The Florida High School Athletic Association’s new playoff rules, announced in November 2016, are about to go into effect. For those who don’t know what that means, things are about to get more complicated than they were.
Under the rules used in 2016 and previous years, the district champion would advance to regionals as a high seed and host games while the runners-up would claim playoff spots and travel as the lower seeds. While the district champions still make the cut, everything afterward is going to be determined by a wins-based wild card point system.
Team wins are going to be divided into four categories based on their opponents’ win percentages. Total of games played will be divided by the total of points earned to determine final scores, though teams must play at least eight regular-season games to qualify for the playoffs. Out-of-state teams are also factored into the equation based on their own regular-season outcomes.
The best outcome your team can hope for falls into Category 1, where the opponent has won at least 80% of their games. A win would net your team 50 points and a loss would net 30. Behind that is Category 2, which awards 45 or 25 points against a team that’s won 60-79% of its games. Category 3 awards 40 or 20 points against teams that have won 40-59% of their games and Category 4, covering teams with winning percentages under 39%, awards 35 or 15 points. If an opponent only played nine games, your team will not be penalized and the points total would still be based on the percentages. Teams that forfeit receive points as if they lost the game.
Three extra points are awarded for opponents that made the playoffs in either 2015 or 2016, so any teams that have scheduled Durant or Plant City will get the bonus. A playoff appearance in 2017 grants a team the same two-year bonus point privilege.
The points system does not use win quality as a factor. For example, Durant would get the same amount of points from a 38-3 win over East Bay as Strawberry Crest would from an 8-3 win over East Bay.
The playoff field of 32 includes eight qualifiers per region, consisting of four district winners and four wild card teams, dubbed “at-large qualifiers.” This creates the possibility of three teams from the same district making the cut. Wild card points will be used in the playoffs to determine host schools when needed.
In the case of a two-team tie, the team that won the regular-season match between the two wins. If the two teams did not play each other, the best performer against Category 1 teams during the season wins. In the case of a three-way tie, Category 1 and Category 2 team wins are considered if there is still a tie after the Category 1 wins are counted. Should that not solve the tiebreaker, Category 3 wins are counted with categories 1 and 2. If all three teams are somehow still tied after all that, the playoff selection is determined by a series of coin flips.
The first school in alphabetical order calls a flip against the second school. The winner then faces the third school, which calls that flip. The winner of the coin flip advances, but a tie would create one more coin flip with the first alphabetical school calling and the winner moving to the playoffs.
For more information on the rule changes, visit ow.ly/EwhK30ercbv.