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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, 185 teams finish with a conference record of better than .500, all at 4-3 in conference. In addition, we project Unity to finish 3-3 in league play, as there are an odd number of teams in the state this year, with the Lakeland Conference the one league with seven teams and no paired league. In addition, as an Independent, Milwaukee Academy of Science will finish at least .500 overall and will get in before any of the teams that finish below .500 in league play.

That leaves 37 spots available for teams that finish under .500 in conference, with 42 teams finishing 3-4 in league play in our projections and eligible for those 37 spots. In the past, this is where we would bore you with all kinds of explanations of the WIAA tiebreakers, but in the interest of brevity, we will just list which tiebreaker step the teams got in below in the playoff qualifier list. To shorten things up, the better wins you have, and later on in the tiebreaker list the better wins your opponents have, the better chance you have in the tiebreaker criteria.

"Step" explanations:

• 1b - Teams with a winning record (above .500) in conference games only.
• 2.1 - Teams with the best W-L percentage of conference games will be added to the field.
• 2.2 - Teams will be ranked in order of the combined won-lost percentage (conference games only) of conference opponents they have defeated. Teams whose conference opponents had the best winning percentages will be added to the playoff field. 
• 2.3c - W-L percentage vs. playoff field as determined by steps 1, a-d.
• 2.3d - Defeated opponents (conference wins only) overall W-L percentage.
• 2.3e - Defeated opponents (all wins) overall W/L %

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.

NOTE: Milwaukee South and Kingdom Prep Lutheran have opted out of the playoffs. Southwestern/East Dubuque (IL) is ineligible.

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.