MIAA Football Playoffs 2017: This Isn't Your Father's Tournament

It was so much simpler in 1972. It was the first year of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association's high school Super Bowls and there were no tournament seeds, no scheduling committees, and most important, just two divisions.

Brockton and Swampscott won the first Super Bowls in Eastern Massachusetts. Fitchburg and East Longmeadow won the Central-Western Mass games. It wouldn't be until 2013 when a new system was voted in that Massachusetts schools on both sides of Route 495 would meet in a real state championship, played at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro.

Friday marks the opening of the 2017 MIAA football playoffs, complete with 108 teams in Eastern Massachusetts spread across eight divisions and two regions, North and South. It's not a perfect system. This year's field has 30 teams with losing records including eight that went 2-5. If past history holds true, those teams will lose this weekend and it won't be pretty -- 53-8, 56-7, 42-0, 42-7, 59-24, 47-14, 33-0 are just a few of the scores from last year when a top seed played a No. 8 seed.

A message to Dracut, Taunton, Acton-Boxboro, Barnstable, Reading, Walpole, Pembroke, Hanover, Winchester, Bedford, Salem, Manchester Essex, East Bridgewater, Marian, Diman, and Hull. Sorry, you're going to lose this weekend. But fans of the current system point to the fact just 34 teams made the playoffs in 2012, the final year of the previous system. At least those No. 8 seeds have the opportunity to pull off an upset.

Following the tournament can be complicated, especially if your school loses. Unlike the rest of the fall sports like soccer, field hockey, and volleyball, a tournament loss doesn't mean your season is over. Losing teams this weekend join a pool of teams that didn't make the playoffs and every Sunday between now and Thanksgiving a scheduling committee will play matchmaker and produce the next week's schedule. To some it's a chance to play teams you normally wouldn't face. To others it has ruined longtime rivalries and replaced them with games that have little fan interest.

We said it was a statewide tournament earlier but there was no mention of Central or Western Mass. That's because in 2015 CMass decided to join WMass and delay the start of their tournaments one week, thus extending their regular season. Those pairings will come out Sunday, Oct. 29. Overall, the results for teams outside 495 haven't been good. In the past four years they've gone 4-12 with all the wins coming from CMass schools.

Before you get comfortable with the system, remember too that CMass just competes in Divisions 3-8 while Western Mass competes in Division 3, 5, 7, and 8. Also, with eight divisions the last two years, four teams have been forced to play their Super Bowl games elsewhere. This year's rotation has Division 2 and 7 playing away from Gillette, which in 2016 meant Manning Field in Lynn and Worcester State.

And one last thing that you'll find in this year's rules that wasn't there in 1972. Leave your drone at home. They're prohibited at MIAA tournament games. You've been warned.