the playoffs. A team from their conference that they beat did make the playoffs. The reason was that the state only used formulas and not W/L records or even head-to-head. In fact you could have an entire conference not get a playoff representative...

In the specific scenario above the team that did not make the playoffs and was a perfect 10-0 won the game over the 9-1 team by picking up a fumble and returning it for the only TD in the game to win 7-0.

The formulas were so in favor of offensive statistics that this defensive juggernaut was left out of the playoffs...