Football is the only sport or activity in the wide array of things offered by the Illinois High School Association that requires qualification for the postseason.

It is one of many unique wrinkles that only the football season provides.

495 teams started the season with the hope of being one of the 256 teams invited to the postseason fracas. Some of those journeys to the field have been relatively smooth and have been locked up for a few weeks. Others could be waiting it out until the last minute.

Let’s walk through that journey that creates the field of 256 teams.

The first teams placed are conference champions.

There are 58 conferences in the state of Illinois that include teams that are eligible for the playoffs.

But all of them do not receive that automatic bid designation. The IHSA standard for conference champions to receive bids is that a minimum of six teams be involved in a conference to earn that bid. As such, no divisions of the CCL/ESCC are eligible for the automatic bids. The South Seven, Southern Illinois River-to-River Ohio Division and two divisions of the Heart of Illinois (Small and Medium) and Chicagoland Prairie don’t qualify for a bid as the leagues have less than six teams.

Teams that have already clinched conference championship berths are Mount Zion, Byron, Johnston City, Chester, Breese Central, Glenwood, Sacred Heart Griffin, Highland Park, Maine South, Noble-Rauner, Chicago Richards, Agricultural Science, Crane, Bishop McNamara, Prairie Ridge, Bloomington Central Catholic, Morris, Richmond-Burton, Arthur, Farmington, Kewanee Wethersfield, Richland County, Washington, Barrington, Mascoutah, Warren, Stockton, Williamsville, Vandalia, Oak Lawn Richards, Benton, Carterville, Lincoln-Way East, East St. Louis, Monmouth, Rockridge, South Elgin, Westville, Moline, Camp Point Central and Hardin Calhoun.

Teams that are on track to claim conference championships with victories in Week 9 are Normal Community, Prosser, Corliss, El Paso-Gridley, Coal City or Wilmington (they play each other), Hersey, Belvidere North, Wauconda, Lemont, Kankakee or Crete-Monee (they play each other), Plainfield East, Yorkville, Lincoln-Way Central, Riverside-Brookfield or Glenbard East (they play each other) and Addison Trail.

In all, 56 automatic bids will be awarded to conference champions, leaving 200 bids yet to be filled.

Next up are any teams who are not conference champions or from leagues (or independents) that do not qualify for automatic bids which have already won six or seven or eight games on the season.

There are 155 teams that have reached the six-win standard already, 101 spots to fill. One team in this group, CICS-Longwood, must win a playoff game against Kennedy to reach CPL standards for qualification.

There are 68 teams that have already reached the 5-win group.

One of those teams, Chicago UIC-Prep, must play Chicago Marshall (4-4) in a playoff game in a Week 9 elimination game to see who gets a playoff bid.

Also, there are CPL teams, Noble/Comer (5-3) and Collins (5-3), Schurz (4-4) and Orr (4-4) that cannot qualify for the playoffs regardless of outcome in Week 9 because of its placement in CPL divisions where a top two finish was required for a IHSA playoff berth.

After all of those extra CPL scenarios are figured in there will be 220 teams with at least five wins.

Working on the presumption that all five-win teams will make the playoffs (we’ll get to the alternative later on in this story) that leaves 36 spots for teams to make the playoffs.

There are 58 teams that enter Week 9 with four victories, including Chicago Marshall that needs to win a playoff game with UIC-Prep to obtain playoff eligibility through the CPS.

The winner of that game will be one bid granted to the field of 256, leaving 35 bids to fill the field entirely.

There is one game statewide between a pair of 4-4 teams, Pekin and East Peoria, with the winner reaching 5 wins and loser dropping to 4-5 without enough points to be a serious consideration for a potential at-large bid.

East Moline United received a forfeit victory over Rock Island Alleman in Week 9 to join the 5-win group.

That leaves 33 remaining bids to be filled in the field, 54 4-win teams looking to join the five-win group.

The breakdown of 4-4 teams in Week 9 is as follows:

Of those 54 teams, 30 are playing opponents with records below the .500 mark, 24 teams are playing opponents with records above the .500 mark.

