[Bigblue78]

It is not a perfect science by any means. There is a few problems unique to MS playoffs.

In HS you KNOW you are going to get a certain amount of teams in the playoffs. They wanted 32 teams this year but they did not get it. Since teams are not playing in districts and the such its tough to do. Its more like making a playoff of the BSC teams or something. You also get tems that do not do what they are suppose to do in order to play.

Travel expenses. MS teams do not pull in the money like HS teams to pay for travel. The Graves Co game will be played on a neutral site due to travel. Unless your boosters pay for some or all of it, then it is very tough for MS teams to be able to pay for the travel to these games.

Now if some of these confrences would get on board as a group it would make a ton of difference. You could use the confrences as almost districts.

I agree that it is expensive to travel long distances at this level.
But you know what? That is part of it.
If a school cannot bear the expense and if their boosters wont pay for the trip then they can opt out of the playoffs.
Last I checked it is not mandatory to participate.

What is NOT ok is for a school to benefit from being in a remote location by being given fewer games to play to make it to the title game.
How is that fair to the other teams who have to play a full slate of games?

As another poster metioned, in the 7th grade brackets they have 4 teams on the left side and NINE on the right side.
This is patently unfair!
It is also easily fixed.
Just move Corbin and S Pulaski from the east to the west, and there would be 6 teams in the west and 7 in the east. Problem solved!
You will notice that Corbin and S Pulaski are already in the west side of the 8th grade bracket.