It’s a whole-new playoff system

CEDAR RAPIDS – His Mountain Dew and NoDoz are at the ready. It's going to be a long Friday night for Todd Tharp.

The assistant executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association is in charge of drawing out pairings for the state football playoffs that begin next week. It's not nearly as easy a task as it has been in recent years.

The IHSAA has done away with sister districts in each class and instituted a 125-mile limitation rule for all first-round games. You might remember last season Eddyville-Blakesburg traveled over three hours one way to play its opening playoff game against Clayton Ridge.

There's no more of that stuff, even if it means schools from the same district have to play each other right away. It is still guaranteed district champions will play fourth-place district finishers and district runners-up will oppose third-place district finishers initially, though there could be some initial regular-season rematches.

'A lot of it has been feedback we have gotten from our school administrators, from our high school principals, from our athletic directors, from fans regarding some of those early mornings getting home from (playoff) games that Wednesday and things,' Tharp said. 'Without the mileage limitation, you could have a Creston playing at LeMars, or maybe on your side of the state, a Mount Pleasant or Keokuk traveling to Decorah or Waverly-Shell Rock or Manchester because they are in sister districts.

'You are talking about leaving at two o'clock in the afternoon, getting home at two o'clock that next morning and getting up and going to school that next day … We talk about these kids being student-athletes, so what can we do to put the student part back into things?'

The playoff changes do not end there. The bracket system is kaput, so first-round winners will have no idea who they play in the second round until Tharp and the IHSAA come out with a new batch of pairings after next Wednesday's first round.

The only guarantee is district champions will not meet until the quarterfinals. Higher-seeded teams have home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, per usual.

That's until the semifinals, of course, which are played at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls. Tharp was asked if he intended to keep a geographic slant to those games.

He brought up Class 4A as an example. On this side of the state, Cedar Rapids Washington and Bettendorf have separated themselves as the lone unbeaten teams in the class, with defending champion West Des Moines Dowling, West Des Moines Valley and Waukee doing the same on the other side of the state.

'I just don't have any justification for 'All right, Washington, you play Dowling and Bettendorf, you play Waukee,'' Tharp said, flatly. 'You guys ask me 'OK, Todd, how did you get these semifinal pairings?' What am I going to say? I drew them out of a hat? I don't have any way to justify. At 2:30 in the morning, or whenever we release the pairings, I have to be able to justify why all 96 of those (first-round) games were matched up the way they are. To say 'Well, it sure looked good on the map,' that's not a good rationale for my schools.'

Another impending change will be lengthening the playoff process, which could come as early as next season but probably in 2016. Right now, teams can play three games in 11 days, which doesn't provide nearly enough physical recovery time.

Tharp said he attended a national summit on football safety over the summer and was met with incredulity when he explained Iowa's playoff schedule.

'I think that (change) has to happen. We've got to make that occur,' he said.

It's likely the beginning of the regular season will begin a week earlier, he said, in order for playoff games to be played on a string of consecutive Friday nights. That's not ideal for a state that has summer baseball, but he said playing the finals a week later isn't an option because it's Thanksgiving.

'There are a lot of puzzle pieces that need to fall into place and be looked at,' he said. ' It's got to happen at the front end of the season. We are pretty much locked into the UNI-Dome and playing where we are now. I have not talked to one coach who says he wants to play outside in December. They like the atmosphere in the Dome. It's awesome for neutrality, we don't have to worry about being cold, a team that likes to pass the ball isn't at a disadvantage. Nobody wants to play outside, so the UNI-Dome is the place for us to play. The weekend we play the finals is the weekend to have them. Something has got to happen on the front end of the schedule.'

Tharp was tight lipped on the controversy that arose last week in which Ames and Des Moines East had their game cancelled because of safety concerns after the rumored threat of potential gun violence. The IHSAA initially gave East three options (to move the game to Ames, to play it during the day Saturday or forfeit), with the Des Moines Public School District flatly refused.

The IHSAA, East and Ames came to a resolution Tuesday in which the game was declared a no contest instead of an East forfeit.

'I am respectfully declining to discuss it,' Tharp said. 'This case is closed. We are done with this.'

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