A Look At The 2018 Schedule

The high school football schedules for the next two years have been released by the Iowa High School Athletic Association, and there's really no big surprises. We had already known the makeup of the districts for the next two years, which made up five of the nine opponents - the schedule announcement confirmed the four non-district games as well as the home-and-away sites for 2018 and 2019.

Here's the schedule for Cedar Rapids Xavier for this fall (non-district games in blue):

• Friday, August 24:   Regina, Iowa City (at Iowa City)
• Friday, August 31:   Decorah (at Xavier)
• Friday, Sept. 7:   Assumption, Davenport (at Xavier)
• Friday, Sept. 14:   West Delaware (at Manchester)
• Friday, Sept. 21:   Maquoketa (at Maquoketa)
• Friday, Sept. 28:   Wahlert, Dubuque (at Xavier)
• Friday, Oct. 5:   Western Dubuque (at Xavier)
• Friday, Oct. 12:   Center Point-Urbana (at Center Point)
• Friday, Oct. 19:   Marion (at Marion)

• Friday, Oct. 26:   First-round playoff
• Friday, Nov. 2:   Second-round playoff
• Thursday, Nov. 9:   3A Semifinal (at Cedar Falls)
• Thursday, Nov. 16:   3A Championship (at Cedar Falls)

Interestingly enough, even with the district changes and adjustments to schedules that the state made for this two-year cycle, there's only one team on the schedule that Xavier has never played (Center Point-Urbana). The Saints have played Regina every season since moving to Class 3A in 2014, while Maquoketa, Marion, Western Dubuque, Dubuque Wahlert, and Decorah were all previous fellow district members at one time or another. Davenport Assumption has played Xavier every season since 2014, either as a non-district opponent or in a playoff game, and West Delaware faced Xavier in the playoffs in 2014.

Let's look at Xavier's all-time record against this year's opponents:

• REGINA: Xavier is 3-1 all time, losing to Drew Cook and company in 2014 then winning three in a row.
• DECORAH: Xavier is 2-1 all time, losing a playoff game to the Vikings in 2015.
• ASSUMPTION: Xavier is 4-0, with two regular season wins and two playoff victories.
• WEST DELAWARE: The Saints won their only meeting, in the 2014 playoffs.
• MAQUOKETA: Xavier went 2-0 against the Cardinals as district mates in 2014-15.
• WAHLERT: Xavier is 9-3 all-time against former MVC member Wahlert, but the Saints are 7-0 since 2006 (I couldn't find the full records to find out when Wahlert last defeated Xavier).
• WESTERN DUBUQUE: Xavier went 1-1 against the Bobcats when they shared a district in 2014-15. Western Dubuque is the only 3A program to beat Xavier during the regular season since the Saints joined 3A in 2014.
• MARION: Xavier is 2-0 all time, again as district foes in 2014-15.

Just as an extremely early heads-up for KMRY radio listeners, once again the Xavier football season starts off conflicting with broadcasts of the Cedar Rapids Kernels baseball games. The Saints' first two games, August 24 vs Regina and August 31 vs Decorah, will be heard on a tape-delay basis following baseball. The third game, September 7 vs  Assumption, will be carried live unless the Kernels make the Midwest League playoffs and the first round playoff series goes the full three games. After that, assuming the Midwest League keeps to their recent championship series schedule that leaves Friday night open, Xavier games will be heard live for the rest of the season.

[Just as an aside, this does bring some interesting technical challenges for KMRY in 2019. Doing tape-delayed home games is easy, and we handled it at Regina last season (once we got a working phone cord); but delayed broadcasts of away games from Decorah and possibly Davenport next year (which will probably be on a Thursday to boot) will require some extra steps!]

PLAYOFF SITUATION

I've mentioned this probably way too much over the past couple of months, but now that we know the schedule, it's worth taking another look at how the playoff structure is changing this season and next.

Since 2016, 16 teams in each class have qualified for the playoffs. District champions (typically 7) and second-place finishers made 14 automatic qualifiers, and the rest of the field was filled through a formula based on district records and point differential in district games. The key to this system (and all playoff qualifiers going back to 2014 in all classes and much earlier than that in all classes but 4A) was that only district games counted for playoff consideration. The games outside your district weren't considered at all as far as the playoffs went.

This has now changed. The state adjusted the number of schools in each class and each district for 2018-19, reducing Class 4A from 48 to 42 members and rolling back classes 3A, 2A, and 1A from 56 to 54. District sizes dropped from 8 members to 6, meaning instead of seven districts, 3A/2A/1A now have nine districts.

This affected playoff qualifying in a number of ways. First, only district champions are automatically in. For most classes, that accounts for nine playoff teams (barring district title ties, of course). The other seven qualifiers will be chosen through an RPI (rating percentage index) formula, and for the first time ever, this formula includes all nine games on a team's schedule, district and non-district. The formula is based on a team's winning percentage (37.5% of the RPI), its opponents' winning percentage (another 37.5%), and the winning percentage of its opponents' opponents (the final 25%). So of course, the better your record, the better chance you have of qualifying, but at the same time, the quality of your opponents (and, to a lesser extent, their opponents) also comes into play.

What does this mean for Xavier, for example? Well, first off, Xavier has won their district each of the four years they've played 3A football. Another district title guarantees a playoff spot. However, if it comes down to RPI to qualify for one of the nine "wild card" positions, here's how Xavier's opponents have fared over the past three seasons:

• REGINA: 23-4 (.851)
• DECORAH: 16-11 (.593)
• ASSUMPTION: 21-6 (.778)
• WEST DELAWARE: 24-3 (.889)
• MAQUOKETA: 7-20 (.259)
• WAHLERT: 13-14 (.481)
• WESTERN DUBUQUE: 15-12 (.556)
• CENTER POINT-URBANA: 10-17 (.370)
• MARION: 11-16 (.407)

Since you can't really control who your district members are, schools do get a chance to request who they'd like to play in non-district games. Xavier has done extremely well here, with four quality non-district opponents holding an overall winning percentage of .778 over the past three seasons. If you only look at results from the last two years instead of the last three, Decorah's win percentage goes up to .667 (as does Western Dubuque's), Wahlert goes up a bit to .556 and Marion climbs to .611 (although Maquoketa's drops to a paltry .056). Regina, Assumption and West Delaware also have some quality teams on their schedule (to figure into Xavier's opponents' opponents winning percentage), but there is a bit of overlap in there, as well (West Delaware plays Wahlert and Marion, for example, while Decorah plays Western Dubuque - those will all even out in the opponents' opponents winning percentage game).

So, what are the prospects for 2018? Xavier has got to be the favorite in D-4; they are the defending state 3A champions, after all, with a 13-game winning streak (and a 27-game regular-season win streak stretching back to the Regina loss in October 2014). Marion is on the rise, with a solid 6-3 season last year that just missed the playoffs; Western Dubuque made the 4A playoff field last year; and Wahlert has good talent coming back from consecutive 5-4 seasons. Should Xavier slip during the district schedule, their RPI should put them in a good position for a wild-card playoff spot. The key, as always, is to take care of your own games. If you win all five district games, you make the playoffs regardless of how your non-district slate goes (you could be 5-4, yet you'd still be district champion). If you don't win the district, you need to handle those non-district games to get a chance at a playoff spot; a 4-1 second-place record may not be enough if you drop two non-district games to end up 6-3, as that drags down your RPI and you need to rely on your opponents having good records to battle other 6-3 (or even 7-2) playoff contenders.

This is all new, for everybody. It will be a really interesting year for Iowa high school football!