It will be a busy Friday night at the offices of the Iowa High School Athletic Association where officials will set the parings for next week’s start of the high school football playoffs.
Todd Tharp says the first chore will be to determine the 16 qualifiers in the six classes.
The next step is to set the pairings and Tharp hopes they will be released early Saturday morning.
A new RPI system will determine at-large bids. As in past years district champions are in automatically and Tharp says that includes three-way ties if no team owns the tie-breaker.
Head to head will be used to break a tie that involves two teams. Tharp says they will not release a full bracket for each class and instead bracket through the quarterfinals. The remaining teams will be re-seeded before the semifinals.
Tharp says under the new RPI system he does not envision a team finishing 8-1 being left out of the playoffs.
The opening round of the playoffs are next Friday, October 26.
