High gas prices impacting Illinois high school football playoffs plan

[June 23, 2022]  By Scot Bertram | The Center Square contributor

(The Center Square) – A change to the Illinois High School Association’s prep football playoff system won’t happen after all.

In February, IHSA board members voted to change its playoff seeding system for most football classes, approving a 1-to-32 seeding proposal for Class 1A through Class 6A. Class 7A and Class 8A already followed the format. The switch would take effect this fall.

Now, however, the board has reversed course, voting to return to a system under which teams in classes 1-A through 6-A are split into north and south divisions and then seeded.

High gas prices drove the decision.

“That cost is definitely something they can't control,” said Matt Troha, assistant executive director of the IHSA “It feels like [high prices] are going to be here at least for a while, from everything you see. They felt like another year, at the least, under this system wouldn't be the worst thing in the world at all.”

The geographical split originally was put in place to cut down on travel for the schools. With the average price of a gallon of regular gas hovering around the $5.50 mark in Illinois, travel once again became a big concern.

“I think as the gas prices have gone up, they've heard even more and more concerns,” Troha said. “As our board president said, she still supports the [statewide seeding] concept. She'd like to see it happen. She just felt like right now with where gas is going into this season, that additional cost on schools wasn't really fair.”

Statewide seeding for football could be considered again, but Troha said the current policy will remain unless a vote takes place in the future.
 

“As of right now, they have just changed the policy back,” Troha said. “We are splitting 1A through 6A in half [with] two one-through-16 brackets until we're not. It would take something changing during the next school year and then a new board vote to change it to a different system.”

As of now, there are no plans to adjust the playoff policies in any other IHSA sports.

“I think the feeling of the room was they had heard quite a bit on the football change, but have yet to hear a lot from member schools seeking changes on how we do some of the other tournaments,” Troha said. “For the majority of our sports, there is a relatively fair amount of travel and it isn't too overly taxing or burdensome.”