Proposed football alignments released, to be voted on next week

AURORA — A total of 17 football alignment options across all seven classifications were submitted to the CHSAA office in the permitted time frame. Monday, those proposals were posted.

Find them here:

• Class 5A
• Class 4A
• Class 3A
• Class 2A
• Class 1A
• Class A-8 (8-man)
• Class A-6 (6-man)

Each of these proposals will be voted on at the football committee meeting on Dec. 5. That committee will then forward their selections to the legislative council at its Jan. 30 meeting.

These alignment proposals are for the 2014-16 two-year cycle.

Among the highlights of the proposals is an outside-the-box idea from the Centennial League, which would completely restructure the 5A alignment. Under the proposal, the 5A alignment would be set by a so-called “waterfall” system.

The waterfall system tries to balance leagues based upon past performance. In the Centennial proposal, which would split the 49 5A teams evenly into seven leagues, the system places teams into leagues based on how they performed in the Wild Card points over the past two seasons.

The top seven teams by that criteria would each be placed into separate leagues. Then, teams would be placed into conferences on a snaked order. So, the No. 8 team would go with No. 7, No. 9 with No. 6, No. 10 with No. 5, and so on.

A waterfall system is used in other sports already, notably tennis, golf and wrestling. Those sports use it for regional placement. If the Centennial’s proposal is selected, it would be the first use of a waterfall system to set an alignment in Colorado.

Elsewhere:

• Each of the other 5A proposals have Valor Christian in the Centennial League.
• The Southwestern League is proposing moving its 5A and 4A teams to metro-area leagues.