The changes were intended to help North Jersey powerhouses like Don Bosco and Bergen Catholic, but now some athletic officials are questioning how the tweaks came to be.
The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association released a revision to its football tournament regulations this afternoon, including an apparent change to the power points calculations that could provide significant boosts to teams that play North Jersey power programs.
According to the regulations, teams that play North Jersey Super Football Conference United Red and White Division teams will receive two times the quality, group and residual points against Red Division teams and 1.5 times the points against White Division teams. Also, “in either case, points will be calculated as though the opponent had won, regardless of the actual outcome of the game,” the regulations say.
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Before the change in calculations, an opponent who lost to a United Red or White Division team would have earned no quality points. Under the new changes, the losing team would earn 12 points regardless of the outcome.
The change could drastically affect which teams make the playoffs — and how teams that do make the playoffs are seeded.
“A team with a better record can win the game against a team with a poorer record, and the team with poorer record would get more power points than the winning team — how can that be?” said West Jersey Football League president and Ewing athletic director Bud Kowal, whose teams could be hurt by the calculations change. “First, you’re giving points for losing, and then you’re giving the team that lost more points than the team that won.”
Earlier this year, the NJSIAA Executive Committee approved two proposals aimed at enticing teams to play NJSFC power programs. The first proposal granted bonus power points to schools that play teams from the United Red (Don Bosco, Bergen Catholic, Paramus Catholic, St. Peter’s and St. Joseph Regional) and White (Pope John, Delbarton, Seton Hall and DePaul) divisions, and the second allowed all nine teams in both divisions to automatically qualify for the state playoffs.
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However, the initial proposals did not appear to include granting quality bonus points regardless of outcome. It’s unclear how or when the extra line was added to the regulations.
Jack DuBois, the NJSIAA assistant director who oversees football, did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment Thursday night.
“That’s not what I remember voting on in the Executive Committee,” said Paul VI athletic director Tony Mitchell, who sits on the Executive Committee. “I don’t know how that suddenly happened. If I go to play Don Bosco, I just have to show up and I get all those points? That’s not what I thought we voted on. That’s not how I remember it being explained in the meeting.”
Meanwhile, NJSFC president and Nutley athletic director Joe Piro said there should not be any confusion about the new calculations, adding the changes were made clear earlier this year.
"The Commissioner of Education says we have to provide [the power programs] with full and fair schedules and that's what we're trying to do," Piro said. "In order to do that, we have to put incentives in place for teams to play them. Those incentives were more power points. We've been talking about this since the inception of the Super Football Conference."
Mitchell said he plans to raise the issue at the Sept. 14 Executive Committee meeting in Robbinsville.
“We’ll see what happens there,” he said. “Someone may bring it up and ask for an explanation how that came to be because everyone I spoke to had no idea that’s what it was. That’s a new line just added.”
Matthew Stanmyre may be reached at mstanmyre@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattStanmyre. Find NJ.com on Facebook.