One-third of the teams in this year’s LHSAA softball playoff brackets released Wednesday enter the postseason with losing records.
Is that not insane to everyone else?
Louisiana doesn’t have the number of teams overall and number of teams winning at a high enough level to slice itself into 10 brackets in baseball, softball and basketball or eight in football without diluting the competition. Never has.
Every one of this year’s 10 softball brackets — four non-select divisions, four select divisions and two classes of non-football schools (exhausting just typing that breakdown all out) — includes at least four teams that lost more games this regular season than they won.
That’s not to say that no team with a losing record can be respectable at its respective enrollment level.
In particular, there are some solid teams — even a rare contender or two — in Class B and C who load up their schedules with quality competition from larger-school opponents.
But the volume of playoff teams with losing records is staggering and wide-spread. The bottom of every division and classification field is loaded with them.
Each bracket includes between 20 (Classes B and C) and 26 (Non-Select Divisions) total teams in the field.
Three of those 10 tournaments include at least 11 participants with losing records — more than half of one bracket and nearly half of two others — while another four include at least seven.
Even a combined seven teams who fell shy of the threshold of 15 games played reached the postseason, including one that only played four — four (4)! — total contests.
Twenty-eight teams with losing records will host playoff games. This includes not only seven Class B or C programs with first-round byes, but at least one team with a losing record in nine of the 10 brackets that will host.
Between the combined 50 Select and Non-Select playoff teams in Division-II, nearly half — 23 teams (46%) — lost more games than they won.
That example doesn’t mean to pick on Division II. It’s to illustrate with the level of schools with the second-largest enrollment numbers that the issue can’t be explained by small schools playing challenging schedules against higher-classification competition.
And there’s no need to name specific examples. This isn’t a knock on an individual program. This is a systemic problem beyond a given team or even a given sport.
Softball is just the freshest and maybe starkest illustration of the LHSAA’s bloated postseason formats with too many brackets and too many teams throughout both boys’ and girls’ sports.
Fifty-five of 216 baseball teams (25.5%) in the brackets released Tuesday take losing records into the postseason.
Like softball, there are some examples of highly ranked Class C teams in that equation, but also a consistency of at least one losing record in all 10 brackets and at least four losing records in seven of the 10 brackets.
And we’re not simply talking about some 14-16 or 8-11 type marks. There are many instances in which playoff teams have won 25% or fewer of their outings — even at least one with a winning percentage of less than 15%.
Compiling and categorizing that extensive of data from basketball and football at this point would be a bit more tedious, as the LHSAA for some reason swiftly pulls down its power ratings reports at seasons’ end (baseball and softball are both already gone, but we saved them ahead).
But, anecdotally, a quick glance through playoff brackets will show you losing records across the board.
The level of competition in most early-playoff rounds in most sports is atrocious as a result.
Eighty first-round games in the 2025 softball playoffs netted 53 run-rule finishes (66.3%) compared to 12 upsets (15%).
Seven of the upsets were 17-over-16 or 18-over-15 in the seeding lines.
Twenty-seven of the run-rules were margins of 15- and even 20-plus runs.
Teams were driving in some cases more than five hours each way to get torched off the diamond in less than three innings.
The quarterfinals featured only five teams outside of top-10 seeds (four No. 11 seeds and a No. 12) and nearly three times as many abbreviated, run-rule finishes (13).
Baseball brackets begin with a mixture of best-of-three series (Divisions I, II and III) and single-game eliminations (Division IV, Classes B and C). Across all levels, more than 100 teams (nearly half the entire field) receive first-round byes.
Thirty-six series featured 31 sweeps and one forfeit to just four three-game series in 2025. Only four teams outside the top-10 seeds reached the quarters, with three coming in Division-I Non-Select bracket that featured rare chaos.
Twenty single-elimination games featured four run-rule finishes and two upsets, and the following round saw seven run-rule finishes and four upsets in 32 games.
Eighty-seven first-round boys’ basketball games this spring — an odd number because of a forfeit — included three times as many margins of 15-plus points as upsets (48 lopsided finals to 16 upsets). Six of the upsets were 17-over-16 or 18-over-15 seeds.
Eighty-eight first-round girls’ basketball games included 51 margins of 15-plus points compared to 14 single-digit games and 18 upsets (more than half of which were six 17-over-16 and four 18-over 15 upsets).
No need to deep dive into all the details in all the sports. The story is the same.
But football, the bell-cow of sports in the state, saw more than half of its first-round playoff games this fall (47 of 80) and nearly one-third of its second-round games (21 of 64) decided by 30 points or more.
Even six of the 16 semifinals around the state in December were notably one-sided.
The abundances of both teams with losing records and lopsided outcomes doesn’t seem to fit the intention of playoff competition.
But the dynamic only feeds into an all-around watered-down, everyone-gets-a-trophy mentality.
Some volleyball coaches have expressed interest in splitting their sport to match baseball, basketball, football and softball.
This fall, 72 of the state’s 80 first-round volleyball matches were sweeps, while only two went a full five sets and only three total upsets occurred. Of 40 second-round matches, 31 were sweeps, compared to just five five-set battles and five slight upsets.
I’ve recently heard at length from a coach frustrated two players from a losing-record, third-place in district, one-and-done lower-seeded playoff team weren’t at least honorable mentions on an LSWA all-state team.
A parent recently snapped at another veteran reporter on social media for having not interviewed a team that surrendered an eye-popping 54 runs in its 17th of 19 losses in a 23-game season.
Increasingly, I hear parents make the case that a given — or any given — student-athlete “deserves” the same media coverage — or even college opportunities — they see a top football prospect or member of a winning opponent receive, because their kid works hard too.
That’s not to say student-athletes shouldn’t receive a fair shake from reporters covering their sports. Not only should they, but they largely do receive that from an increasingly stretched-thin press core of individuals doing what they can despite often being taken for granted in their own right.
But there’s a clear misunderstanding of what constitutes a “fair shake” or what is “deserved.”
Mere effort doesn’t guarantee victory or media coverage or college opportunities. But playoff berths — or even postseason home games or byes — being awarded almost simply for showing up seems to have contributed to confusing some people of that notion.
All you can control is what you can control, and then the results fall into place as they may. More likely if you’re working hard, but not guaranteed.
None of these things should be taken for granted as foregone conclusions, and 71.4% of all schools in the state should automatically make the postseason in some cases for barely winning or even barely playing any games.
The LHSAA badly needs to rein its bloated playoffs system back in — if not reunite them entirely.