VHSL Football Ratings Committee Minutes February 10, 2015 – 10:00 A.M
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VHSL Football Ratings Committee Minutes February 10, 2015 – 10:00 a.m. I. Roll Call: Mike Krulfeld, 6A North, Yorktown High School; Kevin Adams, 5A South, Varina High School; Bobby Pannenbacker, 4A South, Lake Taylor High School; Rick Lilly, 4A North, Handley High School, John Ashley, 3A East, York High School; Larry Kidd, 3A West, Brookville High School; Dan Jones, 2A East, King William High School; Richard McElwee, 2A West, Glenvar High School; Mark Redden, 1A East, West Point High School; Anthony Kidd, 1A West, Bland County High School, William Gouldthorpe, 3A & 4A State Director; and Tom Dolan, Lora Bickley, VHSL Staff. Members absent: Todd Parker, 6A South, Oscar Smith High School; Ed Boyd 5A & 6A State Director, Maury High School; Ben Stutler, 5A North; North Stafford High School; Chris King, 1A & 2A State Director, Salem High School. II. Purpose of Meeting: To review the 2014 football season as it related to the rating system, make recommendations to the February Executive Committee and discuss other issues of concern from the regions. William Gouldthorpe moved, Dan Jones seconded and the committee voted 10‐0 (Pannenbacker absent for vote. A. Review current VHSL Rating Scale: Anthony Kidd, 1A West: None. Mark Redden, 1A East: They did make some money but not a huge amount. Their major concern is playoff representation. Richard McElwee, 2A West: None. Dan Jones, 2A East: None. Larry Kidd, 3A West: Prior to the playoffs, there was a concern with too many teams making the playoffs, but when the 16‐seed won for two consecutive weeks, that concern was quickly eliminated. John Ashley, 3A East: His region feels there are too many schools advancing to the playoffs and they have been impacted financially. Bobby Pannenbacker, 4A South: 4A South is looking into reducing the number of teams advancing. Financially, they did not realize as much income as they did in 2014. There were no problems in regard to the games. Rick Lilly, 4A North: The region is concerned with the equity of the first several rounds. The first rounds, like other regions, have not been profitable. William Gouldthorpe, 3A & 4A Director: He indicated that this was the best set of state playoff football games that Liberty University has hosted. The sportsmanship was outstanding. Kevin Adams, 5A South ‐‐ Financially the region did fine. The Richmond‐Area did really well, and the Eastern Area did okay. Beach District has a request before this committee for a recommendation to the Executive Committee to opt out of the Play All in District. Mike Krulfeld, 6A North: Financially, his region has taken a hit for the past two years. B. Materials Included for your review: 1. 2014 Playoff Pairings – First round 2. Minutes from February 11, 2014 3. Final 2014 Football Ratings C. New Business Items: 1. Legislation: It was the consensus of the committee that VHSL allows the regions autonomy as it gives the regions the ability to do what is right for their particular situations. On the flip side of this, Dan Jones felt like there should be a Conference Handbook that is consistent 6A through 1A outlining that every region would seed exactly alike. The committee recommended unanimously to the Executive Committee their endorsement of the following legislation regarding Region Football Representation: SECTION 68: Football (submitted by Executive Director) 68‐4‐8 Regional Playoff Representation‐There shall be two regions for each classification consisting of no fewer than 12 and no more than 16 playoff teams in each region. Rationale: Some regions are considering a smaller number of playoff teams in football due to such factors as the quality of teams making the playoffs in the lower seeded positions, mismatches, poor match‐ups and noncompetitive first round games. 2. Requests for exceptions to the Football Power Ratings: a. “Old Northern Region”: The old Northern Region has remained as a scheduling group in order to facilitate scheduling across all sports. In football, all member schools have agreed to play games according to conference, not district. This most impacts Mt. Vernon and Lee as well as their subsequent conference opponents. The entire (old Northern) region requests approval for conference games to be counted as district games in terms of the rating scale for the next two‐year cycle for conferences 5, 6, 7 and 13. The impact could be both positive and negative on the individual rating for each game, so exactly how this will affect the ratings is not known. For example, when Lee plays Lake Braddock, the VHSL considers that a district game but our group will not. Rather, we will be considering games against Conference 