NCHSAA will use pod seeding for football Playoffs

June 15, 2010

By James Frye of Pinecrest High School


The North Carolina High School Athletic Association has joined the NCAA in creating the pod system for the state football playoffs.

The major reason for moving to the pod system — money. The goal for the NCHSAA in creating the pods is to cut costs, especially in the opening rounds.

The way the playoffs were set up before, you could have a team from the opposite ends of the state facing off in the early rounds. The goal is to eliminate this expense and have teams play closer to home.

The other major change is the seeding process. Teams will be placed still qualify as they have before with the first, second and third place finishers in each conference advancing to the playoffs, as well as some wildcards based on overall records to fill out the 64-team bracket in each classification.

Then, the larger qualifying schools are assigned to the AA bracket, while the smaller qualifying schools are sent to the A bracket.

Once 32 spots in both brackets are filled, then the schools are divided into East and West regions based on geography.

Now, the teams are seeded based on conference finish — with no conference champion ranked below a No. 2 finisher — and overall record. In addition, an undefeated conference champion will be seeded above a conference champion with one loss.

Once the schools are seeded, they are then placed in one of the four pods (West, Midwest, Mideast and East) based on geography. Once this is completed, teams will be seeded in their pod based on their seeding in the region.

The pod seeding will determine the pairings for the first three rounds of the playoff, then the regional final will be played at the site of the highest surviving seed from the regional seeding.

The biggest problem in the new system is that the top seeds from the region could end up in the same pod. Instead of possibly seeing the No. 1 and No. 2 teams from each region face each other in the region final, now that game could come in the second round of the playoffs.

While it is good to see the NCHSAA take the budgetary concerns to heart and embrace the pod system, it does need to teak the way it puts teams in their pods. Because as good of a game it would be, no one wants to see a Butler battle a Richmond in the second round of the playoffs instead of for a spot in the state championship.