It's the depths of winter, which means Snowpocalypse 2016 is bearing down on the eastern seaboard while we midwesterners tire of our winter coats and stocking caps ... oh, and also that the Iowa High School Athletic Association has made everyone's January with their bi-annual release of the new football districts!
There's some really substantial changes in the district system for 2016-17. For one, as we all knew last fall, the state is going to reduce playoff qualifiers from 32 to 16 per class. That knocks a round out of the playoffs, which allows all the games to be scheduled on Fridays (or Thursdays, or Saturdays for Dome games) and eliminates the Wednesday-Monday-Friday gauntlet players had to face in prior seasons. Then, another pretty huge change was to make seven districts of eight teams each, instead of eight districts of seven (for Classes 3A through A; 4A and eight-player are set up differently because 4A has only 48 members and eight-player has, I think, 62). Coaches and athletic directors mostly drove this change, as they wanted more district games on the schedule and fewer games that didn't count toward playoff eligibility. However, this complicated playoff selection because, well ... math. Sixteen doesn't go into seven, not even with a sledgehammer.
So we've got wild cards! And I'm not talking about jokers ... although the River City Jokers would be a pretty awesome team name for some school. Anyway - the top two finishers in each district get into the playoffs. With seven districts, that's 14. The final two qualifiers will be determined using the following tiebreakers:
- Any team considered a district champion (in other words, if you have a three-way tie in a district)
- District record
- Head-to-head (which includes both district and non-district games, which is a bit interesting)
- Point differential (changing the 13-point differential system to a 17-point system)
- Alphabetical, with the starting letter determined by a random draw
The head-to-head thing is interesting because this is the first and only instance where a non-district game can have any impact on playoff qualification. Some observers had complained in the past about non-district games having no meaning, being essentially exhibition games, because the results of those games had nothing to do with the postseason. Your playoff status was based entirely on your district finish/district record/district point differential. You could lose all three of your non-district games 87-0, but win your six district games and you're district champion with perhaps three home playoff games. And with the crazy setup of 4A districts the past two years, with a couple of districts that had only five members, those teams had more non-district games (5) than district ones (4).
So, firstly, by expanding the districts to eight you now have seven games that apply toward the playoffs, instead of six. Adding in the head-to-head caveat now could mean schools might try to avoid non-district games within their class. For example, say Xavier schedules Wahlert as a non-district game (wait, you're saying. I thought Wahlert was in Xavier's district. That's yesterday's news, man. More on that to come). Wahlert ekes out a last-second win, but hey ... it's just a non-district game, means nothing for the postseason, right? Then, consider Xavier and Wahlert both end up with identical district records, good enough to get into the field of 16, except there's already 15 teams that have qualified. Wahlert would get the nod, thanks to their non-district head-to-head win, even if Xavier's point differential was better. There's certainly a school of thought that says you could avoid this outcome by simply not playing anybody else in your class, outside your district foes. That seems a little conspiracy-game theory-overthinking things in my mind, but it's out there.
I would wager the Xavier-Iowa City Regina game will continue as a non-district matchup. Nobody else in 1A wants to play Regina; the Regals already have one 3A rivalry opponent in Solon, so playing Xavier again would fill their dance card. Xavier's other non-district game, though ... I'm not sure. I don't think the Dowling experiment worked out so well, considering the travel and the weather difficulties. Wahlert is going to fill their non-district schedule with metro 4A opponents Hempstead and Senior. Assumption is a possibility, as they'd need another non-district game in addition to Bettendorf, although the whole in-class/head-to-head thing might be a consideration. Outside of those other parochial schools, I really don't know who might be a possible opponent. Center Point-Urbana, Marion, and Clear Creek-Amana are all neighbors, as well as Solon, but I doubt any of them would volunteer to play Xavier. The Cedar Rapids 4A schools (who have four non-district games to fill instead of two) have made it pretty clear they only want to play other 4A teams. It's a mystery at this point. We'll find out in about a month.
OKAY! The Districts! Who's where? What's changed? How much travel is there going to be (a lot)?
3A DISTRICT 1 (Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley drops to 2A)
- Algona
- Humboldt
- LeMars
- Sergeant Bluff-Luton
- Sioux City Heelan
- Spencer
- Spirit Lake (up from 2A)
- Storm Lake
3A DISTRICT 2
- Ballard
- Boone
- Dallas Center-Grimes
- Gilbert
- Greene County
- Iowa Falls-Alden (up from 2A)
- Perry
- Webster City
3A DISTRICT 3 (Crestwood drops to 2A)
- Benton Community
- Charles City
- Decorah
- Independence
- South Tama (up from 2A)
- Vinton-Shellsburg
- Waverly-Shell Rock
- Xavier
3A DISTRICT 4 (Western Dubuque moves up to 4A)
- Center Point-Urbana (up from 2A)
- Central DeWitt
- Clear Creek-Amana
- Davenport Assumption
- Dubuque Wahlert
- Maquoketa
- Marion
- West Delaware
3A DISTRICT 5
- Fairfield
- Fort Madison
- Keokuk
- Mount Pleasant
- Oskaloosa
- Solon
- Washington
- West Burlington/Notre Dame (up from 2A)
3A DISTRICT 6 (Chariton and Saydel drop to 2A, Newton moves up to 4A)
- Bondurant-Farrar
- Carlisle
- Grinnell
- Knoxville
- Nevada
- North Polk (up from 2A)
- Norwalk
- Pella
3A DISTRICT 7
- ADM
- Atlantic
- Carroll
- Creston
- Denison-Schleswig
- Glenwood
- Harlan
- Winterset
A couple of odd things: Xavier was essentially plucked out of District 4 and added to the old District 3 (which had also lost Crestwood and had West Delaware moved out); Benton and South Tama also got added to the same district as Decorah. That's a 123-mile trip from Tama to Decorah. Meanwhile, Center Point-Urbana, Independence, Wahlert and West Delaware - all closer geographically to the old District 3 - got put into District 4 in eastern Iowa.
The oddest thing, though, is Solon's inclusion in District 5 while Clear Creek-Amana goes to District 4. Solon is north of Tiffin, not by a lot, but north. So the Spartans can wave at the Clippers as their bus goes past on their trips to Keokuk and Fort Madison ... If you draw the district boundaries on a map, the contortions to have Solon go south and CCA go east are obvious. And I don't know why the state chose to do that.
Heck, let's look at a map:
See the weird zigzag there in the boundaries along I-80 south of Cedar Rapids? Imagine how much cleaner that would look if it were CCA in the red District 5 and Solon in the aqua District 4. Oh, well.
The actual schedules won't be out until late February. Then schools will know who they play when, and where. Remember, with the two-year district system, the schedules will be the same in 2016 and 2017, with only the home field reversed.
