Idaho will (finally) seed its state tournaments with MaxPreps. It’s long past time.
Nothing unites sports fans like a perceived outrage. And Idaho’s predetermined state tournament brackets have provided plenty of them over the years.
We all have our own one. Pick your favorite team or favorite sport. But they all share the same complaint — two of the state’s best teams facing off early in the state tournament.
Idaho has experimented with a solution in recent years, using computer rankings to seed its high school football state playoffs. Now it’s diving in head first.
Idaho will seed all of its state tournaments with rankings from MaxPreps.com starting in the 2021-22 school year, the Idaho High School Activities Association finalized Tuesday.
The plan only applies to team sports — basketball, volleyball, soccer, baseball and softball. (Football remains its own animal.) And it will not affect who qualifies for state, just where teams are placed on the bracket.
Praising the IHSAA makes you as popular as a wet blanket in a snowstorm. But in this instance, Idaho’s high school sports governing body deserves it.
Everyone knew this was a problem. And the IHSAA took action to fix it.
“We’ve all seen it. We’ve all been a part of it in the past,” Homedale football coach Matt Holtry said. “So many times, the response is, ‘That’s just how it is.’
“But it’s not right. It’s not right for any level above us, so why would we do it here?”
MaxPreps protects its exact formula as proprietary information. But here are the basics:
It uses the scores entered on its website to rank teams on their record, dominance and strength of schedule. Margin of victory is capped to discourage blowouts.
It’s not rocket science, as surrounding states have proved using either MaxPreps or a similar formula. Results on the field, court or diamond matter. Preseason ping-pong balls, media polls and tradition do not.
“It’s definitely an improvement,” Boise girls basketball coach Kim Brydges said. “It’s been a frustration of mine for many years. I can’t tell you how many times my team has been the third seed (from our district) and ended up in a better situation than being the first or second seed.”
Idaho’s small-school football teams led the way for this revolution. The IHSAA doesn’t control the entire state football playoffs, allowing its coaches to experiment.
The 2A ranks started using an RPI formula for its playoff seeding in 2018, and 3A followed in 2019. You can nitpick a few seeds here or there. But by and large, the computers got it right. The best teams ended up on opposite sides of the bracket and played in the finals.
Idaho will switch to MaxPreps’ rankings this fall for the 4A, 3A, 2A and 1A Division I football playoffs. (5A and 1A Division II will stick with predrawn brackets.) The different formula showed nothing to get outraged about.
MaxPreps previously provided me with the final regular-season rankings for all 11-man teams last season, and they nailed it. No team ranked lower than No. 3 reached the state championship game.
Now, that’s just one season. That’s just one sport. That’s a really small sample size.
Will this work for all sports with all of their Idiosyncrasies? Only time will tell. But the IHSAA has a full year to monitor how this season plays out and find any potential pitfalls before going live.
Fans will have to get used to seeing conference rematches in the first round. Idaho’s predrawn brackets avoided that as much as possible. A computer will not.
But the larger snag lies with MaxPreps’ decision not to factor classification into its rankings. A team could theoretically play down a classification all season, rack up some easy wins and climb the rankings. But a cupcake schedule provides a double-edged sword. It would leave a team ill-prepared to make a run at state or to possibly even qualify for state.
I’d still argue naming a committee to seed the state tournament remains the ideal approach. Humans can smooth out the rough edges around an algorithm, a lesson Washington learned and implemented in May after a controversial couple years using RPI.
Its committees include coaches, athletic directors, administrators and media members.
“To me, we could get a committee and crank this out in an hour and get this right, or pretty close to right,” Middleton boys basketball coach Andy Harrington said.
But never let perfect be the enemy of good. Progress often moves at a glacial pace in Idaho. Abandoning the predrawn brackets represents a huge step for Idaho, one I honestly never thought I’d see.
More than two-thirds (68%) of Idaho’s coaches, athletic directors and principals voted in favor of using a computer ranking to seed the state tournaments.
The bottom line is this is better, and better is always an improvement.
This story was originally published October 1, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
