Fryer breaks down Week 10, playoff implications

The football season starts in the weight room, during the off season, months before the first games are played.

Edison’s 2008 season perhaps ended in its weight room late Friday night.

Because of a five-way tie in the Sunset League among Edison, Esperanza, Fountain Valley, Los Alamitos and Newport Harbor, representatives of those five teams met in the Edison weight room where the names of those teams were in slips of paper that had been placed in a bowl.

A sportswriter was asked to pull three slips out of the bowl. Those three would get the Sunset League’s three guaranteed berths for the CIF-Southern Section Pac-5 Division playoffs. This sportswriter was there, too, just to observe the proceedings in the weight room, outside of which Edison coaches and players waited to learn their fate.

The two sportswriters were shown the door, while the athletic directors examined which three slips were pulled out of the bowl.

The three names pulled: Esperanza, Fountain Valley and Los Alamitos. As head-to-head results could not separate those three, a three-way coin flip took place. Esperanza coin landed as heads, and it was tails for Fountain Valley and Los Alamitos.

With Esperanza as odd man out, that made Esperanza No. 1. Fountain Valley is No. 2 because it beat Los Alamitos, which is No. 3.

Edison is eligible for the Pac-5 Division’s one at-large berth. Edison’s top competition for the berth are, like Edison, 7-3 teams: Bishop Amat of La Puente, of the Serra League, and St. John Bosco of Bellflower, of the Trinity League. The South Coast League’s Dana Hills is eligible, but its 5-5 overall record likely takes the Dolphins out of the running.

The top criteria for selecting an at-large team is head-to-head, but those teams did not play each other. 

Other factors: strength of schedule, i.e. overall record of opponents (Bishop Amat’s opponents compiled a 57-37 record; Edison’s opponents went 56-40; Bosco’s went 47-49); strength of league (each of the four Serra League teams was in the state top 25 at one point or another); strength of common opponents (Bishop Amat beat Orange Lutheran, which beat St. John  Bosco; but St. John Bosco beat Loyola, which beat Amat).

So it looks like Bishop Amat is getting that at-large berth.

Edison could have avoided all this by beating Esperanza on Friday. But Esperanza beat Edison, 16-3, in a game that surprisingly was played without much sense of urgency, it seemed, from either team. An Edison victory would have given the Chargers the league’s No. 1 position.

One team ranked in this past week’s Orange County top 10 is definitely out of the playoff picture, No. 10 Newport Harbor, which had beaten Los Alamitos on Thursday for its third consecutive league victory. The Sailors beat Esperanza two weeks ago, and Marina last week.

And No. 4 Edison might be the second county top 10 team that won’t be in the playoffs.

Anaheim could be the only county team that will get an at-large berth in any division. To be eligible for at-large consideration, a team must be .500 or better overall. Anaheim is the only non-automatic qualifier at .500, with a 5-5 record, so the Colonists will get the Southwest Division’s one at-large berth.

(What if no non-automatic qualifier was .500 or better? Then the playoff selection committee would have started looking at 4-6 teams).

There is some unfinished Pac-5 business, going into this morning: sorting out the three-way tie at the top of the Trinity League among Mater Dei, Orange Lutheran and Servite, just like last year. And like last year, head-to-head competition does not sort out anything so a coin flip will have to put the teams in order.

That coin flip is at 8 a.m., at Servite, and we'll have the news on the ocvarsity.com blog as soon as we get it.

Lutheran climbed into the three-way tie by beating Mater Dei, 24-21, Thursday. Parker Flynn kicked the winning field goal with two seconds left. But it was two passes, really, that made the difference.

And those passes were not thrown by 2007 national player of the year Matt Barkley, Mater Dei’s USC-bound quarterback, or by Lutheran quarterback Bobby Wheatley.

A junior receiver, Brandon Turner, threw those passes.

Lutheran had the ball, fourth-and-4 at its 39, in the third quarter. The Lancers lined up to punt, but Mater Dei coach Bruce Rollinson sensed something was up and was yelling and jumping up and down, trying to make sure Lutheran players lined up wide were covered. Rollinson was right, but the Monarchs did not get everyone covered; Turner threw right to Davonte Anderson for a 15-yard gain and a first down at Mater Dei’s 46.

With Mater Dei trying to get reorganized after that, Lutheran dipped into the trick bag again, and immediately. Wheatley threw a backward pass to his left to Turner, who launched a perfect pass to running back Exavier Edwards streaking down the right side for a touchdown.

That tied it, 14-14.

Lutheran took its first lead early in the fourth on a touchdown run by Garrett Gilliland, Mater Dei tied it, 21-21, on Jaron Hytche's second touchdown run of the game (and 22nd of the season) before Flynn’s clutch kick ended it.

That was a great finish, and it happened on the football field. It might have been a different kind of finish for Edison, and it did not happen on the football field.

Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com