Monday Musings

Monday, November 4, 2024

My Mother passed away a year ago today.

I so miss playing those intense dominoes games with her.

Asuncion "Chuny" Contreras

1924-2023

On Sunday, the high school playoff brackets were announced.

The C.I.F.-Southern Section

revealed the 218 teams that will

play in 14 playoff divisions for

11-man tackle football

After looking these brackets over, I discovered that 25 of these playoff bound schools have losing records. That works out to roughly 11% of the playoff field.

In Division 12, five of the 16 playoff teams have losing records.

In my opinion, the most puzzling First Round Playoff occurs in Division 8 where the 2-8 Cypress Centurions travel to take on the 1-9 St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy Warriors.

First, how did these two clubs make the playoffs?

Secondly, as the only two teams in the Division 8 playoffs with losing records, why are they allowed to play each other?

Also, how does a 1-9 team get to host a First Round game?

I thought that this was the epitome of watered down post-season action.

Then this happened . . .

. . . I delved into the wacky world of

the C.I.F.-Los Angeles City Section

Football Playoffs

The L.A. City Section invited 56 schools to its 11-man tackle football playoffs that are contested in four separate divisions.

Of these 56 teams, a whopping 20 have losing records! That works out to 36% of these playoff teams with sub-.500 seasonal marks.

L.A. City's Division III this year is quite perplexing to purists of the game. Let's start with the top four seeds:

#1 Seed - Poly Parrots 5-5

#2 Seed - Taft Toreadors 2-8

#3 Seed - Chavez Eagles 4-5

#4 Seed - Manual Arts Toilers 4-6

One game in this divisions opening round poses a conundrum to me, the Dymally Challengers (1-9) at the #2 seeded Taft Toreadors (2-8). At least the 2-8 team got the all-important home field advantage in this titanic battle.

As I see it, this Dymally H.S. (1-9) at Taft H.S. (2-8) game as well as the Cypress H.S. (2-8) at St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy (1-9) skirmish are both destined to become Instant Classics!

If only the winners got to play each other the following week.

I long for the old days when the playoffs belong to the League Champions plus just a few Second Place teams that had excellent records.

Yes, I am an old fuddy-duddy

and darn proud of it!