Blake: Forfeits shouldn't tank two teams' seasons

Jack Britt did not benefit from a single South View forfeit, but South View's nine matches that it forfeited kept the Bucs from making the playoffs due to low RPI and the NCHSAA's no leapfrogging rule.

Posted 6:16 p.m. Nov 1, 2022 — Updated 6:16 p.m. Nov 1, 2022

J. Mike Blake

, HighSchoolOT Contributor

Editor's note: Everyone has ideas for what rules they'd like to see changed. However, many of them in high school sports are either incompatible with the set-in-stone bylaws or too wide-ranging to ever have a shot at being implemented. This fall, HighSchoolOT Contributor J. Mike Blake will be focusing on practicality and utility when offering 10 ideas for what he believes would be well-received and simple changes to certain NCHSAA rules and regulations — things that would not require an overhaul of existing measures, yet could have an important impact.

The second of these columns takes a recent issue that deals with a team that forfeits in-conference games and has forfeits that affects another team's playoff chances. Such was the case with South View (the team that had to forfeit wins) and Jack Britt (the team that was kept out).

At first, it sounds like a story you've heard before. A team has rostered an ineligible player — they were ineligible either due to grades, residency, or (most commonly) an expired physical — and has to forfeit all wins from any games in which that player was on the team, and now those forfeit losses have kept the team from the playoffs.

In most cases, a team changing its wins to losses only helps the teams it played, bolstering their winning percentages.

But in the case of South View volleyball, it had massive collateral damage.

First, a little backstory...

'No Leapfrogging'

When the N.C. High School Athletic Association switched to RPI in the 2021-22 season, it did not have any stipulations on where wild-cards finished in conference play. I can't recall the exact teams, but the scenario had something like a fifth-place football team being left out of the playoffs while the sixth-place team made it.

In comes the "no leapfrogging" rule (my nickname, not the NCHSAA's).

By the time basketball rolled around, the NCHSAA made sure that in order for Team A to make the playoffs, every team ahead of them in the conference standings had to make it first.

Now, when two teams from the same conference both make it, they might not end up in the same order as their conference standing — the fifth-place team may get a higher seed than the fourth-place one, but that's OK. At least they're both in.

There are plenty of times when Team A has a decent enough RPI to make the playoffs but is "boxed out" by a Team B from its own conference who finished ahead of Team A in the conference standings but has a bad RPI.

Overall, teams can live with that.

It's a well-received rule.

But there is no rule for what happened to Jack Britt suffering because of South View's forfeits.

Why the Bucs stayed home

Jack Britt had an RPI of 21.

It was 15-10 overall. It finished 8-6 in conference.

It did not benefit from a single South View forfeit.

South View had to forfeit nine contests total.

The breakdown was as follows:

Seven different teams were forfeited to in total.
Four games were against conference teams.
The best of those teams pre-forfeit were Scotland (10-10 pre-forfeit) and Lumberton (10-11 pre-forfeit)
It gave Seventy-First (4-18 pre-forfeit), St. Pauls (7-16 pre-forfeit), Douglas Byrd (1-16 pre-forfeit), Purnell Swett (8-16 pre-forfeit), and Westover (1-15 pre-forfeit) one win each.
It dropped South View from a 1-seed in the league to an RPI of 35, because the computer rightly calculates these as bad losses.
It went from 19-3 to 10-12 overall.

But most importantly, South View was now 8-6 in the conference.

The same as Jack Britt.

But South View swept Jack Britt.

And that kept the Buccaneers home.

What can be done and how to do it

Jack Britt would've been in the playoffs comfortably, yet it missed it because of another team's ineligible player.

There is nothing Jack Britt could have done differently, and no recourse is in the handbook on how to remedy it.

Any rule change can be proposed by six schools or by an entire conference.

Whether it's the United 8 Conference or someone else, it's worth thinking of things that can be proposed that would keep another situation like this.

An exception to the leapfrogging rule would need to be in writing.

Something to the effect of "if Team A finishes below Team B in the conference standings, Team A cannot be permitted entry into the playoffs unless Team B first makes it. However, the exception would be if Team B has forfeited games that drop it below Team A in the RPI" would suffice.

The rule itself would not need to be used often, but that's OK.

We should take instances like this and make rules that will prevent them from happening again.

An ineligible player can tank your season.

It shouldn't tank someone else's too.

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