NMAA eliminates bottom two teams in football playoff brackets

CLOVIS — Next year’s football playoffs will be a little more competitive for the first-round byes — and the playoffs will be a little thinner overall.

The New Mexico Activities Association board voted Wednesday to reduce the playoff field by two teams in six-man, eight-man and Classes 2A-6A, effective in the 2018 playoffs.

The five largest classes will move from a 12-team field to a 10-team field. Only the top two seeds will receive first-round byes, compared to four teams receiving it this year. In six-man football, the field will drop from six to four — eliminating the first-round bye altogether.

NMAA Associate Director Dusty Young said the move was initiated by the association’s previous move to reduce the state basketball tournament field from 16 teams to 12 for each class — also effective for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.

It didn’t make sense for more than half of the NMAA’s member schools to make the football playoffs, Young said, then four months later have less than half of those same teams qualify for basketball’s postseason.

“If things fall the way we think they will, there will be 29 teams in 5A basketball. With 12 teams qualifying, that’s 40 percent (playoff participation),” Young said. “Looking at football — because there’s an extra class — the largest class will have about 20 schools. To be proportionate to other sports, it would be eight (playoff teams).

“The board felt that while a reduction was warranted, they also felt football was a different sport. A reduction was warranted, but they felt 10 was appropriate.”

Melrose head coach Dickie Roybal was optimistic about the decision.

“I believe it was a good compromise,” Roybal said. “You’re going to have your coaches and players and everyone else that will disagree or agree with what the NMAA does. But what they say goes, and the only thing you can do is get better instead of complain.”

Melrose has been either the first or second seed four times in the last seven eight-man postseasons.

Whle Clovis has not been quite as highly-seeded, the Wildcats did have the No. 4 seed two seasons ago and would stand to lose a first-round bye in future years. Still, first-year coach Cal Fullerton doesn’t mind the move.

“You don’t really see 11th- and 12th-seeded teams doing a whole lot anymore,” Fullerton said. “You will have your teams that’ll make bit of a run, but to me this decision isn’t something to really dwell on; it is what it is.”

Basketball will have five classifications — 1A through 5A — while football will include six-man, eight-man and Classes 2A-6A. Football will be the only sport with a 6A classification.

Young said the competition seen in the 5 vs. 12 and 6 vs. 11 games wasn’t a factor in the decision. Travel expenses for schools, he said, arguably had an trickle-down effect; they were part of the decision to reduce basketball participants, and that prompted discussion to reduce football participants.

In other moves on Wednesday, the board voted to:

• Retain district tournaments for volleyball and basketball

• Retain a five-classification format in baseball instead of a reduction to four classifications.

— Managing Editor Kevin Wilson contributed to this report.