Political Football

Perhaps it’s appropriate that with all the political wrangling of the last week, the Southern Section finds itself embroiled in a controversy of its own, facing unprecedented debate over its weekly high school football rankings, the voting process and even the poll’s validity.

The criticism grew so heated that some advisory members took up the issue at a meeting this past week, before playoff pairings are announced today.

Section officials admit the polls are far from perfect, but caution that they simply don’t mean as much as people might think.

“Up until the final poll, the polls are more for show than seeding purposes,” section spokesman Thom Simmons said. “We’ll look at the poll, but we’ll also make adjustments when it is skewed. We don’t use it as the only measuring stick.”

That was somewhat reassuring to La Habra Coach Frank Mazzotta, miffed that his team hasn’t moved up from seventh in the Division IX poll despite victories over Troy and Fullerton, both currently ranked higher than the Highlanders.

“I don’t understand the system,” he said. “I’m not crying. I just want to know how this happens. . . . The main thing I was worried about was getting hurt in the seedings. But I’ve been told by my friends on the advisory committee not to put too much emphasis on the polls.”

Weekly rankings are only one criterion used for seeding a team, said Santa Margarita Coach Jim Hartigan, a member of the advisory committee that oversees polling and seeding for the 13 divisions. Other factors include head-to-head competition, records against ranked teams and strength of schedules.

Still, the rankings published each week in newspapers throughout the Southland are hard to discount as the playoffs approach.

“I think people are starting to get upset and they start to wonder if these rankings may stick,” Hartigan said. “Coaches start to get paranoid. It’s getting close to playoff time and there’s a lot at stake.”

The problem, critics say, is a section ranking system that is largely ignored by the coaches and media representatives who are relied upon to participate in it, leading to some eyebrow-raising results.

Each Monday morning, Simmons faxes ballots to the eight coaches who make up the polls’ advisory committee, and to five additional coaches from divisions not represented on the committee. He also accepts ballots from other coaches who wish to participate.

But the bulk of the ballots go to the media. All 35 daily newspapers in the section’s coverage area receive ballots, including The Los Angeles Times.

And how much participation does Simmons get?

“On a great day, I get a total of 15 ballots back,” he said.

Last week, Simmons received 12 ballots--five from coaches and seven from newspapers. (The Times has a staff writer assigned to ensure its ballot is completed each week.)

“There’s a lot of apathy out there,” Simmons said.

Various reasons are given for the lack of interest, especially the 1 p.m. Monday deadline to return the ballots, which include the past week’s results for the top 10 teams in each division.

Many sports reporters don’t arrive in their offices until mid-afternoon. At schools, most fax machines are located in the administration building. Coaches who are busy teaching class sometimes don’t make it to the main office until after lunch.

Sometimes, there are other glitches.

“There have been times when our secretary didn’t get the ballot to my history class in time,” Valencia Coach Mike Marrujo said.

Last week, Hartigan said he never received his ballot.

“That was a pretty important weekend for me to vote,” he said. “We had just defeated Mater Dei and I wanted to be represented.”

Simmons has heard all these stories. But he wonders how hard people are really trying to vote.

“Some people who have expressed concern have not been diligent about turning in their ballots,” he said. “People complain about the polls, but nobody wants to do anything about it. It’s something that concerns us as well. We want it to be the fairest system too. But as big as our section is, we’re absolutely reliant on participation from as many people as possible.”

Simmons would like to eliminate glaring inequities in the football polls, and he acknowledged the problem in Division IX, where Troy (6-3) was ranked fourth in last week’s poll despite losing to sixth-ranked Fullerton (7-2) and seventh-ranked La Habra (8-1).

The Division XI rankings also seemed a little odd with sixth-ranked Kennedy (7-3, 3-2) ahead of seventh-ranked Cypress (8-1, 3-1) despite losing in head-to-head competition. Loara (6-4, 5-0) was 10th despite defeating Cypress, 42-12.

The Troy ranking has apparently taken care of itself. The Warriors lost two of their last three Freeway League games and finished in fourth place.

Simmons said section rules often correct rankings that are obviously out of whack.

“If a team is ranked higher than its league champion, it can’t be seeded higher in the playoffs,” he said. “Also, a [No. 1] and a [No. 2] in a league can’t be seeded in the same half of the bracket.”

That’s of little solace for coaches like Mazzotta, who feel their teams have been mis-ranked. But he said he finds a way to use it to his team’s advantage.

“In a way, I don’t mind us being so low,” Mazzotta said. “We’ve used it for motivation. We’ve milked it for everything it is worth. As long as they’re not going to use it for playoff seeding.”

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In Reverse Gear

The football teams at Loara and La Habra have taken their respective leagues by storm this season, but you wouldn’t know it by following the Southern Section polls. Here are the standings in the Empire and Freeway leagues after the ninth week of the season, and the Southern Section polls released on Monday, Nov. 6

EMPIRE

*--*

League Overall School W L T W L T Loara 4 0 0 5 4 0 Cypress 3 1 0 8 1 0 Kennedy 3 1 0 7 2 0 Katella 1 3 0 2 7 0 El Dorado 1 3 0 2 7 0 Century 0 4 0 1 8 0

*--*

DIVISION VI

1. La Mirada, 2. Irvine, 3. Villa Park, 4. Tustin, 5. Newport Harbor, 6. Kennedy, 7. Cypress, 8. El Modena, 9. Lakewood Mayfair, 10. Loara.

*

FREEWAY

*--*

School League Overall La Habra 4 0 0 8 1 0 Fullerton 3 1 0 7 2 0 Buena Park 2 2 0 5 4 0 Troy 2 2 0 6 3 0 Sonora 1 3 0 5 4 0 Sunny Hills 0 4 0 0 9 0

*--*

DIVISION IX

1. Western, 2. Brea Olinda, 3. West Covina South Hills, 4. Troy, 5. University, 6. Fullerton, 7. La Habra, 8. Pacifica, 9. Baldwin Park, 10. Estancia.