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Inside Selection Sunday: Mapnalysis '13
October 28, 2013
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
At the end of the day – Sunday, in this case – the 2013 MHSAA football playoff field was determined based on a set of numbers we began working with long before the first kickoff of this season.
So to kick off our discussion of how some of the 2013 playoff-selection decisions were made, here are a few numbers that might boggle the mind – or at least surprise:
- A total of 3,111 high school results were used in determining this season’s field – 2,978 for 11-player and 133 for 8-player games.
- We inputted and then followed the schedules for 623 MHSAA teams.
- We also inputted and followed weekly the schedules for 50 teams from surrounding states and Ontario that played at least one game against one of our MHSAA schools.
- We worked through complicated maneuverings made necessary by seven teams playing a mix of 11 and 8-player games, plus two more teams that played a mix of varsity and junior varsity opponents.
- And by Sunday morning we ended up with a few more numeric rarities: only 225 automatic qualifiers, the fewest since the current playoff system was introduced in 1999, and also an uneven number of at-large bids from our four classes because only six Class D teams reached the number of victories needed to be considered. (This was balanced by taking more at-large qualifiers from Classes A, B and C.)
And that was just the start of one of our most exciting days of the school year.
Following are more details. First, I explain some of the history of the MHSAA playoffs – I’ve lifted this in part from our 2012 report, so skip ahead if you’ve already got that down. Next, I touch on five themes that emerged as we built the brackets for this season’s tournament.
The process
Our past: The MHSAA playoff structure – with 256 teams in eight divisions, and six wins equaling an automatic berth (or five wins for teams playing eight or fewer games) – debuted in 1999, as mentioned above. An 8-player tournament was added in 2011, resulting in nine champions total when November is done.
That’s a long way from our start. The first playoffs were conducted in 1975 with four champions. Four more football classes were added in 1990 for a total of eight champions each fall. Through 1998, only 128 teams made the postseason, based on their playoff point averages within regions (four for each class) that were drawn before the beginning of the season. The drawing of Districts and Regions after the end of the regular season did not begin until the most recent playoff expansion.
In early years of the current process (or until the middle of the last decade), lines were drawn by hand. Dots representing qualifying schools were pasted on maps, one map for each division, and those maps were then covered by plastic sheets. Districts and Regionals literally were drawn with dry-erase markers.
Our present: After a late Saturday night tracking scores, we file in as the sun rises Sunday morning for a final round of gathering results we may still need (which can include making a few early a.m. calls to athletic directors). Then comes re-checking and triple-checking of enrollments, what schools played in co-ops, some records and more before the numbers are crunched and the fields are set.
Those 256 11-player teams are then split into eight equal divisions based on enrollment, and their locations are marked on digital maps that are projected on wall-size screens and then discussed by nearly half of the MHSAA staff plus a representative from the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association. Only the locations themselves are marked (by yellow dots) – not records, playoff point averages or names of the schools or towns. In fact, mentions of those are strictly prohibited. Records and playoff points are not part of the criteria. Matchups, rivalries, previous playoff pairings, etc. also DO NOT come into play. The same process is followed for organizing the 8-player bracket.
Observations and answers: 2013
This doesn’t happen overnight: Preparation for selecting the MHSAA playoff field begins long before the first kickoff of fall, much less the first practice. We load schedules for all 600-plus varsity teams during the summer, and many schedules remain fluid right up until the first Friday of the season – and this fall, a few weren’t settled until Week 2 or 3.
This summer as in some past we also worked through schools closing (Inkster, Saginaw Buena Vista, Detroit Northwestern, Flint Northern), and others deciding in mid-July and early August they would not field teams because of a lack of players.
Sometimes we have to take odd paths to find scores for these games. The last 11-player score to be added to our data this regular season came in as a result of tweeting the sports anchor of a Wheeling, W.Va., television station. Our last 8-player score came in via email from a Wisconsin athletic director at 10:30 Saturday night. Thankfully, we get plenty of assistance from some of our friends in the field, who keep an eye on the data and alert us when something appears missing or incorrect.
Win and advance: This season’s list of 5-4 teams includes a number of heavy hitters that did not receive at-large bids – East Grand Rapids, Utica Eisenhower, Orchard Lake St. Mary’s and Flint Powers Catholic to name a few. All were solid teams and played strong competition. All missing the playoffs likely raised some eyebrows.
