LHSAA nearly doubles number of 'select' schools for playoffs

By Ron Brocato
Sports Editor

The executive committee of the Louisiana High School Athletic Association has voted to nearly double the number of so-called "select" schools from 109 to 211 for the purposes of the playoffs in four major sports – football, basketball, baseball andd softball.

 After taking the first step to bring some degree of sanity to the postseason playoffs by changing the designation of nearly half its member schools, the LHSAA can only wait to see how the new system will be received at the January 2023 annual meeting.

I can tell you, it’s unlikely to be ratified by the membership,  if it comes to a vote at all, although LHSAA president David Federico has high hopes that it will.

What the 21 members of the association’s executive committee did on the last day of their summer meeting on June 2 was two-fold.

They first voted to return select and non-select playoffs to one common venue, thus taking away the power (and ability) from the select schools to potentially make a larger amount of money than they received from LHSAA-run championship events.

If you remember, in 2018 the select schools received approval to run their own playoffs. As a result, Jesuit and Catholic High each received checks of $75,000 (minus 10% tribute to the LHSAA) for their Division I title game at Tulane’s Yulman Stadium last December. In 2019, Archbishop Rummel and Catholic each added $35,000 to their coffers. They wouldn’t have earned that much money playing in the Superdome.

The committee then voted 16-5 to assign all charter schools, schools with magnet curricula or magnet components, along with schools in parishes with open enrollments to the select playoff brackets in each of the seven classes. It was the second of three options executive director Eddie Bonine offered in an appeal to have an equitable and fair playoff system.

Simply put, many non-select schools will become select.

Breaking news:

On Monday night June 6, the LHSAA announced the expansion of its members schools to be classified as “select” for the purpose of playoffs in the sports of football, basketball baseball and softball to 211 for the 2022-23 sports seasons.

The change will automatically go into effect with the start of fall sports in late August and increase the number of select schools to 211. That will leave 194 conventional public schools on the non-select side.

If the principals like the plan after watching how it works in the fall, they could make it permanent (at least for two years). And if it comes to pass, the re-defining of schools does not do away with select and non-select or create a common playoff. It just adds more schools to the select side to balance the playoff brackets. It will not affect district play during the season.

However, Bonine sent me a text on Sunday answering my inquiry if a two-thirds vote will be required to make the change permanent. It read: “Negative,  but it all hinges on whether our constitutional legal counsel deems it necessary for a vote. They did not deem it necessary in 2019.”

Bonine’s assistant directors revealed the inequities of select schools playoff results in each sport to justify the status change of schools. My own research shows that 59% (116-of-197) of first-round football playoff games were won by 24 points or more on the select side. In the select softball playoffs between 2017-22, a whopping 69% of first-round games (57 of 83) were shortened to fewer than seven innings by the 10-run rule. The LHSAA feels that larger brackets will add better teams to the playoffs and eliminate weaker teams. President Federico agrees.

“My dad always told me, ‘If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.’ Well, the whole system we’re using right now is broken. You can hear the numbers of how many teams are going to the playoffs and getting slaughtered,” Federico said. “You’ll see that the competition will be better.

Federico, principal of Ecole Classique, a small private school his family has owned since his father, Sal, founded it in 1956, agrees that the select schools playoffs are unfair.

“In Division I, you have 9 to 10 teams. It’s come down to a city championship (citing that most of the schools are local Catholic schools in the same district). Maybe the principals won’t like it, and maybe in January they will find a way to do it differently in a better system. But how many trophies are we giving away now? It’s crazy (and costly). Everyone’s a champion.”

But will principals who have vetoed every proposal to change their playoff system each year since it was created in 2013 – and who increased the affected sports in 2016 – ratify the change of half the membership’s status if it comes down to a vote?

“You’ll see some blowback,” Federico said. “You please some people; you displease some. Some are going to like it while others will hate it. But I try to emphasize that select and non-select are still going to exist, and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s what the principals voted for. They like the system, and that’s fine.

“I think it has a chance to stay if (the principals) think through it and realize what was done. And if they sit back and take a deep breath, they will see that we haven’t changed the definition. It amazes me that, during the regular season you can play anybody that will get you power points. But when we get to the playoffs, the attitudes change: ‘No, we don’t want to play them.’

“What’s the difference? A lot of non-select schools play select schools during the regular season because there’s money to be made. I find that ironic.”

Then there’s the other question of how will the select schools’ principals and coaches react to losing the ability to run their own playoffs for potentially bigger bucks?

“The (select school) principals at the meeting didn’t seem to be concerned (about the single venue),” noted Federico. “This will ruffle some feathers, but we get a lot of criticism that these championship games were not run up to par and that we (the LHSAA) should be there. But I can’t be in Sulphur for the non-select baseball tournament and in Hammond for the select championship games at the same time.

“The whole system of running the (select school) playoffs has fallen on the shoulders of Ryan Gallagher (the Brother Martin principal and D-I chairman) and (Rummel AD) Jay Roth, who put things together,” Federico said. “I was at the Division III finals with St. Charles Catholic. And who was running it? Jay, Mark Wisniewski from Brother Martin and Dave Moreau from Jesuit. And they did a great job.

“Meanwhile in softball, no one wants to take responsibility of running a tournament because they have school business to do. Everything has fallen on the shoulders of Ryan Gallagher,” Federico said.

If that’s the principals’ attitude, Gallagher was understandably one of the 16 principals who voted in favor of the venue change and giving the power back to the LHSAA.

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