The results from Friday’s football games will be important to the CIF Southern Section as it tries to determine the size of the Division 1 playoff group and which teams will be placed in that group.
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Enough information is available now to offer some ideas on how the bracket will look when the playoff pairings are released Nov. 1.
Last year Division 1 was an eight-team bracket that resulted in Santa Margarita defeating Corona Centennial in the championship game. The CIF-SS has not said how many teams will be in Division 1 this season.
The size of the Division 1 bracket affects the other 13 divisions.
The CIF Southern Section uses HSratings.com’s rankings to place teams into divisions and to seed the teams. It’s the system CIF-SS member schools voted for.
Most of the teams in the playoffs will be automatic qualifiers, which are teams that finish in the top two in five-team leagues or top three in leagues with six, seven and eight teams. The top four finishers in nine-team leagues also automatically qualify.
Teams that are not automatic qualifiers can apply for an at-large berth as long as they have three or more wins on their overall schedule.
CIF-SS assistant commissioner Joe Hoggatt, with some input from the CIF-SS Football Coaches Advisory Committee, will examine the final regular-season ratings to figure out where the cutoff will be made between Division 1 and Division 2.
Among the top 16 teams in the HSratings.com rankings on Thursday morning were between No. 4 Mater Dei (73.3 points) and No. 5 Orange Lutheran (65.5 points). A four-team Division 1 bracket makes sense given those numbers and the quality of the teams. But that would create a three-week break from the end of the regular season to the playoffs, a break that no coach would want.
Going down the ratings, another gap that looks fairly significant is between No. 9 JSerra (55.9 points) points and No. 10 Chaparral (52.2 points).
A nine-team Division 1 bracket would work this way: a playoff game between the Nos. 8 and 9 teams on Nov. 6; the winner plays the No. 1 team on Nov. 13, along with playoff games for the other six Division 1 teams.
That might solve another potential problem, which is the awful rule — created by CIF-SS member schools — that no playoff division can have an at-large team as its No. 1 seed.
JSerra is ranked No. 9 by HSratings.com and Servite is No. 13. JSerra and Servite both have the three wins for at-large consideration.
JSerra and Servite do not look like they will be automatic qualifiers. One of them could be ineligible for the playoffs if one of them is the team just below the Division 1 cutoff because, again, a division can’t have as its No. 1 seed an at-large team.
In other words, no division can begin with an at-large team.
The sixth-place Trinity League football team is good enough to win the league championship of 90 percent of the football leagues in California. So keeping a team that good out of the playoffs would not be right.
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FOOTBALL LEAGUE CHANGES?
The CIF-SS Council, the Southern Section’s legislative body that is made up of league representatives, recently approved a proposal that gives five-team football leagues three automatic qualifiers for the playoffs starting with the 2027 season. Currently, five-team leagues get two automatic qualifiers.
Orange County athletic directors and football coaches already have been talking about having five-team leagues when the next football league cycle begins in 2028. A model being discussed is having 12 five-team leagues with one nine-team league.
The Trinity League is not part of the Orange County football grouping discussion so it would remain a six-team league … for now. Discussions will grow about getting Crean Lutheran into the Trinity League.
NOTES
• The CIF-SS Division 1 football championship game will be played Nov. 27 at the Coliseum. The sites and dates for the other football finals will be announced Nov. 21. …
• Crean Lutheran wants to construct an on-campus football stadium that is larger than its current stadium. The school must work out a parking plan with the City of Irvine before going forward. Crean Lutheran would like to have a stadium ready for the 2028 season, so the Saints would have to pay rent in 2027 to use one of the stadium at a nearby Irvine high school — Irvine, Portola or University. …
• El Modena’s football homecoming game Friday at Fred Kelly Stadium will include a pregame celebration of its late football coach Bob Lester. El Modena plays Troy in a Delta League game. …
• Friday will be a busy day in the CIF-SS office. Flag football playoff brackets will be released at 2 p.m. and the girls volleyball playoff brackets released at 3 p.m. …
• Garden Grove’s girls volleyball team was 2-10 after 12 matches. The Argonauts then won eight in a row followed by a five-game losing streak. They finished the regular season this week with a four-set victory over Katella in an Orange Coast League match to win the league championship with a 9-3 league record. …
• Six of the top seven teams in the flag football ratings are Orange County teams. JSerra is No. 1 followed by No. 2 Huntington Beach, No. 3 Newport Harbor, No. 4 Orange Lutheran, No. 6 Mater Dei and No. 7 Woodbridge. Last season there were 16 teams in Division 1 for the playoffs. …
• In JSerra’s 12-11 win over Santa Margarita on Wednesday, it took a second sudden-death overtime period to settle the Trinity League game. Nine players scored for JSerra and seven scored for Santa Margarita. That’s impressive depth. …
• CIF-SS boys water polo brackets will be released Oct. 23. Newport Harbor beat Corona del Mar, 10-3, in last year’s Open Division championship game. Capistrano Valley won the Division 2 championship. …
• It’s time to get rid of the “Open Division” name for playoff divisions. An “Open Division” is a division in which teams are selected to the division regardless of league or enrollment. When a ratings system is used to identify the teams that are the top teams, “Division 1” is the best name because that playoff group is the No. 1 division.
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