CVU Moves up to Division 1

Football realignment could bring bigger playoffs

By Alex Abrami for the Burlington Free Press

The Vermont Interscholastic Football League gave its approval of the next two-year alignment Thursday, highlighted by team and playoff expansions in Division I. Champlain Valley, Colchester, Mount Mansfield and Middlebury — all teams that played in Division II the last two seasons — will make the move to crowded Division I starting in 2011. With 14 teams slotted in D-I, the league also approved an eight-team playoff.

“It’s absolutely what I expected. No surprise there,” Champlain Valley coach Jim Provost said. “We knew we wouldn’t be in Division II very long.”

Colchester coach Tom Perry, a board member of the VIFL committee, said expanding the playoff system to eight teams will create more balance. “This is a big change in high school football,” said Perry whose team went undefeated and won the D-II title in 2009. “It will allow teams to be more competitive and that’s what everybody wants.”

Division II and Division III will have 10 teams each and retain the four-team playoff format. In essence, the same number of teams in each division will miss the playoffs, Perry said. “This is a major change in philosophy,” Perry said. “It was all about every division will send six teams home.”

In Division I, the teams will play an eight-game regular season followed by a VIFL-run quarterfinals among the eight playoff teams. The six teams that do not make the playoffs will play each other in the Week 9, the final week of the regular season.

The semifinals will be considered a Vermont Principals’ Association tournament, said South Burlington athletic director Mike O’Day, who is the VIFL’s scheduler and treasurer. “This is the first time we’ve had quarterfinals (in football),” O’Day said. “We’re not sure what we are going to call it, but we are going to give it some buzz. It’s good for high school football.”

Schools will have the opportunity to challenge their changes in division, and Thursday’s proposals still needs to go through the proper channels at the VPA, O’Day said, but no road blocks are likely. The VPA is expected its stamp of approval in early 2011.

Also approved Thursday: Bellows Falls and Springfield moved from Division III to Division II; teams may only play one nonleague game, reserved for rivalry battles like St. Johnsbury-Lyndon or Burlington-Rice; Overall Quality Point Rating (QPR) will decide the playoff spots. In the past, a league QPR was used.