St. John Bosco's Jason Negro shares gripes about playoff system on CIF Southern Section Sitdown

The Division 1 playoffs had 10 teams in 2022 and eight teams the two seasons prior (2021, 2019). The last 16-team Division 1 field was in 2018

The final week of the high school football regular season is here. Final games will be played Thursday and Friday, October 26 and 27.

The CIF Southern Section will reveal playoff pairings for all divisions on Sunday morning at 10 a.m. — however — the brackets will be revealed sooner, live on the CIF-SS Youtube channel at 9:40 a.m. where a special edition of the Southern Section Sitdown — Bracket Breakdown — will broadcast a show that goes through each bracket from lowest to highest division until 10 a.m.

As questions loom regarding the number of teams that will make up the Division 1 field heading into Sunday, St. John Bosco coach Jason Negro spoke about the current playoff system on Episode 1 of the CIF Southern Section Sitdown.

Currently, the playoff divisions are created from Calpreps.com rankings, which is a computerized system that determines where teams lie ahead of the postseason.

"There needs to be a blend of both (human element and math)," Negro said. "You do need to have some sort of matrix that will help with the rankings. But you also need to try and drive programs to want to become more competitive, not the other way around."

Negro believes teams aren't looking to play up anymore, but uses his game in Hawaii against Kahuku as a prime example for why programs should seek out 'the big game' — not avoid it.

"There was nobody in the country that thought we were going to Hawaii and losing to Kahuku, but guess what happened?" Negro said. "Big, bad St. John Bosco lost [30-23]."

A week prior to the loss, Kahuku lost to Mater Dei, 55-8. St. John Bosco beat Mater Dei 28-0 on October 13.

"That's the beauty of high school athletics, it's the beauty of going out there and playing competitive opponents and not be afraid. Sometimes, we're afraid to test our ability to be great," Negro said.

"Kahuku was not afraid."

A new episode of the CIF Southern Section Sitdown releases every Thursday. Episode 2's guest is CIF Southern Section assistant commissioner Thom Simmons.

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