Commentary: On high school football’s playoff qualification format, late August start and WJFL realignment

Posted: October 23rd 2023

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

High school football in New Jersey has a lot going for it and has never been more popular.

Thousands of fans across the state will pack high school stadiums this weekend to see first-round state playoff games.

Playoffs were expanded quite some time ago, allowing more teams the opportunity to play in the postseason. Public school programs around New Jersey can now compete for state championships. That wasn’t the case until last season.

But there have also been quite a few developments that might not necessarily be good for the game.

The relatively new state playoff qualification system, which creates standings and seedings through what’s known as the United Power Ranking (UPR), a combination of power points and opponents’ strength index (OSI), leaves a little to be desired.

Locally, we have a team in Lower Cape May that essentially missed out on a Group II playoff berth because of one bad half. The Tigers are a division champion for the first time in 41 seasons after beating Gateway Saturday, but missed the playoffs due to a very poor OSI. For the most part, Lower’s opponents consisted of small schools who simply weren’t very good this year. Back on Aug. 31, Lower held a two-touchdown lead at the half against Clayton, only to see the Clippers rally for a 26-21 win. Had Lower won that contest, it would have automatically qualified for the playoffs as an unbeaten team.

Instead, Lower’s 7-1 record wasn’t enough. Yet, Rartian, which is just 2-6, made the Group II field due to a high OSI that trumped its lower power-point standing. Same with Salem in Group I, which is just 2-7. Delran, just 2-7, narrowly missed the 16-team playoff field in Group II, placing 17th, four places above Lower Cape May.

You can fault Lower for playing a weak schedule. However, most of their games came through West Jersey Football League scheduling and through no fault of their own. Yes, you can make the argument that the Tigers should have somehow figured out a way to play Middle Township. And you can make the argument that Lower never should have lost to Clayton after leading by 15 points at halftime.

But winning has to matter, and Lower won seven of its eight games. Teams with that kind of resume shouldn’t be playing in a consolation game this weekend while teams with two victories in eight or nine games are in the playoff field.

Should strength of schedule matter when determining playoff qualifiers? Sure. But teams with two victories shouldn’t be part of the playoff field just because they played tough competition. Raritan has been shut out three times and has lost five of its six games by at least three touchdowns. Salem has lost five of its seven games by three touchdowns or more and its only two victories are over teams that have three combined wins. Do they look like teams that should be in the playoffs?

Adding to the insult for Lower Cape May is that its consolation game this week is at Roselle on Saturday. So we have a team that went 7-1 in the regular season forced to make a 280-mile round trip to play a consolation game.  

That might be even more preposterous than Lower not making the playoff field.

Then there’s the makeup of the schedule itself. Expanded playoffs have pushed the start of the regular season for some teams to the weekend before Labor Day weekend. That means many teams are playing two games before school even begins and, in many cases, teams have half of their regular season complete before the calendar officially changes to autumn.

So much for football being a fall sport.

There are many high school football observers around the state pushing the narrative that the early start of football is a great thing. The more football the better, they say. Apparently, they don’t have anything better to do in the waning days of summer. Me? I’d rather be sipping a drink while watching the sunset on Friday evenings in late August, not in a stuffy press box watching high school football in the sweltering heat.

The expansion of playoffs basically benefits the 5 to 10 percent of teams around the state who have legitimate state championship aspirations. Meanwhile, all programs are forced to begin preseason practices before the smoke clears on Fourth of July fireworks shows, all because the regular season needs to begin as early as possible in order to fit all of the playoff games in before Christmas.

In a state in which the seasons in every other sport have been made shorter, football has gotten longer. Many like that. I’m not so sure it’s prudent, especially when for some teams the season comes to a close before we get to see children in Halloween costumes.

Now, to a third issue.

The West Jersey Football League has its strong points. It’s easier on scheduling for everybody. There’s a great focus on the league since every high school playing football in South Jersey is a part of it. But its alignment of divisions is sometimes difficult to understand.

The WJFL wants to have similarly-talented teams in the same divisions each year to create better competition. It’s a noble idea in theory.

The problem, however, is that the league realigns every two years, based on how each program has performed over the previous two-year span. But that realignment does not, for the most part, take into account the future makeup of each program.

For example, Middle Township and Lower Cape May have each won 13 combined games over the past two seasons going into this week. So each of those teams will most likely be moved “up” in divisional alignment for next season, in theory giving each a more difficult schedule. What is not taken into account, however, is that each of those teams will be losing more than half of their starters to graduation. So both teams could be moving to more difficult divisions while fielding teams that may not be as competitive as this season. 

Then there’s the flip side of that scenario. Take Ocean City, for example. The Raiders were 3-5 in the 2023 regular season playing a very difficult schedule this fall, qualifying for the Group IV playoffs. The team could be moved “down” a division at the next realignment, even though many of its better players, especially on defense, are set to return next year. They may have a better team in 2024 but could be playing against weaker competition.

WJFL alignment has vastly helped the teams that traditionally struggle and the teams that are traditionally elite. Wildwood, for example, has gotten a much better and more manageable schedule now that it’s in the lowest-ranked division in the WJFL. And the elite programs like Millville and Cherokee get to play other elite teams on a weekly basis. But quite a few of the teams in between keep getting bounced around from division to division on a two-year basis, making the maintaining and/or development of rivalries practically impossible. The way the league realigns can be counterproductive to why it is realigning in the first place.

There’s no reason teams from schools with similar enrollments located close to one another geographically shouldn’t be in the same division each year. Instead, we see Lower Cape May and Middle Township in different divisions. Same goes for Ocean City and Mainland. And Absegami and Cedar Creek. And Millville and Vineland. You get the picture.

It’s part of the reason why some Cape-Atlantic League schools have whispered about leaving the WJFL and reforming a CAL-only football setup.