The eagerly awaited IHSA football pairings have been announced. With all the prognostication leading up to them, there weren’t too many surprises.

Here at Shaw Local Sports, we have a numbers guru in Steve Soucie, who turns the state over in predicting the pairings in advance of the IHSA. After Friday’s results from the final regular-season games were in the books, he and his partner, Matt Rodewald, stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, putting up mock brackets for all eight classes.

A bit much you say?

Not for us high school football nerds. I was one of those still awake past 2 a.m. to see what the “Souc” came up with. It’s kind of like when you were a kid on Christmas Eve and could hardly wait until the morning to open presents.

Sure, we could have got it straight from the IHSA on Saturday night, but there is something in the human psyche about the desire for immediacy. Admittedly, it is a character defect, but once in a while, curiosity gets the best of us.

The first thing that stood out is how tough the north bracket is in Class 3A. It has the top five teams in the last statewide AP poll in it.

The potential quarterfinals are doozies with Richmond-Burton (9-0) vs. Bloomington Central Catholic (9-0) and Byron (9-0) vs. IC Catholic (6-3). Even with an undefeated record, Bishop McNamara probably won’t get past ICC in the second round.

Such overloading on one side of the state gives further evidence that each class needs to be seeded 1-32, not north and south 1-16 brackets.

A big question mark is the opposition to 1-32. Where is it coming from? It’s not from the coaches. For years, they have been pleading to play teams from all over the state.

Is it from school administrators who do not want to facilitate long trips? Or is it from schools in the south, who have a pronounced advantage by steering clear of northern teams?

In 2022, the IHSA decided to go 1-32 for all classes, only to rescind that a few months later. Gas prices are a consideration, but I will tell you this from years of covering state tournament action: It doesn’t matter if gas is $10 a gallon; fans and parents will travel anywhere for an important football game. That’s the emotional pull the sport has on us.

And football is a different animal than all other IHSA sports. Certainly, basketball or volleyball would not be bracketed statewide.

Maybe the IHSA feels 1-16 is an adequate compromise over the eight-team quadrant form that used to be in place, which was such a travesty to the landlocked NUIC.

Even with 1-16, it is still Forreston vs Le-Win and Galena vs Stockton, both NUIC rematches. Nobody wants that. At least Le-Win and Stockton wouldn’t meet until the semifinals.

But anything is possible in high school football. Three weeks ago, I mentioned that Oregon and Stillman Valley were locks to make the playoffs.

Well, SV didn’t make it and Oregon barely limps in after a running clock loss to 1A Dwight. Driving home from an early starting Rochelle game, I turned my radio on to listen to 95.7 FM’s Sam Ramirez and Mark Herman call the second half of the Hawks game and was stunned to hear a 28-0 halftime score in favor of Dwight.

At first, I thought Sam had made a mistake. Not so and this partially explains why the IHSA needs to implement 1-32 seeding.

There was an enticing mystery to facing a team you never have seen before. Most of us assumed Oregon would beat Dwight, even Steve Soucie himself.

Although it was a long drive to Dwight, there was an air of intrigue for a first-ever matchup between strangers. When Oregon goes to Byron or Forreston goes to Le-Win in the playoffs, there is no such thing, as these teams have been playing each other forever.

One quirk of the playoff pairings was Benton and Chicago South Shore needing a coin flip to decide who would go 3A or 4A as both had identical enrollments and were right on the 3A/4A bubble. It’s extremely rare for this occurrence and Benton won the coin toss, putting them in 3A.

A side beneficiary of this was Rochelle as a No. 10 seed in 4A, a team that Soucie had forecasted as facing a very tough Metamora squad. With South Shore ending up in 4A, it became the No. 10 seed and will take on Metamora. Rochelle moved to No. 11 and will face Geneseo, a team it soundly trounced in the first game of the year.

With all the adversity this season, it was good to see the Hubs catch a break. If their defense plays the way it did against Geneseo earlier, they should win. Also, the second-round opponent is a better draw for them as No. 11.

Hard luck story of the playoffs was 4-5 Chicago Marist losing out to 4-5 Chicago Urban-Bronzeville for the 256th and final spot. Six criteria were needed before Bronzeville was declared the qualifier.

Feel-good story of the area is 5-4 Rockford Jefferson making the playoffs for the first time since 1993 when Joe Blume was coaching.

The next longest drought might be Rock Falls, which last qualified in 1992. In a battle between winless opponents, it was Rockford Lutheran edging the Rockets, 22-16.

North Boone got into the playoffs with a 5-4 record, but was whipped by Genoa-Kingston 56-36, which did not get in. G-K (4-4) lost three games by a touchdown or less.

Byron and Dixon ended up with a 828-115 advantage in points over the rest of the BNC.

• Andy Colbert is a longtime Ogle County resident with years of experience covering sports and more for multiple area publications.