A recently submitted proposal to the Illinois High School Association that would make several changes to the IHSA regular-season and postseason structure has undergone some changes from its initial submission.

After receiving substantial feedback from member schools, the proposal submitters have made two significant alterations.

The playoff field would be expanded to 320 teams, reduced from the initial proposal of 384 teams. This would reduce the number of entrants per class to 40 per classification.

Seeds 25 through 40 in each classification would play opening-round games, while the remaining teams would have a bye. Although there are concerns by some parties about the presence of byes, Illinois doesn’t have enough participating teams to expand the playoffs without byes unless fewer classifications were used.

Using the data from the most recent season under this modified proposal, all 4-5 teams would qualify for the playoffs and 17 teams that finished 3-6 would qualify with a point tiebreaker of 43 points for the 3-6 teams that would be needed to fill the field.

The other change made from the previous proposal would be seeding all eight of the classifications 1-through-40, eliminating the previous provision that had schools in Class 1A through 6A being divided into North and South brackets.

The current system has only Class 7A and Class 8A, seeded 1 though 32, while the other classifications (Class 1A through 6A) are broken into two 16-team brackets broken by geography.

Qualification for the playoffs would still be in the same structure as is done currently. Teams that win the most games would be placed on the bracket first and seeded accordingly by playoff points.

All current systems – such as multiplier application/waivers, success formulas, and playing up opportunities – would be applied to the calculations for classifying teams.

No adjustments to the proposal’s “Flex Region Scheduling” plan have been made.

The basic principle of the Flex Regional Model works like this. All playoff-eligible teams would be sorted via the enrollment that is to be used for the football program. They will then be divided equally into eight classifications, which would become the most likely group of teams that will be divided into regionals.

However, the 25 smallest teams in each classification group could be flexed into a smaller classification if there is a better geographic fit in one of the regionals for them and a need for them to fill.

The same principle would also be applied to the 25 largest teams in each classification group, as they could be flexed into a larger classification if there is a better geographic fit and a need for them to fill.

Under no circumstances would a team be moved more than one class in any direction.

Regional games for six-team groupings would be played in Weeks 4 through 8, and non-regional games would be played in Weeks 1-3 and Week 9.

Eight-team groups would have seven regional games (Weeks 2 through 8) and non-regional games in Weeks 1 and 9, while seven-team groups would follow a similar protocol with a neighboring seven-team district providing a crossover game option to allow no team a bye week.

Schools would retain autonomy of their non-regional game schedules to allow for the ability of schools to maintain rivalry games with programs that might not be in the same direct regions or from different classification groups.

The proposing group has released “mock-ups” of proposed regions for Class 1A through 4A. They can be found here.

Mock regions for Class 5A through 8A will be released in the near future.