Mistake leaves 2 Wisconsin high school football teams out of playoffs – Madison.com

The WIAA said it applied tiebreaker criteria, which has been applied in three of the five previous seasons, to determine this year’s playoff participants, but it used the wrong information, resulting in the exclusion of Madison West and Greenfield.

The WIAA in previous years has released its Final Playoff Qualifying Report, which provides a detailed explanation of why each team was either included in the playoff field or at what step in the tiebreaker it was eliminated. This year’s report was not released until late Wednesday.

Record data for the previous five years shows the WIAA changed its application of its tiebreakers in determining this year’s field.

“We just wanted to make sure it was enforced the same way it always is,” Madison athletic director Jeremy Schlitz said.

The discrepancy is in step 2.2, which states: “If two or more teams are tied for the final playoff spots, the teams will be ranked in order of the combined win/loss percentage (conference games only) of the conference opponents they defeated.” The teams whose conference opponents have the best winning percentages will be added to the playoff field. Non-conference opponents and non-conference wins by defeated conference opponents will not count in this step.”

Those are the three words in parentheses — conference games only — where the WIAA changed its application of the tiebreaker. The WIAA this year instead uses the overall combined win-loss percentage for the conference’s defeated teams.

How does this apply to Madison West?

The Regents finished 4-5 this season, which includes 3-4 in the Big Eight Conference. The three teams that won the conference had a combined entry in conference games from 3-18, .143 winning percentage. That was better than both Pewaukee and Madison Edgewood, who both saw conference foes beat by just a .095 post-conference winning percentage and should have put Madison West in the playoffs over those two programs.

But the WIAA this year instead used total combined win-loss record of defeated teams in the conference to determine the winning percentage. That would drop Madison West’s winning percentage to .111 because the conference teams it beat finished with a combined 3-24 record.

Madison Edgewood’s winning percentage increases to .185 under the changed criteria, as the conference teams it beat finished with a combined record of 5-22. Pewaukee’s winning percentage increased to .148 as the conference teams it beat finished with a combined 4-23 record.

The WIAA stated in its latest playoff eligibility report for the 2023, 2021 and 2019 seasons that Step 2.2 uses the combined record in conference play ONLY of defeated conference opponents. That wasn’t the case this season.

“We’re just doing things consistently the way we did with the computer,” said Todd Clark, WIAA communications director.

The WIAA fields 224 teams in the football playoffs each year. These teams are divided into seven divisions of 32 teams. There were 181 teams with conference wins that qualified this year. A tiebreaker list was then used to fill the final spots with teams that had a conference record below .500.

There were 46 teams with a 3-4 conference record this year, but only 43 postseason spots available. And there, step 2.2 of the tiebreaker was used.

McFarland was not included in the postseason field and would not have been included if step 2.2 had been implemented correctly this year.

Greenfield and Madison West are slated to be among the 43 teams that made the field based on tiebreakers, while Pewaukee and Madison Edgewood joined McFarland as eliminated from the playoffs.

“It’s a shame we won’t have an opportunity to compete in the playoffs,” Madison West football coach Mike Wolfgram said.

The result of the WIAA’s improper use of tiebreakers means that Madison West and Greenfield’s seasons ended at least a week earlier than they should have. It would be Regent’s first playoff appearance since 2019. Meanwhile, Madison Edgewood and Pewaukee will get the chance to play in the postseason after doing nothing wrong.

“These things are so weird,” said Madison Edgewood athletic director Ben Voss. “They told us we’re in the playoffs and we’re getting ready for Friday.”