Due to an extra week being added to the GHSA football regular season in order to allow teams affected by Hurricane Helene to complete their schedules, the start of the playoffs is still three weeks away in Georgia.
Area teams, however, will use that extra week to prepare for a new-look postseason that will, for the first time, feature a public/private split for Classes A (Division I), AA and AAA. Private schools in those classifications will compete against each other in a single playoff bracket.
Class A Division II, the state’s smallest, and Classes AAAA, AAAAA and AAAAAA will not split for the playoffs.
Until the playoffs start, however, there is much to be decided as area teams work to either guarantee a playoff berth, secure a home playoff game or try to improve their resumé to garner one of the at-large berths created by the exodus of private school teams.
The GHSA, through its “Post Season Ranking Formula” that multiplies a team’s win-loss percentage with its opponents’ win-loss percentage and it’s opponents’ opponents’ win-loss percentage, will seed teams one through 32 and place them in the three corresponding brackets in A (D-I), AA and AAA.