Oct. 23--The bracket inequity became so obvious, the IHSA was actually sufficiently motivated to step in.
Increasingly, the north half of the regionalized 8A playoff bracket and the south half of the 7A bracket became disproportionately strong.
Coaches, fans and guys like me begged for a change that would allow the playoffs to be seeded 1-32, and in what may stand as the upset of the year, we got our wish when the IHSA Board of Directors approved the recommendation of an ad hoc committee in June.
I had previously cried about it often, in the recently defined figurative sense of the word literal, so go ahead and call me a hypocrite for what I'm about to say.
It didn't work.
Mark my words, either the 7A or 8A bracket -- probably both -- will still be out of whack when the pairings are announced live Saturday night on Comcast SportsNet starting at 8 p.m. (Regardless of what your eyes tell you, Hugh Jackman is not part of the panel. I get it all the time.)
I'm still a believer in 1-32 as the most fair way to seed the teams. The seeding process, however, still leaves a lot to be desired.
Granted, the perfect system of seeding teams probably does not exist, and from what I understand, Condoleezza Rice is not available.
I'm OK with using record as the first criteria, even though there are situations where, for example, a 7-2 team from a strong conference is clearly better than an 8-1 team from a weaker one.
There would be wayyyy too much judgment and bias and potential for significant error to get a committee together to seed teams based on subjective measures.
Unfortunately, though, the "objective" way in which ties are broken for seeding purposes does not reflect real strength of schedule the way it's supposed to.
It seems to be that we've become so accustomed to the "playoff points" system -- adding the total number of wins of every team on an individual team's schedule -- that we rarely complain about it anymore.
Well I'm tired of not complaining, so let's take the 7A pairings as they would be if the playoffs began this weekend.
There are only three 8-0 teams: Tribune No. 3 Glenbard West, No. 4 Libertyville and Young.
With 40 playoff points, Glenbard West would be the top seed, which makes perfect sense considering the strength of the West Suburban Silver this year.
Libertyville, I think every neutral party would agree, has a far more impressive resume than Young. The Wildcats dominated the highly competitive North Suburban Lake, easily dispatching defending Class 8A champion Stevenson as well as good teams like Lake Forest, Lake Zurich and Warren.
Yet Young would be seeded No. 2 ahead of Libertyville because six of the teams on its schedule currently have five or six wins, almost exclusively against Public League teams.
Now, there may not be much of a difference between being second and third in this case -- both get placed on the opposite side of the bracket from Glenbard West -- but there will be similar examples up and down the 7A and 8A brackets that will invariably create bracket inequity that probably won't be much different from what we had in the past.
If bracketologist Steve Soucie's projections are correct, complaints will be levied from the bottom half of the 7A bracket.
That's where the veteran sportswriter from the Kankakee Daily Journal projects the field's three best teams in my opinion -- GBW, Libertyville and Glenbard North -- along with Mount Carmel and Simeon.
That's four Top 20 teams plus my choice to win 7A if GBN handles Neuqua Valley the way I think it will on Friday in one half of a bracket. The other half has some good teams but only one in the Tribune Top 20 -- No. 20 Batavia.
Look, I get it. Nobody was as obnoxiously vocal about getting this change enacted as I was. Now I wonder if it did any good.
Mike Helfgot is a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
