[Observing]

Is it just me or does anyone else agree that the games of the first round of the playoffs are a joke? It's a shame that teams like Williamsburg (I'm a Jacket fan so I get to list them first), Mayfield, Raceland, Bowling Green, Trinity and others have to risk injury to play these games. It's just as shameful to make teams like Jenkins, Allen Central, Caverna, Apollo and GRC act as cannon fodder in these mismatches.

If the Jackets were 4-6 and Jenkins was 9-1, I would see no point in loading up the bus and wasting gas money to drive to Jenkins to see our kids get their teeth knocked in. In most cases it's pointless and a waste of school funds that could be spent in any number of ways.

Some of you will say that the first round does produce some upsets and that's all well and good. I root for the underdog most of the time myself, but for every 8 seed Villanova that wins a national championship there are a dozen 1 or 2 seeds who crush every opponent in the tournament and cruise to the title.

Would anyone be willing to place a $100 bill on any of the five underdogs I mentioned? How about if I put up $1,000 against your $100? Any takers? In other words, does anybody have a $100 bill they want to lose for sure?

The system needs to be revamped. It would save time, money and most of all it would decrease the risk of injury to the kids.

I made a similar post to this one this morning, that has mysteriously disappeared. And you are SO CORRECT.

The OVERWHELMING mountain of evidence, and ALL LOGIC AND REASON
say that we should eliminate 4 berths per district playoffs. The ONLY
"reasons" you get in favor of it are personal emotional attatchements to particular teams, and the only "evidence" you for it is the TINY sampling
of anamolous wins by lower seeds. And those are almost without
exception simply accidents of ALIGMNENT, where the better teams all
reside within one district, and the 4 seed winners STILL can't compete
with their own district winner. Really, what reasonable case can be made
for a team that couldn't beat the 3 other teams in their district?

I personally favor eliminating the 3 and 4 seeds and getting on with it.
But even eliminating the 4 seeds, adn starting with 2-3 matchups with
1's getting byes would be an improvement, and would cut out the week
that gets the finals back to Thanksgiving weekend on a regular basis.

And you hit the nail squarely on the head with the costs, and the needless humiliation of the vast majority of #4 seeds. And the injury risk in meaningless games. And what kind of "reward" is it to kids who may have
worked an sweated thur 4 years of football to have their last memory
of h.s. football be a buttwhooping in cold miserable weather with a
4 hour round trip bus ride?