Semi-OT: MHSAA Announces the 2020-2021 Classifications
This mainly interests me from a football standpoint, but the MHSAA has announced the classifications for sports for the upcoming seasons (assuming we have them).
Football still has the 8 divisions of 11-man and then 2 of 8-man. What's different is that we know what division every school will play in if they make the playoffs. Prior, the teams that were on the fringe of a couple of divisions (say they'd either be the biggest D6 team or the smallest D5) may not know for sure until Selection Sunday.
Playoff selection is also different this year, going off of a "power schedule" point system. In a nutshell, points are awarded for wins (more points for wins against schools in divisions bigger than you) and points are awarded for your opponents wins. There will most likely be some teams with a 4-5 record who make it in, and probably some teams with better records who don't get in. No more 6 wins and you're in.
Of course, it's a moot point if it's unsafe to play (but don't want to turn this into another covid thread).
Lengthen the season too. In Ohio, Texas, Georgia, they play a lot of high school football. If Michigan wants to develop talent, they need more games and practices.
Are their seasons longer? I know at least Texas has Spring Practice, but I'm not familiar with the other two. In Michigan, a team that reaches the State Championship plays 13 or 14 games. Do those other states play significantly more games?
Also, from the people I know, more games is not even close to on the radar for the MHSAA, especially with player safety concerns in regards to head injuries.
Eh, Texas, GA and Ohio all play 10 game regular seasons, though not every school ends up playing that many. So, technically yeah they play more, but its not " a lot" more.
We already are playing 1 or 2 games before school starts, with that practice is beginning 3-4 weeks before school starts. In order to lengthen the season practice would probably have to start mid-July and then getting 3-4 games in before school is in session. We can’t lengthen the season on the backend at all due to weather and Winter Sports season.
As a coach I’d be willing to start around the end of July, but I’m not sure the overall interest the players will have in that. The amount of camps, 7-7, and workouts is a good balance for kids to be involved in football, but still enjoying their summer. We already get numerous complaints from parents that football takes over their summer.
I agree. I am in the same boat where I coach. I love football, but there is so much value in a family vacation in the summer. Also, as a proponent of multi-sport athletes, I don't want Spring Football and for kids to have to choose between football and other traditional spring sports
Also, what do you think about the new playoff points system? Did your school end up where you thought you would?
We were unsure because we were the largest D-3 team in 2017 and smallest D-2 team in 2018. We ended up in D-3 which based on our location, there are more D-3 teams that we’d rather be matched up against, even though we’ve drawn some tough district final opponents (Rouge and King). If we were in 2, we would undoubtedly pull De La Salle every year in districts.
Nice, we knew we would squarely be in Division 4. The surprise came from a few schools that ended up a division smaller or bigger by a few students.
The most striking thing I saw as an XC coach was the student enrollment numbers required to be in each division have dropped like a rock over the past few years.
When I was in high school five years ago, my high school just became D3. If we keep enrollment steady like we have over the past few years, we'll be D2 in just another three years. So to summarize, we'll go from the top of D4 to bottom of D2 in a matter of 10 years. Unreal.
As a state, why is our HS student enrollment going down so much?
That's easy:
1. Declining population
2. More charters = more smaller schools and an uneven distribution. Top 25% of schools range in enrollment from 881 to 2000+; bottom 25% schools range from 24 to 188.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:31 PM ^
There is an organic decline throughout the state as we've lost a little population. As well inner city schools attendance has crashed. Some Detroit PSL's playing in C and D, and we've lost about 1/3 of their High schools that had 1,000 plus students. Think of the big 2 Flint schools, Central and Northern both gone. Those kids are all spread out over several high schools now. So large suburban schools that fit nicely in "B", find themselves in "A" and "C's" get bumped to "B" as inner city schools have disappeared or fallen bellow them in attendance.
Lansing Sexton was the 2nd largest high school in my area in the 80's with something like 2,200 students, last year it barely had 600 and Lansing Eastern is way down to just over 400 students another +1,000 historical avg school.