13 opponents to be "district games" since they will not play everyone in conference 7. The committee voted 9‐0‐2 (Krulfeld and Pannenbacker abstaining) to recommend approval of the above format as long as there is a signed agreement from all schools affected by this change. Mike Krulfeld recommended that the ratings part of this request go through one year before requesting any change in regards to the rating system. b. Beach District: The Beach District is made up of 11 schools in 6A and 5A which proves to be a challenge during football season because all 10 games have to be played against Beach District opponents. Ever since the opening of Landstown High School in 2001, the Beach District football schedule has been self‐contained with no school allowed to play non‐District competition. From time to time, our schools have been courted by other non‐District schools that would like to schedule a game, but the Beach District school, even though it might want to play the non‐District school, would have to decline. The past two years Ocean Lakes was offered an opportunity to play Oscar Smith on ESPN, but because Oscar Smith was in another district, OL could not play on TV and Oscar Smith found another opponent. A few years before that, Salem in Virginia Beach found itself in the same predicament. The Beach District principals have voted unanimously to allow two Beach schools to opt out of playing one another, but only if both schools agree and the District can be guaranteed that one of the substitute games will be played in Virginia Beach since all Beach schools share ticket sales revenue. The Beach District will create a master district football schedule which it is working on now. If Ocean Lakes and Salem decided not to play each other on their scheduled Friday night because they can both find a more attractive opponent on that date, the Beach District principals would allow it to take place as long as at least one of those games was played at home. Mark Redden moved, William Gouldthorpe seconded and the committee voted 10‐0‐1 (Adams abstaining) to recommend approval of the above format as long as there is a signed agreement from all schools affected by this change. Tom Dolan reminded the committee that our office will need the representatives on the Football Ratings Committee from those regions to be our point of contact when regions deviate from the Play All in District format. 3. Cumberland not playing full schedule: They have not scheduled a full district schedule for the 2015 football season, but hope to return to full play in the James River District for the 2016 football season. Dan Jones moved, Larry Kidd seconded and the committee voted 11‐0 to recommend approval for Cumberland not to play a full district schedule for the 2015 season. Thus, they will not be eligible for playoff consideration. III. Rating Scale Issues: The 2014 season was completed with no rating scale issues. The inclusion of the additional tie‐breaker, (d) was used in several instances and proved to be a worthy addition. We did have two issues that region representatives should discuss with their regions to get the feedback prior to the meeting. a. Release of Football Ratings: It was brought to our attention that one region expressed concern this year (and another region in the past has also expressed the same concern) that the League office should have the ratings ready for release Friday night and no later than Saturday morning. This does not take into account the Saturday games played both in‐state and out‐of‐state. League staff did not receive the final score Saturday night until 10:30 p.m. during the 2014 season. In order for this to take place, staff would need to be at the League Office on Friday night after 11:30 p.m. to key in the scores, proof scores and calculate the ratings. This is approximately a 3‐5 hour process since the out‐of‐state scores have to be checked as well the in‐state scores. It is easy for a particular region to do their own ratings on Friday night because they only have 24‐28 schools to take care of and the ratings up to that Friday night have been verified if properly checked. The regions have also done projections and worked out scenarios prior to the last game and VHSL does not do projections. Also, they wanted the ratings run again Saturday night after the last score was available. League staff has several concerns since VHSL is responsible for all in‐state and out‐of‐state games (involving the states of DC, MD, WV, KY, TN, NC and FL) and not just selected regions: 1. Staff would need to work around the clock on that Friday and Saturday. There would be a lot more room for error when you have worked your normal 9‐10 hour day on Friday and then have to come back to work at 11:30 p.m.