the Work Week Quarterback (WWQB) - Thoughts and Notes

PHOTO BY ROBERT WILLETT - THE NEWS & OBSERVER

the Work Week QB is Here!

The PAC-6 appears to be solidifying their top three berths for the playoffs based on the results from this past Friday.  We knew going into the games that either the race for those three spots would either become incredibly undecided or else the favorites would exert their might and put some quality distance between the top half of the conference and the bottom  half.  The only game that appeared to be completely up in the air was the Northern Durham at East Chapel Hill game [Knights and Wildcats for First Place?], where the Knights showed dominance on the ground, while the Wildcats struggled to hold onto the ball, leading to Northern equaling their conference win total from a year ago and positioning themselves strongly to at worst end up as the third place finisher, unless some crazy upsets occur over the next three weeks, and with it an automatic bid to the 2011 playoffs.

Bull City Alum

The Bull City has been fortunate to see a number of their student-athletes move on to the collegiate level in a number of sports.  The opening picture is of Jordan alum T.J. Thorpe, currently in his first year at North Carolina.  T.J. has been the primary kick-off return specialist for the Tarheels so far this season and the photo by News & Observer photographer Robert Willett is from the game against Virginia earlier this year.

Playoff Odds and Ends

We've hit the blog hard with a lot of playoff talk, so be sure to check out our recent posts to get up to speed on how it may or may not affect your favorite team.  [When Does 4 Wins Not Equal 4 Wins?], [Multiple Endowments, Oh My!], [Talking Playoffs and Conference Winning Percentages], [NCHSAA Handbook Football], and from last year, our description of how the playoff process will work - [T-Minus One Month = Playoff Time] - aside from a few changes over the past year.


Thinking Bull City Pigskin and the Playoffs

Hillside continued its dominance within the Bull City and PAC-6 in general with a convincing 36-7 victory over cross-town rival Jordan.  The Hornets still have three conference games to go with their regular season finale against Northern Durham potentially shaping up to be for the conference crown.  The Hornets sit at 6-1 overall and 3-0 in the conference and would appear to be in a strong position to nab one of the top three slots, unless what most would consider a huge upset here or there were to occur.  Assuming a complete collapse were to occur, the Hornets would finish at 6-4 and 3-3 (0.500) in conference.  With only ten games on the schedule, they'll retain their full record from the reporting perspective and if they had to go in as an at-large would be in a solid position with six reportable wins and the 0.500 conference winning percentage.  These final three games will be about playoff positioning and Bull City Pride.

Talking Playoffs and Conference Winning Percentages

PHOTO BY ROBERT WILLETT - THE NEWS & OBSERVER

There are a number places that one can find themselves mired down and completely and utterly confused when thinking about whether a particular team will make the playoffs or where they might be seeded if in fact they do make the field of 64.  But, of late I've seen a recurring discussion about where conference winning percentage plays into the mix and from the discussion I've seen it appears that the confusion simply continues.

About a year ago I posted an extensive outline on how the selection process and seeding would occur for the 2010 playoffs.  Rather than go through this process all over again, I'll simply point you to the following story, [T-Minus One Month = Playoff Time], and caution you to take note of the following.  First, this was done a year ago, so disregard all talk about specific teams, as it deals completely with the 2010 season.  Second, there is discussion about dropping a non-conference game for those that played an endowment.  Obviously that has changed since a year ago and I would direct you to one of the following two posts [When Does 4 Wins Not Equal 4 Wins?] and [Multiple Endowments, Oh My!] to get up-to-date on that angle.  Once you've gotten through those items, the rest should be good to go for this year.  But before you delve deep into that post (the T-Minus One Month post), if you scan down all the way to the end (of that post), you'll see a footnote of sorts.  Essentially, it's a footnote about conference winning percentage and how it plays into the process and the fact that the wording and set-up in the NCHSAA handbook [NCHSAA Handbook Football] is a bit ambiguous on this area.  I would add that as you read this year's handbook, you'll leave essentially in the same state, a bit confused and not so sure.  But, I took the time to look through last year's playoffs and I think I may have this down now, based on the data from last year's bracket.

