By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
All 6A teams will be in the football playoffs this season. A new ruling of an appeal to the Arkansas Activities Association was granted Thursday with several changes to the class 6A points system used to determine playoff seeds. The biggest change is that all 16 6A teams will be in the playoffs this year. In basketball, all 16 teams have been going to the playoffs since last year.
When the AAA released its new conference alignments for the next two-year cycle, which begins in the 2012-13 school year, there were a few things many schools in the state did not like, and several appeals were filed. Two of those appeals directly relate to two schools in the area.
Jacksonville and Beebe are directly involved in different appeals to the AAA. The appeal involving Jacksonville was settled Thursday afternoon, Beebe waits until October to find out which conference it will be in for the next two years.
The new 6A points system also gives greater rewards to 6A schools playing conference games against 7A schools, and takes strength of schedule into account.
When the current realignment was announced, it had several 6A schools playing in mostly 7A conferences and vice versa.
It tried to take into account that fact when determining how points would be gained over the course of the season. Instead of the traditional points system, where a team gained points based on margin of victory, up to 13 points, a new system was put into place in which a 6A team got 10 points for a victory, plus one point for a 7A conference opponent. So if the 6A team lost to a 7A team in a game that counts as a conference game, and thereby has playoff implications, it still got one point. If the 6A team won the game, it got its 10 points, plus the one, for 11 points.
The only change, that is effective immediately, is that 6A teams now get two points for playing a 7A school.
How this could impact the 6A playoffs involves Russellville and Van Buren. Those two teams are part of the 6A East playoff race. They play five conference games each against the 7A Central. That’s an automatic 10 points, which equals one win for the 6A East teams that only play 7A West Memphis and Little Rock Hall.
Basically it means this. The five 6A teams that are playing for a 6A East playoff spot in the 6A East will start the season with four points, while the two 6A teams playing in the 7A Central will start the season with 10 points.
There is also a one-point bonus given to teams for every win by opponents they beat. For example, if Jacksonville were to beat an undefeated West Memphis team in week nine, (game six of conference play) that win would be worth 17 points, 10 for the win, two for playing a 7A team, and five more for the five wins West Memphis had before the game.
