When the IHSA announced the changes to the multiplier process it was clear that those maneuvers were going to alter the landscape on where teams could land in the postseason.

Prior to the adjustments, the state had around 20 teams on a yearly basis that had a 1.65 multiplier placed upon their enrollments.

It also had sort of a revolving door that had developed with some programs that received the multiplier waiver dropped down a few classes and had large levels of success including state championships before moving back up to their previous classes when they were multiplied again.

It was a bit of a ping pong effect.

And the new multiplier process required that schools request the waiver rather than have it simply applied to the school.

Apparently it wasn’t that easy to convince that waivers were warranted because very few teams actually got them. The list of playoff-eligible programs that had their enrollment multiplied ballooned to 64 teams.

It also took longer for the IHSA to settle on what each school’s actual enrollment was this year. Just last week, alterations large and small were made to the school enrollments, some by just a few students and some by as much as 100 students.

And when the classification lines are often split by just a handful of students, every addition or subtraction has meaning to the landscape of the field.

Those two things led to a very defined resolution when the first projection of the season was processed.

Wait a minute? Is that what class that team is in now?

The answer is probably.

It was strange to find Richmond-Burton land in the 3A field (and rather comfortably too) and multipliers pushing Hope Academy into the same class.

In Class 4A, where there is usually a logjam of Chicago Public Schools taking up many of the projection slots, the multiplier rules pushed many CPL schools up and left just four in the Week 1 projection. On top of that, teams like Highland, Morris, Rochelle, Metamora and Montini all look like they are largely trending toward 4A.

5A is where the combination of multiplier additions really starts to show itself. There are multiple teams you are accustomed to seeing in 6A trending heavily toward 5A such as Lemont, Cary-Grove, Lake Forest, Kankakee, Dunlap and Washington.

Probably the most surprising find in that group is that the first projection indicates that Glenwood is resting directly on the bubble between 5A and 6A.

6A also saw the push downward, but not as much, considering five teams (Antioch, East St. Louis, Glenbard South, Joliet Catholic and Nazareth) are already locked into that field because of electively “playing up” or being subjected to the success formula.

Still it led to many teams that are usually considered 7A teams potentially sliding into 6A.

There are just four teams that are projected into the field with 4-5 records. Odds are that number will probably increase over the course of the year as the first projection suggests the cleanest possible outcome over the course of the remaining eight weeks.

That basically means that each conference is predicting a clean order at both the top and the bottom and while that happens sometimes, sometimes it doesn’t.

This often comes into play when you have three teams in the middle of a conference that are about the same. Right now the projection will likely have the aggregate of those three teams having one going 2-0 against the other two, one 1-1 and one 0-2. But if they all go 1-1 against one another (which tends to happen more often than you think), that could be the difference between having a qualifying team or none at all.

All of these things being considered its best not to assume anything in regards to what class a program might end up in late October because the options seem endless at this point.

Here is the Week 1 playoff projection for all eight classes:

Class 1A

Class 2A

Class 3A

Class 4A

Class 5A

Class 6A

Class 7A

Class 8A