Are changes coming to Ohio high school football playoffs?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Part I in a 3-part series on Ohio high school football playoff expansion. Part II will publish on Thursday. Part III will publish on Friday.

LEXINGTON — Andrew Saris knew his team was good enough to win in the playoffs.

His Lexington Minutemen just needed a chance.

Lex got that opportunity last fall, qualifying for the Division III, Region 10 playoffs as a No. 12 seed. The Minutemen won a pair of road games and reached the regional semifinals before falling to eventual state runner-up Toledo Central Catholic.

That memorable postseason run wouldn’t have happened prior to 2020.

“If you go back just a handful of years, we wouldn’t have been a playoff team,” Saris said. “We benefitted from the expanded playoff format.”

The playoff landscape underwent a major facelift in 2021 when the field doubled in size. Another postseason sea change could be on the horizon.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association sent out a survey to its member schools last month seeking opinions about the current playoff format. Results of the survey haven’t been made public, but OHSAA Executive Director Doug Ute said recently an announcement is expected in June.

Among the questions asked in the OHSAA survey: What is your preference on the number of qualifiers per region?

“I am not opposed to looking at anything,” OHSAA football administrator Beau Rugg told a gathering of Ohio Prep Sports Media Association members recently. “I like looking at all of the different scenarios that will help us put together a great tournament.”

From 1999 to 2019, eight teams per region were invited to the playoffs. The following year, during the pandemic-altered 2020 season, any team that wanted to participate in the postseason was eligible.

When things normalized in 2021, the number of qualifiers jumped from eight to 16 teams per region. There are four geographic regions within each of the seven enrollment divisions for a total of 28 regions. Beginning in 2021, the total number of state-wide playoff qualifiers increased from 224 to 448 — for better and for worse.

In the four seasons since the current format was introduced, No. 1 seeds are a combined 111-1 against No. 16 seeds. The only No. 16 to upset a top seed was in 2021, when Edison stunned Bellevue in the first round of the Division IV, Region 14 playoffs.

It hasn’t gone much better for the other higher seeds in the 16-team format. No. 2 seeds are 105-7 against No. 15 seeds, while No. 3 seeds are 101-11 against No. 14 seeds. Fifth-seeded teams are 92-20 against 12s, while No. 6 seeds are 89-23 against 11s and seventh-seeded teams are 79-33 against 10s. Not surprisingly, the 8-9 matchup has been the most competitive under the current format (56-56).

Last year’s postseason success and the excitement it generated in Lexington got Saris to thinking about the expanded playoffs. He wasn’t a big fan of the 16-team format before, but now he’s not so sure.

“We struggled early in the season, then we got healthy and got hot at the right time and ended up reaching the regional semifinals,” Saris said. “Last season kind of changed my mind about the playoff structure.”

Lexington was one of six No. 12 seeds to win an opening-round playoff game last year. Lex was the only No. 12 to win a second-round game.

“I do think a 16-team format can be difficult,” Saris said. “If you are a No. 16, maybe you are the opposite of us last year. You started off strong and then got dinged up late in the year.

“You want to end the season on as positive of a note as possible. If you are a 16 seed and your aren’t healthy going into the playoffs and you have to play that powerhouse, you can do some damage to the younger kids on the team.”

New Mansfield Senior coach Antonio Fletcher agreed.

“I can see both sides of the argument. The more kids who get a taste of the playoffs the better,” Fletcher said. “At the same time, if you get in as a 16 seed and play a team like (Division III powerhouse) Toledo Central Catholic in the first round, that can be tough.

“I’m a little mixed about it. There has got to be a happy medium, but I don’t know what that is.”