Tuesday Morning Quarterback: Give the non-playoff teams a break

We?re down to two.
There are two unbeaten teams left on the North Shore ? Bishop Fenwick and Lynnfield. And congratulations are in order for both.
And congrats, too, to John DiBiaso, who has ? yet again ? managed to find another way to rip the hearts out of the boys at St. John?s Prep.
We?re fortunate, at least in this area, that in all the divisions deserving teams will be advancing to this week?s state semifinals.
You might say that any team that survives this three-week playoff skirmish is deserving. But it can be boiled down to something more basic: None of the teams playing this weekend arrives at their destinations after having had losing records over the first eight weeks of the season. Two of the teams advancing (Lynnfield and Fenwick) have run the table; two others (Tewksbury and North Andover) had two losses going into the tournament; and the other two (Everett and Cathedral) had only one. Taking into account the vagaries of non-league scheduling, and the competitiveness of leagues in any given years, two losses is certainly acceptable against five wins. That more than meets the old-fashioned system of state tournament qualification (which, in a 20-game season, demanded a team win at least 12 games).
The same cannot be said for Central Mass, where, in Division 2, Fitchburg advances after having gone 3-4 during the regular season. This clearly indicates Division 2 in Central Mass was a weak field. But it?s also ridiculous that a sub-.500 team is even in the playoffs. This happened everywhere, but at least in this area, the sub-.500 teams bowed out early, clearing the way for some very good football over the last month.
As we move to the conclusion of the process, there are definitely some things that need tweaking. Most of them involve the non-playoff participants.
It?s really too bad that the system has divided schools into have and have-not categories. It forces the have-nots to go almost a month with games about which no one could possibly care. Classical vs. Newton South? Whose idea was that?
The athletic directors administering to these non-playoff schools talk of next to nothing in gate receipts. In fact, in some cases, these games have actually cost schools money. That is absurd.
Including its first-round game at Lincoln-Sudbury, Classical had to go farther away from Lynn each week — first to Sudbury, then to Waltham, and finally to Newton. English and Tech got two home games and St. Mary?s got one. Obviously, this isn?t fair to Classical.
Beverly and Marblehead played each other twice as did Revere and Danvers. Again, why? Tech and Chelsea had to go at it back-to-back, with the second game meaningless.
The biggest problem here is the divisional setup. The plan dictates that teams within the same division must play. That means no Classical-Beverly (which would have been a better gate than any of the two games the Rams played) or Peabody-Gloucester ? or any other games that might possibly generate interest in an otherwise exhibition-like setting.
If there was any recommendation from here on how to change this mess, that would be it. Eschew divisional play once teams are eliminated and set up games in close proximity to the two teams — especially since some of these long-standing rivalries are now defunct thanks to the truncated regular-season schedule.
Then there is the other side. If St. John?s Prep had managed to complete its comeback over Everett last Friday, the Eagles would have played Xaverian on Thanksgiving ? and then played the Hawks 10 days later in the Division 1 Super Bowl. That would have certainly cheapened the impact of the Super Bowl, don?t you think?
There definitely needs to be a few moderations in this system if we?re to go forward with it. One could say the end justifies the means, and that as long as champions are crowned legitimately and fairly, the details don?t matter.
That may be true in some cases. But not in this case.