The topsy-turvy churn otherwise known as 2020 in sports continues with both ends and starts.
High school football playoffs begin tonight. This year, they’re built in a different way. Much like postseasons in basketball and baseball, every team is in and the best teams get byes. Those teams in Class A, in order of pod number, are Grundy Center (who gave up 14 points the entire season), St. Ansgar (the team North Tama was going to play but didn’t), Edgewood-Colesburg, Iowa City Regina (of course), and Logan-Magnolia. Here are the Class A pairings (PDF).
North Tama (2-5, 2-2), will host Maquoketa Valley of Delhi (1-6, 1-3), in their first-ever meeting. The other side of the pod is North Cedar at Lisbon. The 16 pod winners will be seeded into new pods, and then the four semifinalists will be seeded. So IF I reverse engineer brackets, I’ll start at 16.
I found the team records via MaxPreps, because the IHSAA’s website is [expletive deleted]ING USELESS. I tried to search for district standings, which for 20-plus years had been on static pages, and should be able to be reached from here, but there’s only 404s as far as the eye can see.
As for the football beginnings, some minor college conferences begin playing over the next few weeks.