Todd Tharp
The offices of the Iowa High School Athletic Association in Boone will be busy on Friday night as officials determine the qualifiers and set the pairings for the high school football playoffs. Todd Tharp of the IHSAA says the first chore will be to gather scores and determine the 96 qualifiers. They hope to release the teams that are in by midnight.
“So we will list each class and who the district champion was in each district and who the district runner-up was”, said Tharp. “In classes 3A, 2A, 1A and A we will also list the at-large qualifiers.”
Tharp says the qualifiers will be placed on a map and then they will go to work on the pairings which they hope to release at 2:00a.m. on Saturday and for the second straight year a complete bracket will be released for all six classes.
“That was brought back by popular demand from our football coaches and from our friends in the media”, added Tharp. “Spectators also liked the idea of the bracket and seeing who they will be playing throughout and so we respected those wishes.”
The opening round of the playoffs is October 27.