Different is, well, sometimes just that -- different.
When the IHSA announced it had passed eliminating quads from the football playoff format, there was near-universal praise for the change. Putting teams that were spread across the entire state of Illinois into tiny groups always brings up second-guessing. There's always a different way to organize, and there's always several fans ready to show their work. That's just amplified for football.
But I'm not sure how much change shuffling up the quad structure into a 1-16 seeding will really improve playoff football.
There's one glaring advantage -- a much lower chance of teams from the same conference meeting up in the first-round.
As much fun as it is to see Nick Bates and Tuscola go up against Lucas Duckett and Shelbyville, I don't want to see that in the first round. I don't want to see Robinson beat up on the same Little Illini teams it already had once before. It's way more interesting to see how far teams from the same conference can forge ahead into the playoffs.
Tuscola vs. Maroa-Forsyth with a trip to Champaign on the line? That's the dream matchup.
With this setup, there's still a chance those in-conference matchups happen early. But at least it's not all but guaranteed.
What this new seeding doesn't fix is giving the best team the best route to the state championship. In high school football, often the team with the best record isn't the best team.
Seeding teams 1-16 won't change the fact that teams like Maroa-Forsyth (6-3 to state finalist in '14) and Staunton (5-4 to state finalist in '13) were much better than where they were seeded. Strength of schedule doesn't mean everything, but it does mean a whole lot.
This doesn't help that much, but it's at least a step in the right direction. And it's about as far as the IHSA can go before delving into controversial territory -- weighing opponents and giving a team more credit for beating a 7-win 3A team instead of a 7-win 1A team. I can't see this happening too soon, and part of that comes down to money. It's not really worth it to go down this route.
And as much as some programs gripe about travel being an issue as the state's financial situation worsens, that never seems to come up in playoff football. We'll see how schools take having a 3-hour drive in the first round with a team they don't want to play.
I'm concentrating on football here, but the rest of the sports now being divided into sub-sectionals (that's two regionals, and yes, another playoff term that's added into the vocabulary) is a huge plus.
It's a happy medium to keeping travel at a minimum while allowing the better teams a real shot at a regional championship. It's not perfect, but it's much better. There wouldn't be too much difference in a team's path between seeding sub-sectionals or a whole sectional.
But football is a different animal. When teams only play nine games and some are in a six-team conference, their body of work could be vastly different from someone even in their own conference.
In the end, the elimination of quads really isn't going to do too much. It'll take out the higher chance of inter-conference battles, but that's about it. There will still be low seeds that are favorites in reality and high seeds that bring hollow records.
Really, the most it will do is eliminate Justin Conn's annual playoff prediction of who will play who.
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