Harkness Pushing for New Playoff Structure : Prep football: City commissioner pledges to correct flaws in 4-A tournament this year.

City Section Commissioner Hal Harkness vows that this time he means business: The City will revise its football playoff system by next fall.

Harkness expressed similar intentions last year, but his plan to either eliminate divisions among the City’s 49 high schools or to divide the number of schools more evenly between two divisions was pushed to the back burner by concerns over re-leaguing. With that issue resolved until next year, the time is right for the City to address its flawed football playoff structure, Harkness said.

Critics of the current system charge that the 4-A Division playoffs have become meaningless because so few teams participate.

Last year, 37 of the City’s 49 schools competed at the 3-A level and 16 advanced to a four-round playoff. The remaining 12 teams--all of which advanced to the playoffs regardless of their record--came from three leagues, producing a 4-A playoff format that created rematches from the regular season.

Furthermore, in each of the past two seasons a team has forfeited its first-round game because injuries and/or ineligibilities depleted the squad. Cleveland forfeited last fall and Fairfax in 1989.

“I’m not picking on those two schools, but I’m embarrassed by that,” Harkness said. “It’s a black eye to the system and destroys what little integrity we have left. After we went through another year of the fiasco we currently have, our present format can’t continue without some revision.”

Although few coaches disagree with Harkness, a solution remains elusive. No one, it seems, wants to play traditional 4-A powers Banning, Carson, Dorsey, Granada Hills and San Fernando.

“The current system works well at the 3-A level,” Harkness said. “We had an exciting tournament last fall that generated lots of fan interest. But it works at the expense of the so-called higher quality schools.”

Locke Principal Ed Robbs, chairman of the Games Committee of the Interscholastic Athletics Committee, has asked for suggestions to remedy the situation. Robbs said the Games Committee will forward proposals from its March 18 meeting to IAC, which next meets April 1.

Harkness insists a decision for next season will be made at the April 1 meeting but says that whichever plan is adopted will be considered a one-year experiment.

“If we do something as drastic as going to only one division, we need to reflect on it for one year,” he said.

Monroe Coach Dave Lertzman, whose Vikings compete at the 3-A level, opposes a one-division playoff format and claims the divisions can more closely approximate a 50-50 split under the current conference system that he helped devise three years ago.

Lertzman said it was his intention that the conferences be flexible, allowing movement by conference members between leagues from sport to sport, depending on ability. In addition, each of the six conferences of eight teams (the Southeastern Conference has nine) was devised to contain one 4-A league and one 3-A league.

Lertzman suggested that each of the six conferences next fall could contain a 4-A league and a 3-A league based on last year’s won-lost records in conference play. The four conference teams with the best records would form the 4-A league; the 3-A league would consist of the other four teams. Under that plan, both the 4-A and 3-A divisions would consist of six leagues.

Under that plan, many 3-A teams could advance to the playoffs with losing regular-season records. Lertzman considers that only a minor flaw.

“I don’t see anything wrong with a playoff of teams with 3-4 records or 2-5 and a couple teams with 1-6 records,” he said. “If they’re all equal, I bet we have a great 4-A playoff and a great 3-A playoff.”