But we have to take a look at this from a statewide view. There admittedly can be some argument about what schools qualified for the 226-256 spots in the field – but the important part is that 225 qualified because they all met the minimum win requirement. A playoff is simply that – it decides a champion based on teams winning. For some it’s harder to pile wins, of course, because they play in tough leagues. But the winners of those leagues are in the field – and surely will credit that tough road with getting them prepared to now play the state’s best.
Geography rules: This long has been rule number one for drawing MHSAA brackets in any sport, and is a repeat as well for those who have read this report the last two Octobers. Travel distance and ease DO come into play. Jumping on a major highway clearly is easier than driving across county-wide back roads, and that’s taken into consideration.
Also, remember there’s only one Mackinac Bridge and hence only one way to cross between peninsulas – and boats are not considered a possible form of transportation. When opponents from both peninsulas will be in the same District, distance to the bridge is far more important than as the crow flies.
The best example of this comes this season in Division 5. Grayling clearly is east of both Kingsley and Kalkaska – but also sits on I-75, while those two do not. So while those more western teams are geographically closer to Houghton, Menominee and Kingsford from the Upper Peninsula, we instead paired the three U.P. teams with Grayling because being on a main highway made for a shorter trip. The trip to Grayling for any of those U.P. teams would be 36 miles shorter to Grayling than Kingsley and 13 miles shorter to Grayling than Kalkaska.
Sometimes it’s where the points aren’t: Sure, it would be best-case scenario to have perfect sets of eight dots split into four quadrants from Calumet to Bedford. But generally that doesn’t occur. “Dots determine the map” is a common phrase heard here during this selection process, but that works the other way as well. If there are no qualifiers in a division from a specific area of the state – see Division 1, with none south of Holland or west of the greater Lansing area – there’s no choice but to create the unusual Regional Final possibility of Traverse City West vs. Brighton. Brighton is simply closer to the west side of the state than our other options.
Border to border vs. coast to coast: Should Regions be grouped north to south or east to west? There isn't a right or wrong answer – it just depends on that set of dots.
Whenever we have Upper Peninsula teams in a division, they’ll be grouped with those from the northernmost points of the Lower Peninsula for a District. The next northernmost schools will be grouped into a District, and together those eight will form a Region.
But the tough decision comes with the other six Districts. Look at this season’s Division 5 map: Six Districts are grouped south of U.S. 10 with three near or west of U.S. 127 and three east of that highway, which runs through the center of the Lower Peninsula. We grouped the two southwestern Districts into a Region and the two southeastern Districts into a Region – leaving a final Region that stretches from Muskegon on Lake Michigan to Almont, about 35 miles west of Lake Huron.
That’s a haul. But it’s also the best of our possible compromises. We could’ve instead paired regions that would’ve stretched from Hopkins to Monroe – only 19 fewer miles in distance than Muskegon Oakridge to Almont, but a scenario that could’ve created travel increases for a number of additional teams. Another option included a possible trip from Detroit University Prep to Freeland, which also would take more than two hours.
Bottom line – it’s been written here before – we pour all we have into this process, asking questions often more than once until we come up with a consensus. We do appreciate the arguments that arise once brackets are released to the public: The discussions are proof of how much players, coaches and fans care – and often show us new ways we can look at a system that’s now 15 years old.
But we must remember that the good news is the tournament is still set up to reward nine champions over the next five weeks, and five schools – Auburn Hills Oakland Christian, Coldwater, Detroit Allen, Eaton Rapids and Muskegon Mona Shores – will be competing for those titles for the first time.
It’s not so much how the tournament starts as how it ends. And we’re preparing for nine more memorable conclusions.
PHOTO: Each collection of grouped dots is a District on this season's Division 3 playoff map.
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Search for Longest FG Starts in '50s
October 30, 2020
By Ron Pesch
Special for Second Half
Rob LaMielle’s first attempted field goal was a memorable one, and frankly, a bit amazing.
For starters, his track record on extra points, at least to that point in the season, was less than stellar. Flint Holy Redeemer entered their third game of the 1963 slate with a 1-1 record. The Flyers were defeated by Bad Axe in Week 1, then trounced Imlay City the next week. The senior had been successful on only 3 of 9 extra-point placements on the year.
