MHSAA Making New Rule Changes.

Written Wednesday May 8th at 12:05 PM

There will be a ton of changes heading into next season.

According to the MHSAA, their representative council made changes to football, basketball, and soccer.

In Basketball and Soccer, the districts will now be based on seeds that will be determined by a new tool called the Michigan Power Ratings Computer formula. The two top seeds will be opposing each other on the bracket. The MHSAA will draw the brackets two weeks before district play starts. The rest of the bracket will be drawn randomly. However the draw process will not guarantee which teams gets byes or who is the home team.

The MHSAA uses the MPR for Boys Lacrosse. They will use it for Basketball and Soccer as well next year.

It is unknown if they will use it for Volleyball as well.

The council also made changes in football to which in 2020 there will be eight divisions of 32 and at the end of the season it will be based on the average playoff points and not through automatic playoff qualifiers (means strength of schedule is very important.) The points formula will be based on the team's wins and also wins from the opponents regardless of who the team beat or lost too. The council said in their reasoning that these changes would encourage teams to play a tough schedule and taking away the main issue of breaking up leagues and conferences.

Also for football the leadership council approved that they are limiting contact from 90 minutes a week to 30 minutes in preseason workouts. During the season the "thud"tempo there would be still unlimited contact.

The new transfer rule is expected to take effect in the 2019-2020 school year which my co-host Ian Locke and myself on the podcast talked about regularly but there was a major change that was added to the rule. The major change to the rule was that the athlete will not be granted immediate eligibility with a residential change if the student follows their coach from their old school to new school. The council also approved a sport specific penalty for the new transfer rule meaning so that the student would not be eligible to play that sport if the student made the athletically motivated transfer.

Thoughts.

I think there needs to be more clarity from the MHSAA how the brackets will play out come district time unless the MHSAA is doing a six team districts and basing their records and MPR off of those records. My guess is what they will do is that they will do the pairings as normal in June but then they will use the new formula with the teams. It will be interesting to see how this will work. In my mind I still need more information.

I like the football changes, it tells those teams who got in the playoffs with the six wins to toughen up the schedule. I think it's a game changer that strength of schedule will determine where you go in the playoffs. I look for example the Red is loaded with tough teams when you look at Clarkston, Lake Orion, Oxford, West Bloomfield, Adams, Southfield Arts and Tech, and Bloomfield Hills. Oak Park and Groves also plays a brutal schedule as well. My point is that these teams play a very difficult schedule and beat each other up. I remember how Royal Oak and Troy got into the playoffs at 6-3 playing a non impressive schedule and how teams like Lake Orion and Oxford were left out playing a brutal schedule. I like this change a lot.

The new transfer rule has taken into affect already this season but I think the Representative Council needs to look at connecting players to certain programs as well. I'm not sure if they do that with players but they do it with coaches. I think they need to shore that rule up as well which would make things more interesting.

Stay tuned to OAA Now for the latest on this developing story. Expect Ian Locke and myself to go more in depth on the podcast.

Here is the article from the MHSAA Representive Council.
https://www.mhsaa.com/News/Press-Releases/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/8205/MHSAA-Representative-Council-Adopts-Tournament-Changes-in-3-Sports-at-Spring-Meeting

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