Written by Jeff Rich

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In college football, many will agree that the BCS is flawed.  The truth is that it's setup in a way that offers no perfect solution to properly crown a champion from its 120+ team pool of learning institutions.  The premise behind the Bowl Championship Series is to determine who the top two teams are, then put them on the field for a Championship game of sorts.  If there is debate between who should be #1 and #2, it is argued very quietly because sixty minutes of football can settle that debate, but the drama comes with #2 and #3; only one gets a seat at the table.

Speaking strictly in hypotheticals, what if we agreed that Alabama is the undisputed #1 team in the country at the end of the season, but the second and third spots come down to complicated math.  Suddenly, we're looking at games that felt so meaningless, like Oregon vs. Akransas State and Kansas State versus North Texas.  What if it ended up being so close that the winner of Saturday's contest between the Mean Green of North Texas and the Red Wolves of Arkansas State tipped the scale towards Alabama's Championship opponent?

Pretty wild, huh?  Now, imgaine the result of that early November Sun Belt game is changed after the Championship game is scheduled.  We've got Alabama angry after spending a month preparing for the wrong opponent, plus the schools and fan bases in a frenzy, making or canceling travel plans.  Of course, that would never happen; that's the type of thing that could only happen in Ohio, and it's happening right now.

It's not the billion dollar industry that is the BCS, but we now have six schools in Northeast Ohio affected by this chaos.  There are a lot of things still up in the air, as the clock strikes midnight on the North Coast Friday morning, but we do know that Trumbull's County's Brookfield and Lakewood's St. Edward hold #1 seeds in their region, and hope to host the #8 seeds in the first round of the 2012 Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) Playoffs this weekend.

This is a simple timeline of the events that have shaped the chaos that has put Opening Round games in Division I and Division IV in jeopardy, but more importantly, created controversy over the respective #8 seeds in those regions.

• August 31 - Cleveland Heights defeats Cleveland John Adams
• October 18 - Cleveland John F Kennedy (JFK) defeats Cleveland John Adams 14-8 on the field
• October 24 - The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that JFK forfeited the October 18 game to Adams because they used a player that ineligible, per the school district guidlines, but not ineligible per OHSAA standards
• October 26 - Ashtabula County's Edgewood defeats JFK
• October 28 - Playoff pairings are announced. Mayfield gets the #8 seed in Division I, and is set to play at St. Edward on Saturday; Edgewood clinches their first playoff berth ever, and is scheduled to play at Brookfield on Friday. (These pairings were based on the on-field result of the JFK win over John Adams, ignoring the foreit).
• November 1 - Cleveland Heights, who finished behind Mayfield in Division I, successfully files suit; the JFK forfeit is now recognized, and they are now the #8 seed.  The appeal also affects Division IV, where Edgewood, who is printing t-shirts for their playoff appearance, loses enough computer points to fall out of the playoffs because their win over JFK is not as strong.  So, it's Beachwood in the #8 seed, now getting ready to play Brookfield in a little more than 24 hours.  However, Edgewood didn't take the announcement lying down, and filed a suit of their own in Ashtabula County.  The court ruled in their favor.  So, in two different Ohio courts, Edgewood was legally bumped and legally put back into the playoffs.

 

If there were more sense to be made of it, I would offer a clearer picture, but this is where it stands.  There might be football in Brookfield on Friday night, and there might not be, but one thing is for certain.  Brookfield and St. Edward will wake up on Friday morning without a clear picture of who their next opponent will be.

Friday is going to be a long day; stay tuned.

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Update (Friday, November 2nd 14:30)

#MAYFIELD confirms to @johntelich8 that Cats are in, at the expense of #CLEVEHTS, and @ohsaasports says case is "over". Playoffs are set.

— FridayNightTouchdown (@FOX8FNTD) November 2, 2012