“You had to bring that up,” said LaMielle over 55 years later, laughing at the statistic. “That’s probably so. Bad Axe was rated No. 1 in the state in Class ‘B.’ We were a ‘C’ school. They beat us 13-12 that night, because I missed two extra points. They scored in the very last couple minutes.”
The fact that his field goal was on the mark is all the more impressive considering it traveled 50 yards, clearing the crossbar by three feet, according to observers. Even more remarkable, it was a mere three yards shy of Lou ‘The Toe’ Groza’s best effort for the National Football League’s Cleveland Browns, and just six yards short of the NFL record, set by Bert Rechichar of the Baltimore Colts in 1953. Rechichar held the mark until it was famously topped by New Orleans Saints kicker Tom Dempsey in 1970 against the Detroit Lions.
“We practiced behind our football field,” said LaMielle, recalling how he got the job. “Behind our football field was two baseball fields with a backstop at each end. Well the coach lined everybody up on second base and said, ‘OK, we’re going to find out who can kick a field goal.’ So we started kicking the ball over the backstop. One of the times I kicked it, and it went a long ways.”
St. Redeemer’s coach Dick Clark stopped the drill and named LaMielle the team’s kicker.
“Before my senior year, I’d never kicked off, never attempted an extra point.”
At the time, the 220-pound LaMielle, who, like Groza, played tackle, was asked if he was surprised by the success of his kick.
“I was more surprised Coach Clark asked me to try it,” he said.
The field goal helped Flint Holy Redeemer top Bay City St. James, 29-6.
It also prompted another question from sports reporters. Was LaMielle’s kick a Michigan high school record?
The Search
The publicity surrounding the kick sent sportswriters around the state scurrying for the archives.
Initial inquiries indicated that Jim Yore of Battle Creek Central held the state mark, with a 56-yard field goal about 10 years prior, but a recheck of records by Dick Kishpaugh, “sports publicity director at Kalamazoo College and a close observer of Michigan prep football records,” indicated that Yore’s longest had been a 38-yard field goal, kicked on the last play of the game to beat Ypsilanti 3-0 on Oct. 3, 1952. It was thought to be the longest in state history.
Additional digging found that Port Huron High School’s Alfred Davis, a 212-pound fullback, had drilled a flawless 46-yard field goal in a 19-14 win over Hazel Park in 1953.
“The word ‘tremendous’ is probably one of the most overused words in sports lexicon,” wrote Port Huron Times reporter Fred J. Vincent, “but it should be used in describing this kick.”
Vincent called it “perfect, splitting the uprights and clearing the bar by about six feet.”
Impressively, Davis also had kicked a 36-yarder earlier in the contest. “Bob Boyd held on both kicks,” added the sportswriter. “Not since Oct. 8, 1930 had a Big Red player kicked a three pointer. Hank Ceasor did it then to best Ferndale, 3-0.”
Word came that Cheboygan Catholic’s Joe Poirier had kicked one “reported to have traveled at least 53 yards from the point of the kick to the goal posts” in a 10-0 victory over Alcona in 1957. Since the MHSAA didn’t keep records at the time, Kishpaugh added it to his listing of unofficial state records.
The Ironwood Daily Globe unearthed a nugget. While it wasn’t considered by Kishpaugh for his record book, it did bring back memories of changes seen in the game.
Ironwood’s John ‘Cutz’ Cavosie made a “tremendous boot on Oct. 10, 1925 in the final seconds of a game at Oliver Field here in which Ironwood swamped Menominee 41-0. Cavosie apparently was back to punt, but instead he dropkicked the ball squarely through the goal posts 55 yards away. He was in his senior year that fall and was captain of the team. He played a big role in the rout on Menominee by scoring on runs of 42, 51 and 67 yards.”
Record Toppled
So it was quite the event when, nearly 19 years later, junior Derrick Underwood broke Poirier’s mark on a cold October Friday at Inkster.
A week earlier, Underwood had made his first field goal of the season, a 23-yard boot in overtime to give Ecorse its first victory of the year in five starts, 9-6, over River Rouge. This time, his kick gave Ecorse a 3-0 victory over the Vikings, although in decidedly less dramatic fashion as the kick came in the second quarter.
