The often confusing and at times expensive N.C. High School Athletic Association football playoff system got a little more complex on Tuesday when a group of high school football coaches and NCHSAA staff developed a method to implement the 256-team football playoffs using a pod system.The qualifying teams will be placed in eight brackets, then will be split into East and West regions, and then will be split into West, Midwest, Mideast and East pods.
The change is being made to cut costs. In recent years, some teams at the extreme ends of the state have played each other in the early rounds of the playoffs. The pod system is expected to reduce costs in each bracket.
The seeding process and bracketing has several steps:
- Teams will qualify just as they have in the past.
- The first, second and third finishers in most conferences will advance, along with enough other teams, selected based on overall records, to fill the 64-team bracket in each classification.
- Qualifying teams will be arranged within a class based on enrollment. The 64 qualifying 4-A schools, for example, will be listed by enrollment. The largest 16 qualifying schools will be assigned to the big school, or AA bracket, and the 16 smaller schools will go the to A, or smaller school, bracket. The small process will be done in each classification.
- The 32-teams in the AA playoff classification will be divided into East and West regions based on geography.
- The 16 teams in each region will be seeded according to conference finish (no conference champion can be ranked below a No. 2 finisher) and overall records. An undefeated league champion will be ranked ahead of a league champ with a loss, for example.
- After the teams are seeded by region, they will be placed in one of the four pods based entirely on geography. It is possible that the top three or more seeds from a region could be in the same pod. The No. 4 seed in the East region, for example, could be the No. 1 seed in the Mideast pod.
- Teams will be seeded in their pod, based on their initial seeding in the region. The pod seeding determines the pairings for the first three rounds. Regional finals will be played at the site of highest surviving seed from the regional seeding.
Ten head football coaches, representing each classification and region of the state, worked with the NCHSAA staff to develop the procedure.
"We tried to think of all the possibilities," said Que Tucker, the deputy NCHSAA commissioner. "It is an involved process, but you just take it step by step."
