In a move several Marmonte League football coaches called “long overdue,” the CIF Southern Section decided in May to give the league an additional automatic berth into the Division IV playoffs.

Now the top four finishers in the eight-team league will receive an invite into the postseason, whereas in years past only the top three were assured a spot, leaving the fourthplace squad to hope for a Div. IV wild card berth that didn’t always come the league’s way.

According to Simi Valley High School athletic director Matt La Belle, who brought the case before CIF and its voters (representatives from individual leagues), the decision clearly made sense when one took the time to look at the statistics.

“When a five-team league is getting three teams into the playoffs, and sometimes even four, that means between 60 and 80 percent make it,” La Belle said. “Then you look at Marmonte and sometimes we were only getting three teams in—that’s just 37 percent. When you look at this issue strictly on the numbers, it was hard to argue with the fact that the system wasn’t working out fairly.”

The apparent inequity came to light at the end of the past several seasons when a tie for third place in the division’s five-team leagues often resulted in the wild card going to a team with a losing record, while the fourth-place finisher in Marmonte with a winning or .500 record was left out in the cold.

Newbury Park head coach George Hurley said the CIF’s decision is in the best interest of everyone, “whether other leagues feel like it or not.”

“The point is to get the best teams and the best players into the playoffs, and sometimes, that wasn’t happening,” Hurley said. “We just felt that the fourth-place team in an eight-team league was going to be better than the fourth place team in a five-team league.”