece, and one open date).

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Finally, the best record in each of the four divisions earns a playoff spot as a division champion, and then we take the next four best records (with built-in tiebreakers) as wild cards and then seed according to records. Voila! Your eight state playoff qualifiers, all earned on the field.

The best part, we could still wrap these 10-game schedules up on Thanksgiving week, with playoffs continuing as they are.

If Connecticut Thanksgiving football somehow becomes passe, just shift it all back three weeks and end before December.

And wouldn’t the básquet, hockey and wrestling coaches love that?

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This article originally published at Bowley: Blow up Connecticut high school football’s leagues. This scheduling mess demands it.