MIAA Football Committee tweaks playoff format

The MIAA?s playoff system for high school football has been a hit with some schools and a miss with many others.
On Wednesday, the state Football Committee took a major step towards rectifying a lot of the complaints that coaches have had when it unanimously voted to give the scheduling committee more leeway when it comes to putting together the matchups between teams that do not reach the playoffs.
The move also is a measure to help prevent some teams from playing as many as three times in a single season. It will also help to make the non-playoff games more appealing to fans and teams alike.
For example, Woburn and Winchester, out of the Middlesex League, have played six times over the past two seasons.
?It?s all to better the plan we have in place,” Swampscott coach Steve Dembowski said. “It?s nice to see the committee responding to requests from different sections of the state.”
Dembowski, who was one of the people who helped craft the initial playoff plan two years ago, will serve as the president of the Massachusetts High School Football Coaches Association this year. He was at the meeting in Franklin Wednesday and is pleased to see some of the wiggle room that was built into the initial plan beginning to be used.
?I think that you?re going to see improvements beginning next year with ( regard to) the complaints about the plan,” Dembowski said. “The flexibility was built in to what we originally had in place and its nice to see people beginning to use it.”
Some teams reported as few as seven fans in attendance at the non-qualifying games.
The changes also will help prevent teams from potentially having to make long road trips for two or three weeks in a row.
?That was the biggest complaint from the teams and coaches — the repeat games,” Dembowski said. “The key thing is that the football committee is listening and have allowed the scheduling committee not to go by the seedings.”
Tech coach James Runner is another person who is happy that the MIAA is trying to even things out.
?I think they want to make it fair to all the teams,” said Runner, whose team had to play Chelsea in back-to-back weeks this past season. “I don?t disagree with them looking at the format and not making teams have to travel all over the place.”
For example, this season, Classical qualified for the Division 2 North playoffs and lost in the opening round at Lincoln-Sudbury. The Rams then were forced to play on the road for the next two weeks with games at Waltham and Newton South.
Under the newly agreed-upon changes, Classical now could potentially have games with teams from the Cape Ann League or even the Northeastern Conference despite them being in different divisions.
Another change comes in the way teams will be awarded points for their regular season victories. Teams will now get 12 points for a win against teams from a higher division or if they beat a Division 1 team.
A win in your same division will give a team 10 points while a win over a lower division school will be worth eight points.
The committee also enacted a change for the Central Mass tournament, extending its regular season to eight games and dropping the playoff field from eight teams down to four.?Central Mass only has 54 teams and they felt that having 32 in the tournament was watering it down. It will be interesting to see how it goes and you might even see the North and South do something like that going forward,” said Dembowski.