It seems like it’s always playoff time in one sport or another, and it seems like playoffs excel at prompting suggestions for improvements. Consider this one more voice in the cacophony.
In most of the civilized world — and the United States, too! — playoffs consist of only a certain number of teams eliminating each other until one team is left. Some systems, like the NFL playoffs and the NCAA basketball tournament, are single-elimination; others, like the NBA or NHL playoffs, consist of multiple series (typically 5- or 7-game series). But all have some standard of entry.
Well, almost all.
The Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) basketball playoffs began last week. These playoffs are curious for several reasons, the most prominent of which is the standard of entry. Simply put, there is no standard.
In Michigan, every basketball team gains entry to the playoffs, regardless of record or conference standing. Teams whose only consistency was in losing march into the postseason alongside teams that feasted on those losing teams in the regular season. And to add to the curiosity, thanks to the random seeding at the district level, there’s no telling who will be given a first-round bye.
This makes for some odd playoff situations. Chelsea finished the regular season 19-1; the Bulldogs were considered not just the top team in the area, but among the top 10 in the state. But when the district pairings were released, Chelsea did not have a first-round bye. Who did receive a first-round bye? Erie Mason, a team that finished the regular season 2-18. And only two other teams in the district had winning records (Ida and Milan, both at 12-8); the remaining two, Brooklyn Columbia Central and Carleton Airport, were well below .500 at 5-15 and 1-19.
This also makes for humiliating playoff situations. After easily dispatching with Milan in the first round, 63-36, Chelsea moved on to face Erie Mason; as everyone expected, Chelsea won. But they didn’t just win; they won in a blowout, 85-26. Even more than the Milan game, the outcome was never in doubt; for Chelsea, it was simply a practice cleverly packaged as meaningful competition. That continued in the district finals, as Chelsea coasted to a 77-36 victory over Carleton Airport.
Chelsea’s wasn’t the only district featuring losing teams; every district included at least one lowly team. One class C district featured four losing teams: Greenhills (0-19), Inkster (5-14), Riverview Gabriel Richard (4-16) and Romulus Summit Academy (4-16); one class A district featured six losing teams: Adrian (7-13), Lincoln (7-13), Monroe (9-11), Saline (5-15), Tecumseh (6-14) and Temperance Bedford (8-12). There wasn’t room for a winning team.
Districts such as the sub-.500 group cause some to call for coherent organization — which means seeding — at the district level, but this is not a solution; seeding could have one of two effects, depending on its implementation: it could evenly distribute the winning and losing teams, or it could more evenly match teams in the first round.
The former would provide more expedient elimination of the losing teams. With few exceptions, the winning teams would tear through their considerably weaker opponents, much like Chelsea’s Trogdor-like destruction of its weak district; while this might provide a few more interesting second-round games, it would cancel out its potential benefits by guaranteeing too many cakewalks in the first round. This option may improve the second round to some degree, but in most cases, it would do little to improve the first round.
The latter may introduce some interest into the first round by providing more even matchups, but it is difficult to ignore the lowly records of the worst teams in the tournament. A 2-18 team may be evenly matched with a 1-19 team, but the quality of basketball likely will be middling at best. And no matter the winners of those games, they still would be walking from their even matchups into games against far superior opponents, at which point a vast majority of the losing teams would suffer the nearly-inevitable lopsided loss. This option would offer a more realistic — but only marginally meaningful — victory to more losing teams; it would also more quickly eliminate more winning teams. Fortunately, this option also is unlikely.
This playoff situation is not comparable to the NCAA basketball tournament. Unlike their counterparts in the MHSAA basketball playoffs, even the lowest seeds in the NCAA tournament have exhibited some ability to win games. The NCAA has postseason qualification standards; in basketball, the MHSAA does not. The lowest NCAA seeds gain entry through merit; the lowest MHSAA teams gain entry simply by existing.
Ultimately, the idea of guaranteeing even the most miserable team a playoff berth — typically a reward for some sort of regular-season success — is bad for everyone. For the good teams, it gives them not a game, but an unnecessary scrimmage; for the bad teams, it gives them hopeless losses; for the fans, it provides little reason to travel — in Chelsea’s case, a 40-minute trip for its three district games — to watch a blowout. For the most significant improvement, this system requires more than simple reorganization; it requires standards. Any standards.
Football, an equally popular high school sport, recently instituted its own playoff standards. Teams playing nine-game schedules must win six games to qualify; teams playing eight-game schedules must win five games. If there aren’t enough qualifying teams to fill the 256-team field, near-qualifying teams — like Chelsea’s 5-4 playoff team from 2005 — complete the field. As with any system, there are some complications, but in general, it’s easy enough to understand: if you win enough games, you’ll make the playoffs; if you don’t, you won’t.
The specifics of any potential basketball standards would be debated — how many wins is enough? How many teams in the field? How many rounds? — but that would be a welcome debate. It would be the first step in changing a playoff system that suffers because it simply can’t say no.
