How the Football Playoff Pairings are Determined — 2011

The boys football playoffs are the only IHSA tournament for which teams qualify on the basis of their regular-season records. There are 575 schools playing 11-man varsity football in 2011.  However, four developmental Chicago Public League conferences comprising 26 teams do not participate in the playoffs, leaving a total of 549 eligible schools. Of these, 256 (slightly less than half) will be selected for the playoffs. The following steps are used to determine which teams receive a playoff berth and how the playoff teams are paired.

Selecting the Playoff Teams

The first step is to select the 256 playoff teams. The process proceeds as follows:

1. All champions of conferences with six or more teams receive a playoff berth. If two or more teams are tied for the best conference record, the conference determines which team shall be the representative. In practice, two-team ties have always been broken on the basis of head-to-head competition when those teams have played during the regular season. Three- and four-way ties are broken by a variety of formulas.
   
   
2. At the request of the Chicago Public Schools League, only the top two teams in each of the four "Chicago" conferences are eligible for the IHSA playoffs. In this step, the remaining teams in these conferences are removed from the potential field before proceeding. (All teams in the four "Illini" conferences are eligible for the playoffs.)
   
   
3. The remaining schools are sorted by three categories:
   • First, by total wins
   • Second, by combined wins of all opponents
   • Third, by combined wins of all defeated opponents

   For example:

   School	Wins	Combined Wins of All Opponents	Combined Wins of Defeated Opponents
   Abingdon	9	30	30
   Ziegler-Royalton	9	27	27
   Staunton	8	37	30
   Elgin	8	37	29
   Chicago Vocational	7	40	30
   Byron	7	38	31
   Libertyville	6	43	30
   Johnston City	6	37	28

   
   
4. Starting at the top of this sorted list, the teams are added to the playoff field until the 256-team limit is reached. In the event of a tie for the 256th position, the following tiebreakers are applied:
   • Head-to-head competition (if the teams have met)
   • Number of teams played that qualified for the playoffs
   • Number of wins by teams played that qualified for the playoffs
   • Coin flip

   In practice, teams with 9, 8, 7, and 6 wins will always qualify for the playoffs. Teams with 5 wins are "on the bubble," and the tie is broken by the number of playoff points (the combined wins of all opponents).

The chart below shows the historic at-large cutoff for the 256-team field.

Determining the Classes

After the 256 qualifiers have been determined, the schools are broken down into 8 classes of 32 teams each, based on the school's classification enrollment (from last year's report to the Illinois State Board of Education, adjusted by the 1.65 multiplier where applicable).

The largest 32 schools based on the official enrollment figures are placed in Class 8A, the next largest in Class 7A, and so on down to Class 1A. If a tie should occur for the final spot in a particular class, a coin flip is used to break the tie.

Prior to the start of the season, some schools may elect to "play up" a class. Moving such a school up will obviously result in another school moving down. For 2011, East St. Louis has elected to play up to Class 7A.

It is important to remember that a school's classification is not determined until the 256-team field has been selected on the final day of the season. The classes used in the Associated Press polls are a "best guess" at the final determinations, but they are unofficial and can be misleading. The fact that the AP ranks a school all season in a certain class has no bearing on the school's ultimate classification in the state playoffs. This can be determined only at season's end, after the entire 256-team field is selected.

The chart below shows the enrollment cutoffs for the 256-team field after the implementation of the multiplier. In 2005, the multiplier did not apply to schools with enrollments less than 450 and certain other schools. Starting in 2011, any school that had not won a playoff football game in the past six years received an automatic waiver from the multiplier.

In 2005 and 2006, a school's "football enrollment" took into account the enrollments of its opponents. This provision was eliminated in 2007.

Grouping and Seeding the Brackets

Once the 32 teams in a particular class are determined, they are grouped manually by the IHSA Office. Each class is grouped into two halves of 16 teams based on the general location of the schools within that class.

Then, within each half, the seeds are determined by sorting the teams by two of the factors used to determine playoff berths:

If, in any half, the natural first-round pairings (1 vs. 16, 2 vs. 15, etc.) result in more than one trip exceeding 150 miles, the 16 teams will be paired into two quadrants of eight teams each, unless doing so increases the anticipated travel involved during the first two rounds of the playoffs.

A school's ranking in the Associated Press poll has no bearing on its seed in the IHSA Football Playoffs. The only criteria used to seed the teams are those mentioned above.

Determining the Host Team and the Date and Time of the Game

In the first round, the higher seed hosts the game. In subsequent rounds, the school that has hosted fewer times during the current playoff series hosts the game.

If both teams have hosted an equal number of times:

When circumstances warrant, a site other than the designated host school's field may be requested by either school and may be used subject to the approval of the IHSA Board of Directors and the host school.

The game must be played on Saturday, unless both schools agree to play the game on Friday. Friday games must not be scheduled during school hours. Saturday games must start between 1 pm and 7 pm. The schools must agree on the starting time of the game; if they cannot come to an agreement, the IHSA will set the starting time.

For the state championship game at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, the home team (the top team on the bracket) occupies the west grandstand. In odd years, the home team is from the "south half" of the map. In even years, the home team is from the "north half" of the map.