Wisconsin High School Sports | Wisconsin Sports Network | WisSports.net

The 2021 high school football season is just a few weeks away, but it's never too early to start thinking about the playoffs. Enrollment numbers determine divisional placement in the WIAA postseason, but unlike any other sport, football does not have pre-determined divisions at the start of the year. Instead, 224 teams qualify for the playoffs in various ways, and those qualifiers are then broken into 7 divisions of 32 teams each.

The WIAA has released the enrollment figures that will be used in determining this year's playoff divisional placements. These numbers include charter schools as well as co-op figures. Based on those figures and the divisional cutlines from past seasons, we've advanced a very unofficial and very early list of divisional placement for all the teams in the state.

To determine the PROJECTED divisional cutlines, we took the average of each division's cutline from 2016 to 2019. We did not use the cutlines for the 2020 fall season, as about 30% of teams did not play in that season and the WIAA's adjusted two-week culminating event used a six division model. We tweaked the 2016-2019 data to account for cutlines increasing over the last several seasons. We weighted the most recent season more heavily in determining the average.

Other items that could impact the final division cutlines include several more teams making the move from 11-player to 8-player football, which could push the D6/7 cutline up higher. Also, there is uncertainty around several schools ability to offer a football team this fall, including in the Milwaukee City Conference, which did not sponsor football teams in the 2020 fall or 2021 spring seasons and have a number of teams facing significant numbers issues.

Remember, these are just projections and official cutlines and divisional placements will NOT be determined until the final game of the regular season is completed.

We also have provided a list of the divisional cutlines going back to 2008 to show where those lines have been in the past and how they've changed in recent years.

We've also added enrollment figures for 8-player football, with a column to show is a team is playoff-eligible. To be eligible for the 8-player playoffs, a team must have a three-year enrollment average of less than 200.

Travis Wilson serves as the WisSports.net General Manager, Football Editor, and contributing writer for other parts of the site. Wilson was selected as part of the Sports 40 Under 40 list by Coach & AD Magazine and the National High School Athletic Coaches Association for 2019. The Wisconsin Football Coaches Association (WFCA) named Travis the 2015 recipient of the Dave McClain Distinguished Service Award. He currently serves on the WFCA Executive Board and is a member of the Executive Board of the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association. A graduate of Richland Center High School and Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Travis was a three-sport athlete in high school (football, baseball, basketball), inducted to the Richland Center High School Hall of Fame in 2023, and currently resides in Reedsburg. You can follow him on Twitter at @travisWSN.

For the latest and most up to date football news and recruiting information, follow Travis on Twitter @travisWSN. Email story ideas, recruiting info, etc. to Travis at travis(at)wissports.net.