If you're a high school football coach anywhere, chances are excellent you've got at least a few complaints about the structure of your state's playoff.
Heck, postseason criticism isn't limited to high school coaches, after precisely one year of the 12-team playoff there's considerable conversations happening around changing at least how the seeds are determined.
Seeding is where our piece today is going to focus, thanks to a story out involving boys basketball out of Nebraska.
Hastings St. Cecilia's boys basketball team finished their first season of D1 play this winter, and struggled through their 21-game season.
The bad news? Hastings St. Cecilia finished the regular season with a 1-20 record.
The good news? If you're a Hastings St. Cecilia fan, that record was good enough to be the top seed in their subdistrict.
Yup. that's right. A picture of the bracket headlines this article.
How does that happen?
Well, Ryan Valenta points out in a X post that has since gone viral that the Bluehawks played just one team their own size all season long, and their opponent's win percentage is the highest of all teams in Nebraska's Class D1.
The other teams in the subdistrict are #4 Palmer (4-13 record), #3 Nebraska Christian (5-15), and #2 Blue Hill (9-13).
Somehow, Blue Hill won EIGHT more games than Hastings St. Cecilia, but didn't get the top seed.
Subdistricts are Nebraska's first round of the playoffs, so everyone gets in with 10-12 subdistricts in each class, which helps the dismal records making the postseason make some type of sense for those wondering.
Recent headlines in Wisconsin have conveyed that high school coaches went to work on a playoff system that has gotten an impressive 90% approval ratings from coaches around the state, but outside of that every state playoff system has its drawbacks.
...but whatever you're dealing with, it can't compare to what's going on in Nebraska's boys basketball subdistrict pairings, and yet there's almost certainly some committee somewhere proud of their algorithm that got them here.