“The strange thing is I didn’t even know that I was kicking it from the 44-yard line. To be honest, I wasn’t paying that much attention and it didn’t look that long,” Underwood told the Detroit Free Press in 1976. “But I got a real good snap on it and an excellent hold.
Red Raiders coach Patrick Kearney believed the kick would have been good from another five or 10 yards out.
“It felt good when I hit it,” added Underwood, “but because I was in front of the goal posts, I couldn’t tell whether it went over or under the crossbar. But I saw my teammates jumping up and down on the sidelines and I knew it made it.
“I was pretty loose because I figured that if I missed, we still had another half to come back and win it.”
Underwood’s accomplishment garnered national attention in the June/July ’77 issue of Joe Namath’s National Prep Sports magazine. At the time, Jerry Spicer of Hobart (Ind.) High School held the national record with a kick of 61 yards in 1975.
Exasperation to Jubilation
Underwood, who also served as the Red Raiders’ quarterback and defensive end, guided the team to Inkster’s one-foot line in that same game as the clock wound down. But with the lead, instead of pushing for the end zone, they let time expire.
A year earlier, in 1975, the Ecorse players watched their season disappear after a single game.
“The school millage was defeated just prior to the start of that season,” said Underwood, recalling his high school days some 45 years later. “I was the starting QB for the Red Raiders through my senior year ('78). We were heartbroken that our season was over after the first game against Muskegon Heights. No energy for that game.
“We were foaming at the mouth to be playing organized football. Some of us played flag football to stay active.”
“I was just practicing holding for a teammate,” Underwood had told the Free Press back in October 1976. “Eventually I thought I’d try and I got to be pretty good at it.”
“I didn’t take kicking seriously at all,” he states now. “I wasn’t a dedicated kicker. My stars were aligned in my head as being the next Thomas Lott.”
Lott, a Parade All-American out of San Antonio, Texas, played quarterback at Oklahoma, where his coach, the legendary Barry Switzer, once called him the greatest wishbone quarterback in Oklahoma history.
“Went down to Tennessee State University and found out how much football I didn’t know,” Underwood said.
Reminiscing he added, “Looking back, wouldn’t change a thing growing up in Ecorse.”
Equaled, then Topped – in the Same Game
Underwood’s mark would hold in Michigan until 1979, when junior Harold Moore of Dearborn equaled, then topped the mark in a season-ending game against Plymouth Canton.
Moore, a left-footed, straight-on kicking specialist, matched Underwood’s record with a 54-yard boot in the game’s first half, and then topped the record with a 55-yard field goal during the second half.
“I’ve never seen anyone with the leg power he has,” said his coach, Dick Ryan. “His 55-yard field goal cleared the bar with 20 feet to spare.”
Over the next two seasons, three players – Mike Prindle of Grand Rapids Union (1980), Bob Hirschman from Sterling Heights Ford (1980), and Dave Blackmer of Farmington Hills Harrison (1981) – would match Moore’s longest kick.
Since then, only five players have matched or exceeded 55 yards. John Langeloh of Utica shattered the mark in 1985 with a 58 yarder. Doug Kochanski of Warren Woods-Tower is the state’s current record holder, with a kick in 1994 that traveled 59 yards before splitting the uprights. The successful kick came in his final high school contest.
In these days of more and more specialization, one wonders, will Michigan ever see one of 60 yards or more?
Ron Pesch has taken an active role in researching the history of MHSAA events since 1985 and began writing for MHSAA Finals programs in 1986, adding additional features and "flashbacks" in 1992. He inherited the title of MHSAA historian from the late Dick Kishpaugh following the 1993-94 school year, and resides in Muskegon. Contact him at [email protected] with ideas for historical articles.
PHOTOS: (Top) The Detroit Free Press told the story behind Derrick Underwood’s record field goal for Ecorse in its Oct. 30, 1976 edition. (2) Battle Creek Central’s Jim Yore was one of the earliest record holders for longest field goal in Michigan high school history. (3) Alfred Davis also was a standout fullback for Port Huron. (4) Underwood also played quarterback and defensive end for the Red Raiders. (Photos gathered by Ron Pesch.)