The reasonably debatable question is about how conference winning percentage plays into the selection process IF more than 64 teams qualify based on the following two criteria.  First, the number of automatic qualifiers are selected (1-3 place finishers in a single classification conference and 1-2 place finisher in split classification conference).   Second, all teams not in that first group that reach the four win plateau.  At this point, if between the two of those situations we have more than 64 teams the handbooks says that they will move to conference winning percentage to select who makes the playoffs.  What is unclear in the wording is how exactly that is done.

To be more specific, it would be easy for someone to read what is written in the handbook and say that if you have more than 64 teams selected then they move to conference winning percentage to select everyone.  It's simply ambiguous.  So I looked back over last year's playoff bracket to get a definitive answer and here is what I determined.

Multiple Endowments, Oh My!

PHOTO BY LIZ CONDO - THE NEWS & OBSERVER

The following is an addendum to our post from yesterday entitled 'When Does 4 Wins Not Equal 4 Wins?' [Link to previous story].  Suggest you read that post prior to delving into the additional information below.

In further discussions since the original story was posted I was made aware (and went back to read the handbook a few more times) that in fact teams can actually have more than one endowment game (assuming NCHSAA approval)!  The key here is that any team can only have a total of 11 games in the season (there are only 11 weeks of playable dates).  If you play an 11 game schedule, you must have one of those games as an endowment.  If you play a 10 game schedule you can still have an endowment game.  So here are some additional points.  According to the NCHSAA football handbook, you must report a 10 game schedule at the end of the year.  So, if you are a team that has played only 10 games without an endowment, easy, you report that entire record, no games are dropped.  If you played a 10 game schedule and one of those games was an endowment, then you also keep that 10 game record. You don't drop the endowment in this case.  Or at least that is what it appears the handbook is saying.  It does not explicitly say this, rather the exact quote is as follows:

"Each school will only report a record indicating a total of 10 games and must drop the designated non-conference endowment game, provided they played an 11th game (endowment)."  NCHSAA handbook - section on football, page 53. [Link to NCHSAA Football Handbook Section]

As I read that, it looks to be saying what I wrote above for teams that played a 10 game schedule and also had one of those games listed as an endowment game.  You keep all of your games, the dropping of the game only occurs when you've played 11 total games and of course in that situation, one of them would have been an endowment.

Now, if you played an 11 game schedule and one of those games was an endowment.  You drop that game, the endowment game, again getting you down to a 10 game reportable schedule.

Where it may get a bit more interesting is that you can potentially play 'two' or more endowment games.  But, you had to designate prior to the season beginning which of those 'multiple' endowment games you chose to drop, win or lose.  This gets even more interesting due to at least one example that I've unearthed.  Jordan, Wake Forest-Rolesville and Panther Creek.  According to both the Jordan athletic sports calendar [Link to calendar posting] and Wake Forest-Rolesville athletic sports calender [Link to calendar posting], their contest that opened the season was an endowment game.  Not a big deal you say.  Sure, means that both teams drop that game.  Jordan gets rid of one of their losses, WFR has to give up a win (although that is tough on their end as it would have been nice to give up that East Wake loss instead, which would of been how it worked given last year's rules).  But, enter Panther Creek.  According to the article run by J. Mike Blake in the Cary News on Wednesday, 10/5/2011 [Link to article], it is reported that Panther Creek will play an endowment against Jordan, later this month.  Interesting or maybe not.  So, could the Jordan at Panther Creek game be an endowment, but simply not be the endowment designated by Jordan, but was designated by Panther Creek?  That's what it appears to be, at least based on all of the information.  And, it's important to note that as the NCHSAA handbook reads, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with this situation - perfectly fine in fact.  Still, you can see how a very complex system is simply getting more complex and I can't help but think that this may lead to just a bit more confusion come Selection Saturday.  If everything runs smoothly, kudos to the NCHSAA and athletic directors and coaching staffs across North Carolina for being tuned into these new changes!

