Aram writes season’s biggest winner is new CIF football playoff format

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Photos/Gallery: Arroyo celebrates last week’s CIF Division 12 title with a ceremony at the school.

By Aram Tolegian
Here’s something you don’t hear very often: CIF got it right.
The first full set of results as it pertains to the new divisional grouping format for football are in and one doesn’t need to wait for all the data to be crunched to determine it was a rousing success. Those who thought things would wildly change were wrong in the end. Those who thought things would be watered down saw the opposite happen. At almost every turn, the system that was the brainchild of Southern Section commissioner Rob Wigod did what it was supposed to do. Before understanding what went right, we must know what was wrong. It’s possible that doing things the traditional way of grouping divisions based on league had gotten so ingrained that football fans didn’t realize all that was dysfunctional about it.

arroyosingTo drag an entire league into a certain division just because one or two teams are a fit is flawed thinking. That’s how we used to do things. It was a disaster, the culmination of which was seen in last year’s Pac-5 (or Division 1) playoffs when it was very obvious that several teams in the field of 16 simply didn’t belong in that tournament or even ones several divisions lower.
The blowouts in the first, and even second rounds, were something that Wigod and his crew could no longer put up with. Wigod had to act out of necessity more than anything else. Not because he had a great, new option to put in place, but because the old one was circling the drain and taking the legitimacy of the Southern Section football playoffs with it.
In future interviews and discussions, Wigod may use Long Beach Wilson, his alma mater, as a glowing example of why the new format worked. Forever, the Bruins were trapped in the very highest division because they’re in the same league as stalwart Long Beach Poly. Where Poly went, so did the rest of the league, regardless of merit.

This year, Long Beach Wilson was placed in Division 6 while Poly stayed up in Division 1. And after a narrow win in the second round, the Bruins appeared on their way to the championship game until a last-second pass by Los Altos knocked them out in the semifinals.
Compare that result to last year’s 48-16 first-round exit in the Pac-5 (or Division 1) at the hands of Loyola. The example here is not what’s right about the new system, it’s about what was so glowingly wrong with the old one. And the reason for that is not because of what Long Beach Wilson DID in this year’s playoffs, but because of what the Bruins DID NOT do. Read the previous sentence again because it’s a key distinction. Long Beach Wilson didn’t go far enough. For a team that hosted a first-round playoff game in Division 1 the previous year to “only” reach the semifinals when “moved down” to Division 6 says more about how off the old system was than how great the new system is. It shows you just how wrong it was to have a Division 6 also-ran trying to compete in Division 1.
The best metric to judge how well the new system worked can be seen in the tale of three teams: Arroyo, Paraclete and Sierra Canyon. You’re probably wondering what those three schools have in common. In real-life terms, the answer is nothing. In football terms it’s that up until this year, they all played in the same division.
That’s right, the old Mid-Valley Division produced THREE champions this season. It had been obvious that Arroyo, along with many other neighborhood schools in the area, had no business playing in the same division as Paraclete and Sierra Canyon.
And now, after Arroyo’s CIF championship win, there will be many teams saying they have no business being in the same division as Arroyo. That’s the true beauty of the new system. This is what Wigod needs to trumpet. This is what the non-believers need to get through their heads.
Upward mobility is the key to the whole darn thing!
Sierra Canyon went from the Mid-Valley Division to Division 4 and won it all. Paraclete went from the Mid-Valley to Division 6 and won it all. They vacated so that a program like Arroyo, which had several outstanding teams in the past playing in divisions where there was a very real ceiling in place, could win when it was finally spotted correctly.
And now, Arroyo will likely be on its way out of Division 12, thus opening the door for somebody else. This is how it should work. The Southern Section is not one size fits all when it comes to football. There are haves and have nots.
Some will say the new system has watered things down or made it so that everybody has a chance at a trophy. If that’s what you call creating a format so that groupings are made based on merit rather than association, then I’ll take it every day of the week and twice on Friday nights.

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