NIAA’s shifting brackets turn Nevada high school football playoffs into farce

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

High school football players across Southern Nevada will step onto the field tonight to begin their playoff journeys.

These young men have dedicated countless hours to reaching this moment — the weight room sessions, the film study, the two-a-days under the hot desert sun.

Throughout the next several weeks, the playoff games will be about celebrating those players and hoping for a safe and memorable postseason run.

These athletes certainly deserve better than what the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association gave them earlier this week.

The association changed the playoff bracket three times between Sunday and Monday, relying on a points system few people understand or can verify to determine seeding.

First, the great math formula told us Shadow Ridge would be the sacrificial lamb to face Bishop Gorman in the four-team open division designed for the best of the Silver State.

Then, after the NIAA realized the MaxPreps state rankings — a key component in its formula — hadn’t been updated, the association reissued the bracket with Las Vegas High as the No. 4 seed.

It’s careless and lazy on behalf of the NIAA for not understanding when MaxPreps would be updating its data. That page, after all, is timestamped.

“I want to throw up,” one coach wrote in a text message, echoing his colleagues.

At this point in the process, it’s not about who would face Gorman in the opening round but rather how the process was bungled. Everyone involved — surely including the NIAA, whose executive director Tim Jackson is a good man — agrees.

But, unfortunately, the chaos was just beginning.

Less than 24 hours later, the NIAA again hit the reset button and it was Foothill pegged as the No. 4 school. The logic: The NIAA didn’t realize a Foothill loss to a California school earlier in the season had been wiped out by a postgame forfeit.

That’s a weak excuse for poor math because the game reversal was reflected on MaxPreps — a website that aggregates scores inputted by schools — for weeks with the designation “(FF)” denoting a win by forfeit.

Foothill’s administration had even sent a notice to families about how to purchase playoff tickets, assuming they’d be hosting a game in the lower bracket. Instead, in two weeks, they’ll play an open division semifinal game at nationally ranked Gorman.

In August, this column space raised questions about a new formula few understood. However, we expected the people who developed the system had a grasp on it.

This is unacceptable and must be addressed. Nevada’s high school football players, coaches and fans deserve better.

Switching the brackets wasn’t a minor adjustment or a clerical correction. This was a full-blown black eye that killed whatever public trust remained in a process that already had raised plenty of eyebrows in high school football circles here.

Three different schools. Three different communities preparing their teams for a game. Three times the chaos.

The points system, which is based on results, strength of schedule and MaxPreps’ state rankings, determines the top four teams in the 18-school Class 5A and places them in the open division of the playoffs. Gorman, Liberty, Arbor View and Foothill will practice for two weeks before the open playoffs begin Nov. 14.

The next eight teams based on points are part of the Class 5A playoffs opening tonight, where a Southern Region champion will play the Northern Region champion from the Reno area for the classification’s state title.

Reno-area schools are excluded from the open division, although Spanish Springs is undefeated and ranked No. 2 in the state by MaxPreps.

Some open division, right?

The Max Preps top 10 also has Class 3A schools Elko at No. 6, Fernley at No. 7 and Reno’s Bishop Manogue at No. 8. Sloan Canyon, a second-year charter school and the favorite to win Class 4A, is No. 9. Sloan Canyon beat Foothill — all of a sudden a top-four team — by double digits earlier in the season.

Foothill has every right to be upset. So does Las Vegas. And so does Shadow Ridge. All three schools lost last week, and, one could argue, some didn’t put their best foot forward to avoid being paired against Gorman. The powerhouse program again should easily win the state title in the open division.

Foothill lost to Faith Lutheran to close the regular season and won its previous two games at the buzzer, having to rally to beat Coronado — a school that missed the postseason. Now, it will be thrown to the wolves.

Reno schools certainly couldn’t care less: They have a participation trophy to win.

You cannot have an open division for the postseason in Nevada and conveniently forget that Northern Nevada exists. Spanish Springs is a top-four team in the state and will easily win the Class 5A. It should have been included in the open division conversation.

MaxPreps isn’t without some blame in this mix either. The website dropped Shadow Ridge seven spots in its state rankings after the Mustangs lost to Gorman last week to close the regular season in a game in which the mercy rule was invoked and there was no stoppage of the clock. Yes, it would have been cruel punishment to have them play Gorman in back-to-back weeks, but dropping Shadow Ridge to No. 14 in the state was extreme.

Shadow Ridge has an 8-2 record, but MaxPreps ranks it behind Desert Pines at No. 13. Desert Pines has a 4-5 record.

MaxPreps can rank teams wherever it wants. It could rank my Chaparral Cowboys — who won back-to-back games to close the season — at No. 1 if it felt like it.

But let’s not expect a national website to know every team in every state. That’s not MaxPreps’ job. It shouldn’t have been the foundation of the NIAA’s playoff selection and seeding process.

The NIAA characterized Foothill’s forfeit win as “new information” that affected the standings, except that forfeit win has been showing on MaxPreps for weeks. Weeks.

It’s mind-boggling that a forfeit win can dramatically affect playoff seeding in the first place. That’s a systemic flaw that goes beyond one team or one bracket.

Getting this fixed is about integrity. It is about having a system that coaches, players and fans can trust when the stakes are highest.

Paging CCSD Superintendent Jhone Ebert: It’s time for Clark County schools to leave the NIAA. I’ve been saying this for years. This week proved me right again.

When member schools in Nevada’s largest school district can’t get a coherent playoff bracket, the NIAA has failed one of its most basic functions. Schools, coaches and families were left scrambling. What they got in return was chaos.

If the NIAA can’t deliver transparency and consistency to Clark County, then Clark County should deliver itself from the NIAA.

Ebert should demand answers: How did this happen? What safeguards will prevent it from happening again? And she needs to make one point crystal clear — this ends now.

Let’s not forget: Without the member fees paid by CCSD — generally speaking, $1.50 per student per high school —the NIAA couldn’t function. CCSD holds leverage here.

Yes, there’s a risk. The NIAA is part of the National Federation of State High School Associations, which means pulling out would eliminate out-of-state competition along with games against Nevada schools still in the NIAA. There would be no state tournaments in any sports.

But at what point does incompetence outweigh those benefits? If the NIAA can’t organize a functional playoff system for the schools that keep it afloat, what exactly is the benefit of the CCSD schools’ dues to the organization?

Tonight, our athletes will give everything they have. They deserve a playoff system that matches their commitment — one that’s transparent, consistent and considers all the teams who’ve earned their place at the table.

Instead, they have a chaotic process that has lost the confidence of the people it’s supposed to serve.

Nevada high school football deserves better. The athletes embarking on their playoff journey deserve better.

This process was a failure. It must be scrapped. The NIAA had one job this past weekend, and it failed miserably.

Let’s get it fixed so we can go back to debating more important topics, like Spanish Springs getting a crack at Gorman.