MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Twenty-six opening-round high school football playoffs games are scheduled for Friday night. It is impossible to project with any degree of certainty when those games will actually be contested on the fields throughout the state of West Virginia.
About twelve hours prior to the close of regular season play on Friday, the Wood County Board of Education filed a petition for an injunction against the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission regarding the football playoff rating formula. Cabell County discussed similar action.
This action stems from a combination of events dating back to the most recent round of realignment among WVSSAC member schools. Last December, final approval came to add a fourth class to five WVSSAC sports, including football. Several schools objected to where they were drawn into, citing a number of issues with the competitive balance formula, and they went through a series of appeals leading up to the month of August.
In August, the state Board of Review ruled that eleven schools were to be moved down one class for football only for the upcoming season. Three days later, eleven more were moved down as well.
In the weeks that followed, several schools requested that the football rating plan, which contains a strength-of-schedule component, should reflect classification of opponents for when their games were scheduled, and not the new classes they were drawn into with the August changes. No changes to the formula were made. WVSSAC Executive Director David Price says the football rating plan did not allow for such a change.
“Whatever classification a team was in, that would be the rating points that would be applied to them in the playoff system. That’s in the rule. Therefore, we had no choice but to implement the rule. Keep in mind, those rules were written by the Board of Control, the principals of the State of West Virginia, not the WVSSAC Executive Office. We just follow those,” Price said on Sunday’s Citynet Statewide Sportsline.
On Saturday, the injunction filed by the Wood County Board of Education was upheld. As a result, the ratings formula needed to be tweaked on Saturday afternoon, producing new playoff brackets for qualifying teams in all four classes.
That evening, new brackets were released by the WVSSAC. With the new brackets, four teams (Hampshire, Westside, Point Pleasant and Tolsia) were bounced from their playoff positions. They were replaced by Capital, St. Albans, Lincoln and St. Marys. Several teams had their initial seeds changed as the rating plan applies to all four classes.
It is expected that boards of education representing schools that were taken out of playoff position could seek legal action which could trigger a stalemate that could stall the playoffs before they begin.
“Then we would have competing injunctions. We can’t pick and choose which one we are going to follow. That would be up to a higher court to decide that. We would take a look next at what steps to take for that decision to be made. Hopefully it can be done quickly. If not, then we would have to look at possibly postponing or moving back a week or two until that decision is made. Those are all speculation at this point,” Price said.
“We are hearing a lot of it. [Monday] is a holiday so we are anticipating that if anything is to be done, it will be done on Tuesday.”
If the brackets need to be redrawn even further, postponement of the start of the playoffs is possible. That could delay the championship games, which are scheduled to be played at University of Charleston Stadium on December 6-7.
Even though all 16 Class AAAA teams made the playoffs, any changes to the ratings formula would have a ripple effect through all four classes.
“Not only are these four (Hampshire, Westside, Point Pleasant and Tolsia) teams affected, it does affect the seeding as well of the teams who aren’t affected as far as their ability to be in it. It would affect the seeding and who they would be playing, travel and who is hosting. That affects AAAA as well.
“If there were any changes to what is out there today, it probably would have to push things back a week because it would change a lot of things.”