HS football Coaches React to Super 8 Proposal

Super 8, has become the talk of high school sports.

This past week, the MIAA officially approved bringing back the Super 8 for baseball and boys hockey, while adopting the format for girls hockey as well.

Now, football is looking at creating its own version for the first time.

During a virtual meeting Thursday, the MIAA’s Football Committee voted 13-4 in favor of installing a Div. 1A tournament as part of its proposed playoff revision, with a few caveats. While the other sports will now be using overall power ratings to select its schools from all divisional fields, football will limit Super 8 candidates to only Divisions 1 and 2.

The choice was made by the committee with a series of factors in mind, listing player injury concerns and scattered team numbers as rationale for the move. An outlier team with a high power rating from Divs. 3-8 would be excluded from consideration. In the proposal, the regular season would also be extended by one week, creating a nine-game schedule vs. the current eight.

“From the majority of what we’ve gotten from feedback, I think people are in favor of the changes,” Milton head coach Steve Dembowski, who is on the Massachusetts High School Football Coaches Association board, said during Thursday’s meeting. “They are kind of a little bit split on the Super 8. The majority of our association, about 90 percent, would like to see a large private school tournament that would be carved out.”

Had the proposed Super 8 football format been in place for 2025, St. John’s Prep, Springfield Central, Xaverian, Catholic Memorial, Bishop Feehan, Natick, Central Catholic and Wachusett would have been placed in the field. There would be no option for schools to opt out of the Div. 1A tournament if it ends up being passed by the MIAA’s Tournament Management Committee and its Board of Directors.

Decorated Catholic Memorial coach John DiBiaso, whose program has won four out of the last five Div. 2 state titles after making Div. 1 Super Bowl appearances in 2018 and 2019, is in favor of going to a Super 8 format.

“I have no issue with it at all if they’re going to have a Super 8,” DiBiaso said. “I am much more concerned with us getting nine games in the regular season. The playoffs? Wherever (the MIAA) puts us, we’ll play. If they put us there, we’ll play there. If they put us somewhere else, we’ll play. As I’ve said, in Everett, they juggled us around (divisionally) there, and there wasn’t a peep. We follow the rules of the MIAA, and we’ve always been good partners with them. If this is what they think is best, we’ll go along with it and support it.”

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