Section V Football: Power Seeding Points new formula for determining post season

By PAUL LIOTTI

After the dust settles on Week 4’s Section V football games, teams will get a better understanding of  their seeding for the upcoming sectionals. The formula for determining sectional participation and placement, though, has changed this season.

The old +/- point system based on each team’s classification is no longer in play. Instead Section V will be rolling out its new Power Seeding Points system after this week’s games.

Through last season, sectional seeding was determined by a collective point total of how a team fared against its opponents factored by the classification of each opponent. The new system places value on a team’s strength-of-schedule, and every team is now quantified by how many victories it has: The more victories, the stronger the team.

Therefore, the stronger a slate of opponents are for particular team, the better it is for that team when it comes time to evaluating whether or not it deserves to be in the playoffs.

One way to secure the top 8 teams in each class get seeded in the playoffs is to create a seeding system based on a team’s overall won-loss record in conjunction with that team’s opponents’ strength of schedule. By placing value on an opponent’s strength of schedule – and the outcome against that opponent — it is a better validation of a team’s strength, as opposed to simply relying on points determined by the classifications of that team’s opponents.

“When I was first named football chairperson, we spent the entire year looking at the point system, because the schedule is done by the leagues, unlike in other sectionals around the state,” said 2^nd year Section V Football Chairman Scott Barker. “Every league is different, and every league’s scheduling protocol is different. What I was concerned about was with all the competitiveness of getting into a closed playoff, how do we ensure the top 8 teams get in?”

Since each league does their own scheduling, and each league is made up of multiple classifications, every team in every league has different paths to sectionals. The new system levels the playing surface for all teams across all leagues and Classifications.

The only negative to this new system is weekly sectional standings are irrelevant. While Section V is going to release the ‘current standings,’ the Wednesday after each week’s play, it’s really more of a snapshot of where a team stands. Since final records are the determining factor in the final Power Seeding Points total, in-season values are mute.

VIEW MORE CHRIS CECERE PHOTOS HERE. 

This is because Power Seeding Point system is based on the FINAL won-loss record of all teams. The week-to-week W/L records are immaterial. That’s why in-season Sectional standings are only a snapshot of a team’s relative placement in the Sectional, but a lot can change before the last seeding is released on October 14.

Here’s how new Power Seeding Point system works:

At the end of the season, a point value is assigned to each team’s total number of wins. If a team finishes either 7-0 or 6-1, that team’s “value” is 10 and 4 points. The team that beat the 6-1 team would earn 10 points and if and any opponent that lost to either the 7-0 or 6-1 team would earn 4 points.

The theory is to reward teams for playing tough opponents and not penalize with negative points when a team loses, regardless of classification.

The sliding scale of points is based on wins, where the lower the win total, the lower the value of playing that team becomes. All of the point totals are based on the wins as long as the team plays 7 games.

Here is the complete chart and ‘value’ of each team based on a 7-game regular season:

Record	Power Points for Beating a team  with this Win Total	Power Points for Losing to a team with this Win Total
7-0	–	4
6-1	10	4
5-2	9	3
4-3	8	3
3-4	7	2
2-5	6	2
1-6	5	1
0-7	4	–

If a team plays less than 7 games, that team’s point total is in line with the ‘loss values’ in the chart. So if a team plays 6 games and finishes 5-1, its value would be in line with the “6-1” team; 4-2 in line with the 5-2 team, etc.

In case a seeding position initially ends in a tie, the tie will be broken in this sequence:

• Head to Head (winner of the head-to-head game if applicable)
• Win/Loss Record (won-loss record by percentage)
• 10 Point Wins (how many wins the tied teams had against opponents that had “10” point wins)
• 9 Point Wins (how many wins the tied teams had against opponents that had “9” point wins)
• 8 Point Wins (how many wins the tied teams had against opponents that had “8” point wins)
• 6 Point Wins (how many wins the tied teams had against opponents that had “7” point wins)
• 7 Point Wins (how many wins the tied teams had against opponents that had “6” point wins)
• 5 Point Wins (how many wins the tied teams had against opponents that had “5” point wins)
• 4 Point Wins (how many wins the tied teams had against opponents that had “4” point wins)
• Coin Toss

The new system challenged the old adage that just because a team wins more games, it doesn’t necessarily mean that team is better qualified than a team which won fewer games.

