Breaking News ... And, uh, oh yeah, Xavier Won State

I'm only two months late, give me a break.

The Xavier Saints won their second state football title in school history (and their first in Class 3A) with a convincing win over three-time defending champion Pella last November. Xavier first defeated a tough Solon squad in the semifinals, using some big yardage plays to roll up points on the state's number one scoring defense. Xavier is now on a 13-game winning streak, and a 27-game regular season win streak (their last regular season loss was to Iowa City Regina in Week 8 of 2014). Since moving to Class 3A, the Saints are 41-6, 36-4 vs 3A competition (2-1 vs 4A, 3-1 vs 1A). The only 3A teams to defeat Xavier in 4 seasons are Pella (twice), Decorah, and Western Dubuque.

Enough of the past. On to what's coming, which is actually a big change in how the state is aligning classes as well as how playoff teams are determined. I mentioned some months ago the IHSAA was going to change the numbers of schools in each class for the 2018-19 seasons: 4A will drop to 42 (instead of 48); 3A/2A/1A will drop to 54 (instead of 56); and A/8-player takes the remaining programs. For 2018 this means there will be 62 teams in Class A and 65 in 8-player.

So how will the new districts shake out? Well, since the state claimed the major reason for the change was to reduce travel by increasing non-district/cross-class games with nearby opponents, the only logical thing would be smaller districts than the 8-team setup of the past two years. Yesterday we found out - 4A will be made up of 7 6-team districts; 3A/2A/1A will have 9 6-team districts; A will have 8 districts of 6 and 2 districts of 7; and 8-player will have 7 districts of 8 and 1 9-team district. For most classes, then, there will be 4 non-district games, and 5 games within the district to determine district standings.

Every school will submit a 7-team "wish list" to the state for prospective non-district opponents, and if two schools have each other on their list, they'll likely get paired up for a game. However - and this is pretty important - it's the state that's going to make the final determination on schedules. If the IHSAA thinks a game between Cedar Rapids Kennedy and Xavier makes sense, it's going on the schedule regardless of who Kennedy or Xavier had on their wish list.

On to playoff qualifying. In the recent past, only the results of district games were used in determining playoff teams. It all depended on your finish in your district, then ties were settled via head-to-head, the 17-point tiebreaker (from district games only), and the alphabet. Non-district games didn't have anything to do with the playoffs. If you go further back in the mists of time, the state would dock playoff points from teams who played opponents in a lower class - if Cedar Falls, for example, played 3A West Delaware, a win would have earned them fewer points than a win over a 4A team; and a loss would have been crippling.

All that is out the door for 2018-19. EVERY game of the 9-game season now is counted toward playoff qualifying. Here's how it works:

• District champions are in. This includes teams who tie for the district championship. So for 4A, there's 7 guaranteed spots; for 3A/2A/1A, there's 9; for A there's 10, and for 8-player there's 8.
• The rest of the 16-team field (9 for 4A, 7 for 3A/2A/1A, 6 for A and 8 for 8-player) will be wild card entries. They will be determined by an RPI rating, similar to what the NCAA uses for college basketball.
• The RPI is set up this way: 37.5% of the value is based on the team's winning percentage, for all 9 games; another 37.5% is based on the winning percentage of that team's opponents; and the final 25% is based on the winning percentage of those opponents' opponents. It's a bit complicated, but anyone would be able to figure it based on wins and losses. No more 17-point tiebreaker, no more second-place district finish automatically in the playoffs.

The state will start posting RPIs for every team starting in Week 4 of the season, with what I assume will be weekly updates. So anyone can look at the IHSAA website and keep track of their chances as the season goes on.

There's a couple of good things about this. Larger schools won't have to worry about being docked for playing a smaller-class opponent. Xavier, for example, should be somewhat valued as an opponent, as their winning percentage ought to be high and help boost the RPI of whatever team plays them. It also makes every game count towards playoffs, so non-district games will no longer have the feel of glorified exhibition matches.

Given the relatively small numbers of opponents, though (particularly in comparison with the over 300 NCAA D-I basketball programs), it's likely the difference in RPIs will be minuscule. It's easy to see teams make the playoffs or take a better seeding by virtue of a few thousandths or even ten-thousandths of a point on the RPI. Now, that's just the way the system works - but considering how much control the IHSAA exerts on scheduling, it's pretty easy to predict a school left out of the playoffs howling bloody murder because their state-controlled schedule ended up giving them a fractionally lower RPI than another school.

So there's the big news of yesterday. Today the state will announce official classifications as well as the districts for 2018-19. Check back here, and I'll have maps and everything.