Yodice: Here's how the 6A football playoff bracket might shake out

Welcome to a helter skelter version of my weekly prep football column.

We have — so quickly, right? — reached the final week of the regular season for the 11-Man schools.

Classes 2A-6A will close things out Thursday, Friday or Saturday, and then we’ll have state playoff brackets to pour over and digest come late Saturday night.

As a quick side note, this Week 11 schedule, in an extreme oddity, will feature exactly ZERO games in Albuquerque on Friday night. The lights will be dark all across the city. Bernalillo is the only team close to the city that’s hosting a game Friday. So if you want to make dinner or movie plans, this would be the right week for a Friday date night.

From the metro area, nearly everyone is either playing Thursday night or during the day Saturday. An extraordinarily bizarre thing, to have no games of note on the last Friday night of the regular season.

Now that we’re 10 weeks in, time to put together my first 6A playoff projection.

Naturally, this will be complicated, insomuch as we still have a few key swing games on the schedule — Rio Rancho-Cleveland, Las Cruces-Centennial, Hobbs-Carlsbad, Sandia-Los Lunas most notably among them — that could shake things up.

But as I sit at my keyboard on this Saturday, this is where my projection takes me:

When the 12 teams appear in the NMAA’s 6A bracket, we’re going to have five teams from District 1, five from District 3, and just two from District 2.

These are the dozen I have making it: Cleveland, Rio Rancho, Volcano Vista, Piedra Vista, Cibola, La Cueva, Los Lunas, Las Cruces, Hobbs, Centennial, Carlsbad and Alamogordo.

Let’s do some diving.

We’ll start in the middle district, 2-6A, where La Cueva and Los Lunas are locks. Does anyone else in this league deserve a bid? No, not yet. Not as of today. Not Eldorado. Not Sandia. Not Albuquerque High.

The Matadors will play themselves into the field if they upset Los Lunas at Wilson Stadium next Saturday. Then 2-6A will get a third team, since Sandia would overtake Los Lunas for second place in the league standings.

And that means someone else whom I believe will get in, will not get in.

If Sandia wins in Week 11, the three teams on the 6A bubble for the final spot, that bubble, as we visit today, would almost certainly be Cibola, Alamogordo and Eldorado. (But not Sandia.)

Cross Eldorado off. The Eagles lost to Cibola, and the Cougars have advantages in both polls, which are two of the criteria for choosing teams.

You’re then down to Cibola and Alamogordo. I think both will finish 5-5. And both seem certain to finish fifth in their respective districts. Cibola has the edge in both polls, so the Cougars would be the final team on my list.

If Los Lunas beats Sandia, then I have Alamogordo getting its playoff ticket punched.

Piedra Vista has played its way in with a three-touchdown victory over Cibola on Friday. The Panthers have head-to-head wins against the Cougars, Sandia and Alamogordo, and that gets PV into the playoffs.

Some other things to watch in Week 11:

Los Lunas faces a must-win over Sandia if the Tigers want to be at home on the first weekend of the playoffs.

Hobbs is going to need a win to secure what should be a top-four seed.

The anarchy involved if both Rio Rancho and Centennial win next week is far too extensive to puzzle out here if we’re talking teams that should be seeded 1-4. Especially in Centennial’s case, so much would depend on the final score, because that district could end up with a three-way tie for first.

Having said all of this, here’s how I would rank these teams at the moment:

1. Las Cruces

2. Cleveland

3. Hobbs

4. La Cueva

5. Centennial

6. Rio Rancho

7. Volcano Vista

8. Los Lunas

9. Carlsbad

10. Piedra Vista

11. Cibola

12. Alamogordo

The Nos. 4 and 5 seeds intrigue me greatly; Centennial, to be fair, has an edge on La Cueva in both polls. Could Centennial, conceivably a third-place team in its district if it loses Friday to the Bulldawgs, gain a higher seed than the Bears, a district champion? Certainly it is possible.

These are my first-rounders: Alamogordo at Centennial (winner to play La Cueva), Cibola at Rio Rancho (winner to play Hobbs), Piedra Vista at Volcano Vista (winner to play Cleveland), Carlsbad at Los Lunas (winner to play Las Cruces).

My two cents, anyway. Another two cents coming next week.

TEAM OF THE WEEK: This absolutely must go to the Raton Tigers.

There was not much, in looking at the Raton schedule, to suggest that the Tigers would post the biggest upset in Class 2A football all year in Week 10.

But the Tigers, a 4-4 team, beat No. 1-ranked, and undefeated, Santa Rosa by a 15-14 final in Raton.

Incidentally, whatever joker went onto MaxPreps.com on Friday night and typed in the final score for this game as Santa Rosa 99, Raton 0, I hope you’re feeling appropriately stupid today.

With Santa Rosa losing, that leaves Las Cruces, Los Alamos and St. Michael’s as the only three unbeatens in the 11-Man ranks.