POSTED ON WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2016 9:26 PM
BY DARREN COOPER
The North Jersey Interscholastic Conference is going to do something in football & wrestling that no other conference in New Jersey does starting with the 2016-17 school year.
Hey, the SEC does it, the PAC-12 does it….
That’s right, the NJIC, a 38-team conference with 29 football-playing schools, announced today that it would hold a true conference championship game in week 9 of the regular season. That comes out to Nov. 3rd or 4th. The exact site and time is to be determined, so are the 2 teams, naturally.
Not many things surprise me in high school athletics in New Jersey any more, but this did. When NJIC Executive Director Stan Fryczynski detailed the plan for me this afternoon I was pretty shocked, then impressed.
I’ll get to the cool details first, then give the back story.
The way it works out is the NJIC has 4 divisions of 7 teams (I know I said 29 teams, but Dwight-Englewood is independent, so it’s 28 total).
Colonial Division – Garfield, Waldwick/MP, Glen Rock, Rutherford, Lodi, Manchester, Pal Park/Leonia
Liberty Division – Hawthorne, New Milford, Pompton Lakes, Elmwood Park, Lyndhurst, Queen of Peace and Harrison
Meadowlands Division – St. Mary, Hasbrouck Heights, Cresskill, Saddle Brook, North Arlington, Secaucus, Ridgefield
Patriot Division – Becton, Park Ridge, Weehawken, Bogota, Wood-Ridge, Wallington and Emerson
The divisions are all based on enrollment, although they used a multiplier for the 2 non-public schools, doubling the enrollment of QP and St. Mary. By the way, Queen of Peace hired a new coach, Scot Weaver. Congratulations to him.
So, 7 teams means six divisional games for everyone. So, after six weeks of the season, you should have a divisional champion.
The divisions Colonial & Liberty have been designated the “North” and the Meadowlands and Patriot have been designated the “South”.
So in Week 8 (I’ll get to why Week 8 in a minute) the NJIC will have playoff semifinals. The winners of the Colonial and Liberty divisions will meet (the “North” championship) and the winner of the Meadowlands and Patriot will meet (the “South” championship).
Those 2 winners will then face off the following week, week 9, in a NJIC Conference Championship game.
(I immediately thought this game should be at a neutral site, like Overpeck Park in Pal Park/Leonia, but those details aren’t finalized. Right now the plan is to let the North champ host one year, then the South team host the next).
Every NJIC is now scheduled to play 8 regular season games. Each team has a bye. This was done to give teams a break in their schedule and make everyone’s schedule fully balanced. Yes, New Jersey rules say you can play 9 games, but you only need to play 8. Teams can also find non-NJIC teams to play to fill the bye. That’s why the semifinals are week 8, and the championship game is week 9. By the way, I love lots about this plan, but having a real meaningful game in week 9 of the HS football season may be my favorite, since lots of week 9 games are totally meaningless.
So what happens in case of a tie atop the division standings?
There are 3 tiebreakers
– Head to Head, obviously that’s No. 1, but there could always be a tie
– Power points – internal division points only
– Points Against – yes, points against, that way there is never any reason to try run up a score.
Ok, so what happens to teams who don’t make the NJIC playoffs?
They will be slotted to play against teams that finish in the same spot in their corresponding divisions. For example the second place team in Colonial would play the second place team in the Liberty in week 8. In week 9, yes, there is a de facto 3rd place game played between the two losers of the semifinals, and the other teams match up as crossovers meaning the 7th place team plays the 6th place team in the adjoining division, 5 plays 4 and 3 plays two. That’s another thing to like about this plan, because if I go 0-6 in my division, unfortunately, well, I know I’m guaranteed two games at the end I can at least play in, if not win. Teams will still be eligible for the playoffs, of course, and a regional crossover (aka “consolation” game).
Got it?
I asked about playoffs, and whether a schedule like this would impact a teams power points, but Fryczynski said he didn’t think so. If anything, he said he thought the crossover games, and the conference championship games would ADD power points, because at that point you would be matching quality team versus quality team.
Stan said the NJSIAA had been briefed, and fully agreed and supported the plan.
So now the backstory.
