Bossick: This is the place for football pairings
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By DAVID BOSSICK
david.bossick@lee.net
Wednesday, October 15, 2008 9:14 AM CDT
Chalk this up as you can’t believe everything you read.
(Wait. Don’t stop. You can believe this. It’s what’s coming that you can’t believe. Believe me.)
While starting to look ahead to the playoffs, and surfing the wide world of the web, I stumbled across this gem on the WIAA’s web site under the football playoffs page in regards to the pairings:
“(Pairings Scheduled to be posted here Saturday, Oct. 25, 2008).”
Before you go screaming and yelling and alerting all of your family and friends about this (like I did), I did some checking.
Well, actually, I asked someone else and they did some checking. The Wisconsin State Journal’s prep guru, Rob Hernandez, got into contact with Dave Anderson, the WIAA’s deputy director. And, I heard back from WIAA spokesperson Todd Clark.
Anderson says despite what the web site states, the state will continue its practice of determining the divisions for the 224 schools and in what section each belongs in.
They do that overnight and probably with the help of a few cups of coffee or a personal favorite, Mountain Dew.
Friday morning, pairings and locations are decided for the teams in each’s respective section followed by the announcement of the pairings sometime Friday afternoon.
Clark told me Tuesday night via e-mail that the brackets won’t be available to the public via the WIAA’s site until Saturday. That part is true on the organization’s site. However, the school and the media will be contacted on Friday as in years past as to who’s playing who and when.
“(A) Couple things this does,” Clark wrote. “Our site has crashed and slowed down Friday so that many can not access the site. Second it give our friends in the media a chance to promote their site locally as the ‘place to get the brackets.’”
That’s right from the WIAA’s mouth, our trusted newspaper and web site, www.chippewa.com, will be the place to go on Oct. 24 for the playoff pairings. Thanks for the plug, Todd.
When first seeing the Oct. 25 date, one could speculate that it had something to do with what happened last year with the announced playoff brackets. Kettle Moraine Lutheran essentially got a bye week in Division 4 in the first round because Winnebago Lutheran violated the quarters rule. Players can only play so many quarters of games a week if they move up and down from varsity to sub-varsity contests.
Clark said the date on the web site has absolutely nothing to do with last year’s snafu. It has everything to do with Internet bandwith, as what he discussed with the state’s site crashing and slowing to a crawl.
The pairings announcement was on the web site Wednesday morning.
Despite what the WIAA’s football playoffs page says about the pairings being available Oct. 25, don’t believe it.
You’re still going to get your playoff pairings, you’ll just need to come right here to The Chippewa Herald and www.chippewa.com to get them.
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