I'm not sure how it happened, but I somehow became "the Class A points guy."
As near as I can tell, the title is available to anyone who has a deep, abiding love of Class A football, is good at math and pays meticulous attention to detail. I'm actually only one-for-three there, so maybe that isn't actually the criteria at all. Perhaps it's "has free time" and "is entertained by odd things." Yes, that description fits me. "The Class A points guy" is not a particular lucrative or important title...it's kind of like the guy in that money lending service commercial that wears a cape and pretends to be a low-grade super hero. I've never had a title before, though, so I try to embrace it. Several years ago, Class A football decided to split in two and crown a pair of football champions every year, since it was difficult for the state's smallest Class A schools (many have 200 or less students) to compete with the larger ones (which can have around 400 students). So a points system was devised as a way to decide which teams qualified for the post-season and what their seeding would be. Wins over Class A teams with a losing record net you a point, wins over winning ones get you 1.5 points, wins over losing AA schools are worth two points all the way up to 4.5 points for a win over a winning AAAA school. You also get points for losses, unless you lose to a Class A school with a losing record, in which case you get nothing, but a loss to a winning Class A school or a AA one with a losing record earn you .5 points, all the way up to three points for a loss to a winning AAAA team. As they say in the horrible, late-night commercials, "BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE." You can only count three games against AA, AAA or AAAA teams and can only count one per class (accept for AA), so if you have two games against AAA schools, one has to count like you're playing a Class A school (even though you're not) and at the end of the year, you have to just erase two of your games and those mark-offs have to maximize your point total. Oh, and you get big-time bonus points for how you finish in your region. Did I mention if you play a SCISA school or an out-of-state team, you have to get the enrollment numbers of the school, calculate what class they'd be playing in if they were a regular, South Carolina High School League program and assign the points based on that? Gosh, it's just riveting stuff. So, about this time of year, as the regular season wraps up, folks start to wonder what the Class A playoffs will look like. Most of those people have productive things to do with their lives, so they just call up "that weird guy from Chester that messes with points" and see what he's come up with. I used to only do the upperstate teams, since our two Chester County Class A schools (Great Falls and Lewisville) compete in the upperstate. Now, thanks to Twitter and the like, people from places I've never been are inquiring about who their team is playing in the first round. In the past few days, I've talked to coaches from every corner of the state. "How have you got us playing Estill in the first round?" a coach asked me Wednesday. We then sat on the phone and went game-for-game through the point values of every game on Estill High's schedule. We hit a snag when we saw they'd forfeited a game to SCISA team Porter Gaud. "How many people go there?" I asked. Things as seemingly trivial as the enrollment of a private school in Charleston make an actual difference in figuring up this stuff. The point value of a game that wasn't actually even played between Estill and a private school actually changed the seeding order. Because of the flooding that hit some areas of our state extremely hard, a couple of games were postponed and weren't made up until Friday, the day the playoffs would normally be starting. Still, by early last week I'd pretty well figured up everyone's point total and published those projections in print and on this blog. Wednesday morning I got a message from a coach in another part of the state telling me there was something I'd missed. At some juncture, the points formula was altered to ensure that region champions receive the highest seeds, even if their point total is lower than that of other teams. I asked a couple of other coaches about it and they'd not heard of it. Surely someone would've told the illustrious "Class A points guy" if things had changed. Well, they didn't. I talked to several coaches who said that was the case and was told that one coach, who is considered the "points guru," had also said that was the case. So, I went back and re-figured everything and printed the amended match-ups in print and on this blog. Saturday morning, I was standing in line waiting to pick up breakfast when I got a text. Funny thing...I HAD BEEN RIGHT ALL ALONG AND THAT STUFF ABOUT REGION CHAMPIONS BEING ASSURED THE HIGHEST SEED WAS A BUNCH OF HOGWASH! I ended up looking like more of a doofus than I already am. I should have just stuck with the formula as I know it. I've never seen so much confusion about playoff seeding in my life. How is it that a guy who is terrible at math and lacks attention to detail was the one who had it right? It's worth noting that next year, with reclassification and a switch to five classes instead of four, that there won't be split Class A titles and meaning we probably won't have a points system. No points system means having a "Class A points guy" won't be necessary. It's my only title, but one I won't mind giving up. See the full Division I bracket RIGHT HERE and the Division II bracket RIGHT HERE.
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TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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