Southern Section is moving forward on competitive equity playoff groupings

Southern Section Commissioner Rob Wigod made a clear, precise presentation to league representatives on Tuesday in Long Beach at the Southern Section Council meeting on a proposal to switch to competitive equity playoff groupings beginning in the fall.

A final vote is scheduled for Jan. 27, and barring any last-minute complications, it appears to have strong support.

Currently, many of the Southern Section playoff groupings (basketball is an exception) are based on enrollment and teams are placed in playoff divisions based on what league they are in. This proposal would place individual schools into playoff divisions prior to the season using two years of statistics from a combination of past performance, playoff success and strength of schedule.

It is badly needed at a time when lots of schools complain about being in outmanned playoff divisions simply because one school in its league is so much better. For example, the proposal would give relief to schools in the Moore League, which continues to be in the Pac-5 Division for football primarily because Long Beach Poly is in the league. Ditto for the Big VIII League, where Corona Centennial forces the other schools to play in the Pac-5 because the entire league is placed there.

A key requirement to making the proposal work is for schools to imput results from 2014-15 and this season into the Southern Section data base. Without the results or with inaccurate results, the system would not work to come up with power rankings. But there will be a penalty in the proposal that schools failing to imput results would be ineligible to participate in the playoffs. Also, appeals on playoff placements would only be allowed based on inaccurate information submitted.

One of the few negatives about the proposal is that there’s a possibility in football several schools that finish in third place in their league and would be usually guaranteed a playoff spot might be eliminated. There will be 16-team brackets in football. If there’s 18 teams eligible, two would have to be removed.

Twitter:@LATSondheimer