The proliferation of small charter and religious schools has been something else. You can't throw a rock at a Class D district pairing without hitting a private school or charter. A lot of small town "D" schools find themselves in "C"
Can the MHSAA ever explain this:
Why does football get 8 state championships while the other sports only get 4?
It makes no sense other than from a $$$ perspective.
I do not know. You are probably right.
I believe that football is already the only MHSAA sponsored sport in which every team is not automatically in the playoffs. To get to four champions like other sports you would either have to reduce the number of teams in the playoffs by half or add a week to the season.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:38 PM ^
Years ago football coaches wanted more teams in the playoffs, With 4 divisions we had teams with 8-1 records that were missing out. So they went to 8 divisions and we had and still have a handfull of 5-4 teams make the grade each year.
The playoffs were shorter then, I think we've added two extra rounds, essentially "districts", hence the extension of the season into August.
There were also competitive balance issues. With 4 divisions you'd get frequent matchups of schools twice the size as the other. With 8 the enrollment numbers are much closer so in theory the talent level should be closer.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:45 PM ^
Football is the only sport where you have to qualify for the state tournament. Imagine a playoff of 6 or 7 weeks if every football team made the playoffs and some of the horrific first round matchups with unbeaten teams pounding on teams with zero or one win.
Why not set up one division with 8-12 teams back in play anyone in the country, and any student can transfer right in and play that season. Let them start practice in mid-july, let them play 12 games outside the playoffs, basically all the good players will transfer to those schools.
Totally naive to this. Why don't schools know what division they would be in? Aren't individual conferences and schools setup in certain levels (like FBS, DII, DIII, etc.) or is that not at all how high school sports work
A lot of schools did know, but not all. In a nutshell, under the previous playoff system, 256 teams would get into the playoffs. The biggest 32 would be Division 1, the next 32 D2 and so on (there were some nuances about automatic qualifiers and then 5-4 teams). So a class B School, who is on the fringe of Division 4 or 5 wouldn't know at the beginning of the year what division they were in because it depended on which schools qualified. Now, we all know who the 66 Division 4 teams are, and 32 of them will make the playoffs
I would just like to see them issue more eligibility for the 5th year kids who lost their career this spring.
Is there a rule where teams cant travel x amount of miles from the state for a game? If not it would be cool to see like a Cass Tech play against a school like Bishop Gorman or a mid texas power.
April 21st, 2020 at 10:31 PM ^
Yes, most states have a rule of traveling no more than x miles over the state border. For Michigan, I think the rule roughly equates to playing teams that are north of Indianapolis (for Indiana) or Columbus (for Ohio) and east of Rockford (for Illinois). So if a Michigan team wants to play an out-of-state team, they have 5 options:
1. Northern Ohio
2. Northern Indiana
3. Northeastern Illinois
4. Northern Wisconsin
5. Southern Ontario
April 21st, 2020 at 10:40 PM ^
Hurley, Wis is or used to be a member of a Michigan conference in the western UP
When I was in high school in the early 2000s we had two teams from Ohio in our conference that we played every year. I think it was only for football though.
April 21st, 2020 at 11:22 PM ^
I still follow high school sports, just a little less than I used to, my youngest having graduated several years ago.
I think it's a good idea they tweaked this a bit, it should make for a little better planning environment for coaches, athletes and their parents.
As for school enrollment sizes, it sure has changed over time. Back in my youth, the 5 GR City League public schools used to be nearly all Class A and the 3-4 City League parochial school members were usually Class B; now there are only 2 "traditional" GR public schools remaining. The City League folded in 2008 when all 7 of its members were accepted into the O-K Conferences (Ottawa-Kent), which, though it primarily consists of schools from those two counties, now has membership from nearer schools in an additional 5 counties, 49 schools total spread out over 6 divisions: the Red, White, Gold, Blue, Green and Silver Divisions.
The OK reshuffles periodically to account for enrollment and membership changes, most recently in 2019 when it went from 7 divisions down to 6. Though the primary deciding factor is enrollment as to which of the individual divisions a school is assigned, geography is also somewhat taken into account.
Good system to keep their leagues competitively balanced.