The offices of the Iowa High School Athletic Association will be busy this evening as officials gather scores to round out the playoff field of 96. IHSAA spokesman, Bud Legg, says the first thing they do is determine all the champions and runner-ups in each district from 3A through eight man.
They have eight teams in the east and eight in the west in 4A, and need the scores from the games to determine those qualifiers. Legg says points will need to be tabulated in many districts to determine the qualifiers. He says it’s not only what a school does, but what other schools do in concert with them. Legg says they have it down to 112 games they are watching before knowing the qualifiers.
After the qualifiers are determined the pairings will be set and Legg says they try to avoid rematches from district play. He says the preference is to have a district champion play a district runner-up from another district, if that is possible geographically. Legg says there are cases where that just doesn’t work.
Legg concedes that no matter how the pairings come out there is no way to make everyone happy. He says there will be people who look at it and ask why the teams go together. "You’ve got to remember that this is educational athletics, this is not the NCAA, this is not some hyperseeding type of thing like the BCS," Legg says. Legg says the schools know that and appreciate the thought process used by the board of control.
The eight-man playoffs begin next Tuesday while the rest of the classes open on Wednesday.