CHAPEL HILL — The N.C. High School Athletic Association knows the components of the formula that will determine state playoff seeding in football, basketball, baseball, soccer, softball and volleyball next school year, but not how much each component is worth, officials say.

“We’re looking forward to seeing how this turns out,” NCHSAA board of directors president Rodney Shotwell said. “I think we’ll have an interesting discussion in December because we will have already gone through football and soccer and volleyball to see how that works out.”

Last week the board of directors approved a one-year period to use the rankings on the website Max-Preps. It means once qualifying teams — regular-season conference champions, other automatic qualifiers and at-large bids — are established, they’ll earn state playoff seeds based on overall rankings from MaxPreps.

The formula that MaxPreps uses to rank teams — rankings coaches often urge players to ignore or use for encouragement, depending on the motivation needed — is something NCHSAA officials inquired about. It’s something that the California-based website was unwilling to fully divulge, though parts of it were shared.

“We know strength of schedule is a component, we know who you play is a big component, and then the other side of that is do you win? And by how much, because there is a small marginof-victory component in there,” NCHSAA assistant commissioner for media relations James Alverson said. “There’s a cap on that margin of victory in some form, but there are a lot of pieces that are in that formula and I don’t know exactly what all of them are, but generally the components of the ranking they have shared with us.

“And it’s the same things that you would expect in any computer rankings system.”

Uneasiness about using the system is warranted, given the rankings are pumped out by a computer that is roughly 3,000 miles away and obviously doesn’t see a single game.

Look no further than the softball teams at Eastern Alamance and Western Alamance this season, which split regular-season meetings before the Warriors prevailed in the Mid-State 3-A Conference Tournament final. That result made both teams’ records 19-4. Eastern Alamance is ranked fifth in the state for Class 3-A; Western Alamance is ranked 11th.

But opting for the MaxPreps ranking is also something that had been pushed for by separate coaches associations, and it’s something that comes along a winding and ever-changing path of playoff seeding that the NCHSAA has been traveling.

Predetermined brackets, with conference strength dissected, have been so criticized that NCHSAA commissioner Que Tucker said she doesn’t see going back to those as a possibility. The pod system that paired conference teams against each other in early rounds was heavily criticized. Shotwell said it was “loud and clear” nobody wants to seed playoffs using overall records because teams would create easier schedules.

So, the next step in a process that will never satisfy everybody is to give MaxPreps rankings a trial run.

“I think we enter into this clearly with some unknowns. Before we ever seeded, it was 32 teams and there were no byes, we understand that,” Tucker said. “That’ll be the one-year review, how did the MaxPreps rankings work in determining the seedings and determining the seeds? At that point, we might be at, ‘OK, that didn’t work, so now do we want predetermined brackets?’

“There are a lot of folks, probably in my age group, who think predetermined is the best way to go. But we also recognize this is a new day.”

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Nick Stevens, Veteran NC High School Prep Reporter...High School Sports OT link:

http://www.highschoolot.com/breaking-down-the-new-playoff-system-maxpreps-rankings/16686653/