Las Vegas Sun
Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014 | 2 a.m.
Prep Sports Now
Commencing Division 1A week
Las Vegas Sun sports reporters Ray Brewer and Case Keefer run through some of the plethora of playoff possibilities on the lower level before getting to their picks.
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Beyond the Sun
The way high school sports standings are kept by organizers in Nevada is severely broken.
A tiebreaker scenario this week involving six high school football teams in the Division I-A Sunset League is so confusing, some of the league’s coaches spent Monday trying to crack the tiebreaker rules themselves to learn what outcome they will need Friday in the regular season finale to advance to next week’s playoffs.
A better solution would have been for the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association, the group that governs high school sports, to distribute the scenarios so there is no confusion. But, in Nevada, the NIAA doesn’t keep its own standings.
That surprisingly is done by a reporter at the Review-Journal, which publishes playoff brackets and distributes to the NIAA to forward to schools and other media.
Apparently, the reporter at the R-J knows the NIAA better than the NIAA knows itself.
I got that impression Monday when I called the NIAA looking for tiebreaker scenarios. My plan was to outline the possibilities so coaches could focus on coaching. But I was told standings aren’t kept in the NIAA office and was given the number to the R-J.
What if I worked for Fox Sports and called the NFL looking for playoff tiebreakers and were given the number to ESPN?
“To be honest with you, it’s a big mess,” one coach told me. “The boys are all confused by it.”
The method of calculating standings is nothing new for the NIAA. In past seasons, I’ve also called looking for postseason scenarios only to get an email forwarded to me from the NIAA with information calculated by the R-J reporter.
But that was two years ago, when the R-J was the major sponsor of the NIAA and was considered the official standings provider. The R-J no longer gives money to the NIAA, which is now affiliated with Maxpreps.com. Maxpreps records team-by-team stats but doesn’t keep standings.
With six teams fighting for four playoff spots and as many as eight tiebreakers scenarios in play, some teams will have to win their game and root for other teams to also win with hopes of squeezing into the postseason. After seven league games, advancing may come down to a margin of victory in a game played last month. Pure craziness, right?
The tiebreaker isn’t as easy as head-to-head competition because Cheyenne, Faith Lutheran, Sierra Vista and Spring Valley have 4-2 records, and Clark and Mojave are 3-3. Each team has multiple wins against the others, creating a rare logjam in the standings. Spring Valley is the only team guaranteed to advance.
Take Clark, for instance.
One scenario requires the Chargers beating Cheyenne by at least four points and also needing Spring Valley to beat Faith Lutheran.
On Monday, I called most of the Division I-A Sunset coaches to get their feedback on what they needed to do to advance. Case Keefer, Adelaide Chen and I took that information, analyzed the tiebreaker rules and came up with scenarios. Keefer did most of the heavy lifting.
Note: These haven’t been verified by the NIAA. Or, of course, the standings guru at the R-J.
SCENARIO 1
Cheyenne beats Clark
Faith Lutheran beats Spring Valley
Sierra Vista beats Pahrump Valley
RESULTS
1. Faith Lutheran
2. Sierra Vista
3. Cheyenne
4. Spring Valley
SCENARIO 2
Clark beats Cheyenne
Faith Lutheran beats Spring Valley
Sierra Vista beats Pahrump Valley
RESULTS
1. Faith Lutheran
2. Sierra Vista
3. Cheyenne
4. Spring Valley
SCENARIO 3
Cheyenne beats Clark
Spring Valley beats Faith Lutheran
Sierra Vista beats Pahrump Valley
RESULTS
1. Sierra Vista
2. Cheyenne
3. Spring Valley
4. Faith Lutheran
SCENARIO 4
Clark beats Cheyenne
Spring Valley beats Faith Lutheran
Sierra Vista beats Pahrump Valley
RESULTS
1. Sierra Vista
2. Spring Valley
3. Clark
4. Cheyenne
SCENARIO 5
Clark beats Cheyenne
Spring Valley beats Faith Lutheran
Pahrump Valley beats Sierra Vista
RESULTS
1. Spring Valley
2. Faith Lutheran
3. Mojave
4. Clark (win by 4) or Sierra Vista
SCENARIO 6
Clark beats Cheyenne
Faith Lutheran beats Spring Valley
Pahrump Valley beats Sierra Vista
RESULTS
1. Faith Lutheran
2. Sierra Vista
3. Spring Valley
4. Cheyenne
SCENARIO 7
Cheyenne beats Clark
Faith Lutheran beats Spring Valley
Pahrump Valley beats Sierra Vista
RESULTS
1. Cheyenne
2. Faith Lutheran
3. Mojave
4. Spring Valley
SCENARIO 8
Cheyenne beats Clark
Spring Valley beats Faith Lutheran
Pahrump Valley beats Sierra Vista
RESULTS
1. Cheyenne
2. Spring Valley
3. Faith Lutheran
4. Mojave
Ray Brewer can be reached at 702-990-2662 or [email protected]. Follow Ray on Twitter at twitter.com/raybrewer21
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