Stan said that when the North Jersey Super Football Conference approached the NJIC about joining, the decision was made to stick together. The league liked the balance it had, liked the teams involved, they all had similar footprints. But when they told the Super North no, they said, that’s fine if we’re going to stick together, but then let’s try to do something special.
The NJIC was set to realign anyway, since 2016-17 was the start of a new 2-year cycle. From the realignment committee, and Stan said, specifically, Secaucus football Coach Charlie Voorhees put out the idea of aligning this way and creating the opportunity for a conference championship game. Stan said originally the reaction was mixed, but then the issue was kind of solved by the idea of going to eight games, with a bye built in. Then everything else fell into place.
The other thing though that the conference had to wait on was the NJSIAA vote on whether to split, because had St. Mary & Queen of Peace been forced out of the conference, well, that screws up the math here. Well, as you now, the vote passed, but the Commissioner of Education overturned it. St. Mary and Queen of Peace were back in the NJIC.
Once that happened, the last thing to do was to vote on this system. The vote passed today 25-5 and 2 abstentions. To Stan, that’s pretty good. Nothing is unanimous any more.
Stan sounded really thrilled at this idea, which I think is revolutionary. And even though he never wants to take credit, Stan definitely deserves some for creating an environment in the conference where a new idea can be discussed, analyzed, and put into place.
You know, when the NJIC turned down the Super North, I was a bit critical, but I love this idea. I think it gives NJIC football a real prize at the end to play for. And think about the match-ups going forward, and teams maybe winning the NJIC title, and then winning a sectional title, or a team finished second, but coming back to win a sectional title. You’re giving football teams a shot at a true triple crown: division, conference and section (remember, public schools don’t play for true state championships in New Jersey. By the way, did I ever tell you New Jersey is the only state in America where this is the case?)
Had this been in place this year, we could have had Rutherford vs. Glen Rock in 1 semifinal and Park Ridge and St. Mary in the other. That’s not too bad. Now we could get Pompton Lakes vs. St. Mary in the NJIC Championship Game, or Saddle Brook vs. Glen Rock (Darren White can tell you stories about that one). That’s exciting. Those are good match-ups.
And I’ll be interested to see now, going forward, everyone is always looking for and talking about balancing the schedules in North Jersey HS football. Could Joe Piro, Denis Nelson and company with the Super North implement something like this? Even Stan said to me this afternoon, if anyone can see this, build on it, it would be Denis. Remember, the way the Super North is arranged, you have multiple divisions of teams in the same group.
There are 3 non-public divisions – that’s a whole different animal
There are 3 Group 5 divisions
There are 4 Group 4 divisions
There are 4 Group 3 divisions
There are 3 Group 2 divisions
There is 1 Group 1 division
Could you tweak some of the alignments and schedules to mirror what the NJIC has done and have essentially a Group 4 Super North champion? You could. The NJIC is showing them how.
By the way, the wrestling format is similar, the 4 division champs would all meet, but you wouldn’t have the crossover matches down below (no 2nd place team vs. 2nd place team).
As far as issues, one thing I said to Stan was, the league is truly perfect right now with 28 teams, but I asked him about 2 possibly scenarios…One, a team in the league, say, Paterson Charter, wanted to start a football program, or Two, a team in the league has to drop varsity football because of low numbers.
Stan was reasonable on both counts. He said, as of now, it doesnt look like any school in the NJIC that doesnt have football is looking to add football. He did say, however, that the league has had to deal with teams dropping varsity football at the last minute, but the league would just make accommodations if that happens (essentially, teams would have to accept the forfeit). He said specifically that Ridgefield is in good shape to bring back varsity football in 2016.
I also asked Stan about what would happen if this really caught on and schools wanted to join the NJIC. Dumont tried to join the NJIC a while back and was turned away. The NJIC is kind of in a place where they could potentially expand, but if they want to keep this system, they’d almost have to expand in increments of 4. But that’s a good problem to potentially have.
Stan said, the league couldn’t deal with “what ifs” and it was time to do this and not worry about what might happen.
What a great attitude to have. In this day and age of complex high school athletic issues (redshirting, transfers etc.) it is refreshing to see a conference try something different to make the whole enterprise more fun.
– See more at: http://blog.northjersey.com/varsityaces/44311/scoops-on-football-njic-will-hold-conference-championship-game-in-2016/#more-44311