Photographs courtesy of newsobserver.com (The News & Observer)

When Does 4 Wins Not Equal 4 Wins?

PHOTO BY CHRIS SEWARD - THE NEWS & OBSERVER

Glad you asked, or, perhaps you didn't because for a number of years now reaching that magical four win plateau in North Carolina high school football has meant at least a shot of making the big dance the first few weeks of November.  Well, based on recent changes by the NCHSAA and the new 10 games schedules (or 11 game schedule) in 11 weeks, this hard and fast rule of getting to 4 wins has become just a bit more convoluted.  For those coaches and administrators that read through the NCHSAA handbook prior to this season or maybe more importantly prior to deciding to either add that endowment game or not, this is probably not that big of deal - even more so if they let everyone else that didn't have a handbook know what they found out.  For those that didn't read it thoroughly and thought the high school football world of 2011 was on a standard operating procedure of 2010 and prior - well, today may not be what you would call a good day.

So what is this big change, how does it deal with the mythical four wins and why should anyone care you ask?  It's all about the endowment and that '11th' game.  To be blunt - it doesn't really exist.  See, prior to this year, if you played an eleven game schedule with an endowment game you had the opportunity to 'get-rid-of' any non-conference game on your schedule to get you down to the 10 game reportable schedule for playoff consideration.  This meant that if you played Team X as the endowment game and won, played four other teams in non-conference and won all of them but one (putting you at 4-1 in non-conference play), then when it came to reporting that 10 game schedule you could ditch that one non-conference loss and effectively be 4-0 in non-conference play, thanks to your endowment game!  So what's the problem you say?  Well, over the past year things changed and teams are no longer able to operate under the above mentioned criteria.  Specifically, for teams that played an endowment game, Win or Lose, that game and only that game must be dropped for the 10 game reportable schedule.  What that means is that four wins, might just mean three wins and not the four wins you might have been expecting!  In the situation provided above, the team would have to keep the 3-1 record in the non-conference games and drop the win they picked up in the endowment game.  For teams that lost their endowment game, no big deal, but for those that won that game - or perhaps for teams that are currently on the bubble of trying to reach four wins and have yet to play their endowment game...it means that game in essence doesn't exist from the perspective of reaching the four win plateau.  I should add that the endowment game may be of importance when it comes to tie-breakers in the seeding process, but aside from that element and historical record books, the game will not be counted towards playoff qualification purposes.

J. Mike Blake at the Cary News [LINK] has a story up directed at this new change as does Earl Vaughan out at the Fayetteville Observer [LINK].  Links are provided for both for additional details.  In addition, the NCHSAA Football handbook is referenced [LINK].

The implications of this new rule are many, first it means that trying to predict who will make the playoffs, aside from the automatic qualifiers is going to be incredibly tough, unless you have a detailed schedule of every AAAA team, but also have verification of which non-conference game on their schedule was the endowment game.  This is important because only the endowment game is removed from that 11 game schedule.  I would be hard pressed to simply find which of the non-conference opponents for the PAC-6 were the endowment games, much less the rest of the 99 teams that play AAAA classification ball.  Second, it means that there are teams that currently have a certain number of wins, but in fact actually have one less win then the record is showing.  In the past this was never really the case, unless the team had won all of their non-conference games and played an endowment.  With the recent change, that is not necessarily the case and knowing which of the games was the endowment is ultra-important.  Third, for the small group of teams out there that have yet to play their endowment game and may perhaps be in a situation where they are still trying to reach that four win plateau, this may or may not be an eye-opener for them.  My assumption and certainly hope is that for teams in this situation, all those involved knew and understood this fact and so this isn't really news, rather just some additional clarification.  Regardless, the 'you-can-only-drop your endowment game' rule is something that will certainly add to the already complicated and layered system that we call the North Carolina high school football playoffs.

Photographs courtesy of newsobserver.com (The News & Observer)