Prior to this season, a team would earn positive or negative points depending on if they won or lost, points based on the relative position of itself to its opponent’s Classification. Therefore, if a team played another team:

• in its own Class, and won, it earned positive-5 points; if it lost, negative-5 points.
• 1-Class higher and won, it earned positive-6 points, if it lost; negative-4 points.
• 2 Classes higher and won, it earned positive-7 points, if it lost, negative-3 points.
• 3 Classes higher and won, it earned positive-8 points, if it lost, negative-2

Conversely, if a team played another team that was:

• 1-Class lower and won, it earned positive-4 points, if it lost, negative-6 points.
• 2 Classes lower and won, it earned positive-3 points, if it lost, -7 points.
• 3-Classes lower and won, it earned positive-2 points, if it lost, -8 points.

As an example, if in Week 1 a Class A team played a Class B team and won, it would gain 4 points (beating a 1-Class lower team). Then in Week 2, the Class A team played a Class AA team and lost, it would earn a negative-4 points. Therefore, it two-week total would be 0 seeding points.

That has all changed with the new system.

“The positive or negative points system, which is based solely on a classification is not a good system,” Barker emphasized. “If I’m an undefeated B team and I’m playing a winless Class A team, it might be a blowout for that B team and therefore the B team would have an advantage over other teams in Class B, even though the Class A team was very weak.”

Consider the following:

Team A and Team B reside in Class A and both play 7 games all of them against Class A opponents. Both teams are vying for the final playoff spot in Classification.

• Team A finished 4-3, beating teams that went 1-6, 2-5, 3-4, 1-6, and losing to teams that finished 4-3, 5-2, 5-2.
• Team B finished 3-4, beating teams that finished 1-6, 3-4, 3-4, while losing to teams that finished 7-0, 7-0, 6-1, 4-3.

In the old Sectional Points system:

• Team A (4-3) would have collected 20 positive points and 15 negative points for a total of 5 points.
• Team B (3-4) would have collected 15 positive and 20 negative for a total of minus-5 points.
• Team A would be in the playoffs, Team B would not.

In the new Power Seeding Points system:

• Team A (4-3) would have collected 33 points.
• Team B (3-4) would have collected 34 points.
• Team B would be in the playoffs, Team A would not.

So where did this seeding system come from?

Lacrosse says Barker.

“Lacrosse has power-seeded both boys and girls for 7-8 years now,” he said. “This system pretty much ensures that the final four teams in each sectional are the four-best teams in that sectional, which is ultimately what you want to see. Yes, there will be upsets along the way, but you want to set up the playoffs to ensure that the best teams get to the finals.”

Barker, who also doubles as the Pittsford Athletic Director, estimates that since lacrosse has gone to this Power Seeding Points system, more than 80 percent of the sectional final games in each classification were contested by the top two seeded teams. Additionally, the same percentage of time the third and fourth seeds made the semifinals. It shows that the system promotes great seeding, because no one wants to see the two ‘best’ teams playing in the semifinals (think NBA playoffs).

This new system may lead to more rivalry match ups that have been discontinued over the years due program sizes, avoiding the inherent risk a large school takes when playing a lower Class team in the +/- system

“We have to do everything we can to promote big games in football,” Barker said. “In my experience when teams did have openings in their schedules, they were trying to figure out (who to play) based points rather than looking to find who would be the best opponent to play.”

In the old sectional point system, AA teams would not ‘risk’ potential points playing a team in a lower class (i.e. Class B team or even a Class A team) no matter how strong that lower-class team was or how good that potential game would be to the programs and the fan base. If a Class AA team lost to a Class B team, it would lose 7 points in its collective sectional points sytem, which could spell the difference between a high seed (and home game) versus potentially not even making sectionals.

“With the Power Seeding Points process in lacrosse, (every year) have Fairport (Class A) plays Penn Yan (Class D),” Barker added. “Those are our the two traditional powerhouses. If there was a points system in place in lacrosse, that game would never happen because it’s too much of a risk from a points perspective for Fairport to schedule Penn Yan and potentially miss out on sectionals (if they lose).”

It is unlikely a Class AA team would play a Class C team in football simply because of the much lower number of players on the Class C team, which equates to a player safety issue. But perhaps a strong Class B team will play a powerful Class D team, or a AA team will take on a strong B team. Who wouldn’t like to see Batavia (B) play Alexander (D) this year? Or witness a McQuaid-Kearney game sometime in the future?

So what if this system is a success? Will it translate to other sports?

Barker said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Power Seeding Point system gains traction with other sports. It won’t avoid a #1 seed playing a #16 seed in sports with open Sectionals, but it will be a more equitable way to seed the teams.

Barker’s research which has taken him all across the country and cut across all sports shows that more and more sports are going to a power-ranking system.

“We presented it to the sectional sports’ chairs and they seemed to like what we showed them,” Barker said, adding that Section V hockey is already transitioning to a Power Seeding Points system.

Whether it catches on in other sports is still be determined. But one thing is for sure, it is here to stay in football.