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It is that time of the year again, where I feel like an accountant on April 15th trying to crunch numbers and figure out the good and bad news for people. 

I have predicted every game for the last two weeks of the high school football season, thereby determining final conference records for all teams. With these predictions, I can put together a PROJECTED playoff field. To see full WIAA Playoff Regulations, please visit here.

Please note the emphasis on PROJECTED, as things can and will change between now and the end of the final game next Friday night. Even one or two games going differently amongst the nearly 400 I projected could throw things off. This is meant to give an idea of where teams may fall in divisional placement as we head to the busy final two weeks.

Based on my projections, 207 teams finish with a conference record of .500 or better. Two more teams, Hurley and Northland Pines, qualify as Indpendents by going at least .500 overall.

That leaves 15 spots available for teams that finish under .500 in conference. The first tiebreaker, something adjusted a few years ago, is conference winning percentage. This gives an advantage in the tiebreaker to teams from 10-school conferences that play 9 league games. A 4-5 league record (0.444 conference winning percentage) is better than a 3-4 league record (0.429 conference winning percentage).

There are five teams that I project to finish 4-5 in conference play: Big Foot, De Pere, Grafton, Madison La Follette, and Whitefish Bay.

That brings our total to 214 teams, leaving ten more spots available for teams that finish 3-4 in conference. There are 12 such teams that finish 3-4 in conference in my projections: Baraboo, Catholic Central, Greenwood, Hayward, Highland, Kenosha Bradford, La Crosse Logan, Milton, Randolph, Ripon, Shiocton, Union Grove.

To figure out which ten of those 12 get into the postseason, we follow WIAA criteria.

First is the combined winning percentage of defeated conference opponents, conference games only. Basically, it rewards teams that have beaten some of the better teams in their league. 

Most of the 12 teams had wins over a conference opponent who finished 2-5, one over a conference opponent who finished 1-6, and one who finished 0-7. However, La Crosse Logan had wins over teams that had a total of four wins in conference play, and thus becomes team 215 to make it in.

That leaves nine spots remaining, with 11 teams still in contention.

Head-to-head result (since every team doesn't play every other) and result versus conference champion do not apply to any of those teams.

The next criteria is win/loss percentage against the playoff field as determined initially (steps 1, a-d). Highland had two non-conference wins over playoff teams (Ithaca, Brookwood), while Kenosha Bradford beat Badger (who I project to get in) and Shiocton topped Rosholt (who I project to get in). Those three teams up the playoff number to 218, leaving six more spots amongst eight contenders.

We now move down to step 3(d), which is "Defeated opponents (conference wins only) overall win/loss percentage". Ripon gets in in large part to a win over Kewaskum, who will go 4-5 overall but miss the playoffs, while Hayward also qualifies on this step, giving us 220 teams.

This is where it gets a little interesting. You'll notice the criteria is opponent's overall win/loss percentage. Randolph beat Wayland Academy, who scheduled just seven games this year, and Greenwood beat Thorp, who had a Week 2 game canceled. As a result, even though the teams they beat didn't have more wins than others still in the running, they had fewer overall games and thus a better win/loss percentage, so Randolph and Greenwood get in as teams 221 and 222.

The next criteria is defeated opponents (all games) overall win/loss percentage. Similar to the above situation, Union Grove and Catholic Central we project have wins over teams that have the same number of overall wins, but Catholic Central's had a non-conference win over University School, who played just eight games this season, so their defeated opponents' overall win/loss percentage is .250 while Union Grove's number is .2414. Milton (.200) and Baraboo (.1739) trail in that department, so Catholic Central and Union Grove become the final qualifiers. Milton and Baraboo get left out of the playoffs as projected 3-4 conference teams based on a number of tiebreakers.

Now that we know the 224 teams PROJECTED to be in the playoffs, we can break them into divisions. The full PROJECTED divisional placements are below.

* Please note that according to our projections, there is a tie on the D6/7 cutline (and several more potential ties if anything changes slightly) between Reedsville and Potosi/Cassville at 192 enrollment. The tiebreaker in this instance is the actual Third Friday of September enrollment count for 2018. At this time we do not know the tiebreaker number for the teams but will be reaching out to them to find out for sure.

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.