Switch in playoff format shows newfound football parity

For those of you who have not noticed, ASAA has changed its format for the first round of the large-schools prep football playoffs.

Actually, it’s not a drastic switch, but more of a return to a method of old.

After nine years worth of teams facing conference rivals during the large-schools quarterfinals, ASAA is back to using interconference crossbracketing in the first round.

Now, teams from ASAA’s two large-schools conferences, the Cook Inlet and the Railbelt, are paired in each of the four first-round games. So, rather than the Railbelt No. 1 hosting the Railbelt No. 4, the Railbelt No. 1 sees the CIC No. 4.

“I think it’s due,” Colony head coach Jamie Mayo said late last week. “I think of the old arguments of why our conferences went to playing ourselves in the first round, and those reasons are no longer valid.”

After ASAA expanded its football playoffs to include a quarterfinal round in 1993, interconference crossbracketing was used for seven seasons. This is before the addition of the small-schools class, and ASAA included three football conferences — the CIC, Northern Lights and Railbelt.

At that time, the Northern Lights included the three existing Valley teams — Colony, Palmer and Wasilla — and five Peninsula squads. The Railbelt featured only four Interior programs.

The top three teams from the CIC and NLC moved into the playoffs, along with the top two squads from the old Railbelt. ASAA then matched teams with a squad from another conference and put them into a bracket.

During those seven years, the CIC had a virtual stranglehold on the first round.

The CIC was an astounding 19-2 in 21 first-round games. The NLC held a 6-15 total mark, and the Railbelt was just 3-11.

In 2000, ASAA reduced the number of large-schools conferences to two, and added a small-schools class. The NLC, along with its Peninsula members, was declared small-schools, and the three Valley teams were matched with the Fairbanks schools in the Railbelt.

With those changes came the move to keep quarterfinal games within the conference for the first round. From 2000-2008, a pair of teams from each of the two conferences were assured a spot in the semis, where they were crossbracketed for the second round.

And while, the CIC held control in the 1990’s, the results of semifinals games from 2000-2008 showed a leveling of the playing field among the two conferences in the state.

In nine seasons, the CIC was 10-8 against the Railbelt in 18 semifinal games, but from 2004-2008, the Railbelt was 7-3 against the Anchorage conference during the semifinals.

And to show that parity among the conferences does truly exist, each of the conferences finished 2-2 in four quarterfinal games last weekend.