A humble proposal for NorCals

[noknight]

Imagine the following, which seems to embrace the notion of "competitive equity" on a NorCal scale...

The commissioners of each of the sections, along with some support staff, get together at the end of the regular season and select the 128 best teams in all of NorCal (you can decide if/how you wish to guarantee X number of teams from each section ahead of time). You then seed them 1-128 and play your first round of games. The 64 teams that lose move to a new bracket that becomes the NorCal Division 3 bracket in a single elimination tournament. The 64 winners of that first round play the second round, and the teams that lose there move into a 32 team Division 2 single elimination bracket. The 32 winners of the second round play their 3rd round games - the 16 losers move into a single-elimination Division 1 bracket and the 16 remaining teams are now the NorCal Open bracket. Every team that advances plays a total of 7 postseason games - no more than they presumably would have played in advancing through their section playoffs and the NorCal playoffs.

The teams that aren't part of that 128 team bracket can then be seeded by each of the individual sections to play for section titles. A subset of these teams can then be chosen for NorCal Division 4 and 5 brackets.

As an alternative, drop each of the aforementioned losers brackets down one (i.e. first round losers go to Division 4, etc.) so that the NorCal finals winner becomes the Open representative and the NorCal Open runner-up becomes the Division 1 representative. Then the best of the teams who didn't make the top 128 compete to be the Division 5 representative.

 

[laidbackcoach]

Interesting. I can see some positives to this. HOwever, that opening 1 v. 128 game is likely to be pretty ugly.

 

[LoganHomer]

Interesting. I can see some positives to this. HOwever, that opening 1 v. 128 game is likely to be pretty ugly.

Imagine telling your friends and family that you guys made the playoffs as the 128th seed lmfao

 

[mansnothot]

Imagine telling your friends and family that you guys made the playoffs as the 128th seed lmfao

Kennedy made NCS. 6 win.

 

[LoganHomer]

Kennedy made NCS. 6 win.

I still don't understand that bracket. Salesian plays a 6 win team in the first round as the first seed, but the second seed gets a bye.

Why not have both the first and second seed get a bye, or if you're gonna put Kennedy in then why not make them the 15th seed and play Campo?

They were literally the 16th seed in a 15 team bracket.

 

[espot]

I still don't understand that bracket. Salesian plays a 6 win team in the first round as the first seed, but the second seed gets a bye.

Why not have both the first and second seed get a bye, or if you're gonna put Kennedy in then why not make them the 15th seed and play Campo?

They were literally the 16th seed in a 15 team bracket.

Campolindo was supposed to play Pinole Valley which wasn't eligible for playoffs to begin with, NCS didn't realize that mistake until five hours before tipoff

 

[LoganHomer]

Campolindo was supposed to play Pinole Valley which wasn't eligible for playoffs to begin with, NCS didn't realize that mistake until five hours before tipoff

Oh I wasn’t aware of this happening, this certainly makes a lot more sense

 

[TurtleLoveCA]

Realistic scenarios are one thing. This one is not. It's absurd.

 

[larry legend33]

Realistic scenarios are one thing. This one is not. It's absurd.

Agreed. Must be a slow news day on CNN.
All I know is back in the "old" days when I played it was brutal. You had to make the NCS champ to advance to Norcals. Its a joke now. I would rather shorten the season up and have the best teams play in the post season. To be honest I liked how much they crunched into the norcals this year. And did that many people really get "turned away" playing in smaller venues. Doubtful. They let that thing drag on way to long in the past and at smaller type schools you have guys that play baseball as well.

 

[noknight]

Realistic scenarios are one thing. This one is not. It's absurd.

I don't know. I think "absurd" might be strong. 86 teams made the D1-5 SJS playoffs. 78 teams made the D1-5 NCS playoffs. 67 more made the Open-D4 playoffs in CCS. Not counting the Northern, SFS, Oakland or Central sections, we're already well north of 200 teams. Mine's 128. Yeah, maybe there would be some first round mismatches, but those teams would be knocked down to the Division 4 tournament in 1 round anyway.

If you use Maxpreps rankings to do an imaginary draw and my 2nd version of the proposal (meaning the Open Final decides who plays in the Open and D1 state games), AND if you just assume the highest seed wins for each game, here's how my proposal would have worked out:

The state games would have featured (from NorCal)
Open = Salesian
D1 = Sheldon
D2 = San Joaquin Memorial (17th highest seed in NorCal)
D3 = SJND (33rd highest seed in NorCal)
D4 = Sonora (65th highest seed in NorCal)

Paths taken to get there would have been:
Salesian vs. Ponderosa, Liberty Ranch, Sacramento, Bullard, Modesto Christian, Campolindo, Sheldon
Sheldon vs. King's Academy, Leland, Pleasant Valley, Mitty, James Logan, Branson, Salesian
San Joaquin Memorial vs. Irvington, Amador Valley, Bullard, Sacramento, Grant, College Park, St. Mary's (Stockton)
SJND vs. Inderkum, Sacramento, Liberty Ranch, Amador Valley, SPSV, SHC, Redwood
Sonora vs. Liberty Ranch, Inderkum, Mission, St. Mary's (Berkeley), Bakersfield, Rio Americano

(yes, I recognize teams like Sacramento, Bullard, Amador Valley and Inderkum show up a bunch - that's because their seed puts them as the top/bottom opponent in several draws. They would still effectively be in a double elimination tournament. For Sacramento, e.g., they'd play Montgomery in round 1 (projected win), SJND in round 2 (projected win), Salesian in round 3 (projected loss, moving them to the D2 tournament, then San Joaquin Memorial in round 4, projected loss, season over)

Is that really worse than De La Salle vs. Irvington, Salesian vs. Kennedy or Folsom vs. Bear Creek like we had this year?

 

[observer22]

That’s actually not all that different than what has been proposed by posters for a playoff system for football. Doing away with the current sections and putting all the top teams into seeded brackets. The current section brass would hate to give up their power and would never approve it, but it would be doable.

 

[TurtleLoveCA]

Absurd was exactly correct. It's as stupid as Andrew Yang proposing a tax on Amazon purchases to give everyone over 18 $1,000 a month.

 

[noknight]

Absurd was exactly correct. It's as stupid as Andrew Yang proposing a tax on Amazon purchases to give everyone over 18 $1,000 a month.

Thank you for that articulate and well reasoned rebuttal to my proposal!