Just for fun: West Michigan repeats as cumulative football champs

Well, it wasn’t quite 2008, in which West Michigan took home seven out of eight possible state football championships.  But West Michigan still defended their football cumulative championship, even though the spread was much narrower this year.

By my count (hat tip to the awesome Snooze), schools located in the traditionally accepted definition of “West Michigan” took home three state championships; Lowell won Division-2, East Grand Rapids won Division-3, and Montague won Division-6.

This leaves two trophies for Northern Michigan (Traverse City St. Francis won Division-7, and Beal City won Division-8), two trophies for Southern Michigan (Marshall won Division-4, and Jackson Lumen Christi won Division-5), and one trophy for East Michigan (Detroit Catholic Central won Division-1).

Considering the trophy distribution (3, 2, 2, 1), we could reasonably make the case that West Michigan earned the cumulative title by virtue of their three individual titles.  However, the fact is that no two championships are worth the same in the public eye.  So given that, how do we determine which geographical quadrant of the state should be crowned the high school football cumulative champions?

By assigning each championship a point value, weighted based on relative importance.  For example:

Division-1 = 8-points
Division-2 = 7-points
Division-3 = 6-points
Division-4 = 5-points
Division-5 = 4-points
Division-6 = 3-points
Division-7 = 2-points
Division-8 = 1-point

Based on that simple formula, West Michigan scored 16-points out of a possible total of 36-points (44%).  Southern Michigan came in second, scoring 9-points (25%), while East and Northern Michigan came in third and fourth with respective scores of 8-points (22%) and 3-points (8%).

So like I said, it certainly wasn’t 2008 (which would have garnered a remarkable 34-points (94%) using this scale).  But it wasn’t shabby.  Congratulations West Michigan!

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