Here’s a breakdown of those games:

Whichever teams win from each group will join the 256-team field. If all of the teams playing teams with losing coupled with all of the teams playing teams with better than .500 records recording a defeat – it would leave the field three teams short of 256 teams with at least five wins.

In reality, there’s probably a blend of the two groups with a few of the 4-4 teams losing to teams with below .500 records and a few of the teams playing above .500 record teams pulling off an upset to try to work their way into the field.

Let’s start with what happens if we don’t get 256 teams at five wins or better.

The remaining spots have to be filled with four-win teams with the highest amount of playoff points (opponents’ victories).

Here’s a look at the teams with the most amount of points in the four-win group in order of points through eight weeks of play:

Obviously any of these teams can remove themselves from the list by winning their fifth game, but the list can’t be limited to just teams with 4-4 records at this point because 3-5 teams have the opportunity to join the other teams in the 4-5 group with a Week 9 win.

You get the leading candidates to take the open spots from whoever ends up in the 4-5 pool after the conclusion of this week’s games. With additional points factored in from Week 9 it appears it will take at minimum of 47 points to have a chance to earn one of those bids.

Conversely, if more than 256 teams qualify for the field with five victories or more, those five win teams that do not have an automatic bid for winning their conference are sorted out by playoff points. The teams with the fewest playoff points in this scenario would be removed from the potential field until the list holds only 256 teams.

Here are the teams that could find themselves at 5-4 with the fewest number of playoff points:

If there is a tie for the last spot or spots in the playoff field the tie is broken by the following steps:

• Head-to-head result if teams have played

• Number of teams played that qualified for the playoffs

• Number of wins accumulated by opponents that qualified for the playoffs

• Number of points allowed against playoff qualifiers

• Coin flip

Once the field is set with 256 teams the schools are sorted by their pre-established football enrollments.

Six schools are using the optional “playing up” option in the IHSA by-laws. East St. Louis, Antioch, Glenbard South voluntarily moves up from Class 5A to Class 6A, while St. Rita, Richards and Batavia moves from Class 6A to Class 7A.

Three schools, Chicago Mount Carmel, Nazareth and Joliet Catholic, are subjected to the IHSA’s Success Formula. Those schools attained state trophies in each of the last two seasons and will be moved up one class above the class where the state championship trophies were attained. Nazareth and Joliet Catholic (if they qualify) will be moved up from Class 5A to Class 6A, while Mount Carmel will move from Class 7A to Class 8A.

The eight classifications are then broken into groups of 32 teams each. In Class 1A through Class 6A the 32-team groups are broken into groups of 16 and 16 by a north/south geographic split. Class 7A and Class 8A are 32-team brackets with no geographic split.

Seeding then occurs with nine-win teams placed in the bracket first, followed by eight, seven, six and five wins teams. If needed, four win teams that qualified are placed at the bottom of the bracket.

Seeding ties are broken inside of the win groups by playoff points. If teams are in the same win group with the same number of playoff points, ties are broken by a tiebreaker of the number of playoff points accumulated by defeated opponents. The only exception being for undefeated teams, as both of those tiebreakers are the same number and can’t break the tie. A random number generator is used to split the tie in that case.

So now that we’ve gone to into the great detail of what could come in Week 9. Here’s a quick review and primer on the steps it will take to fill the field of 256:

• There are currently 223 teams that have already achieved five wins.
• That leaves 33 spots left to fill.
• There are 30 teams that are currently 4-4 that are playing sub .500 teams in Week 9.
• Assuming all win, that leaves three spots left to fill.
• There are 24 teams that are currently 4-4 that are playing teams with above .500 teams in Week 9.
• If all lose, that would leave three spots available for 4-5 teams
• Every team that wins from the group of 24 teams playing teams with record above .500 reduces that number, counting down from 3.
• If any of the teams from the group of 31 teams loses that number increases, counting up from 3.
• If that number finishes at zero at the end of all games, all five win teams make the field and no four win teams do.
• If that number finishes as a positive number, the number that is how many four win teams are needed to fill the field.
• If that number finishes as a negative number, that’s the number of teams with five wins that will need to be eliminated from the field to set it. Teams with the smallest amount of playoff points in the five-win group are eliminated first.