Louisiana's High School Football Regular Season Ends Saturday. Here's How the LHSAA Sets the Playoff Brackets

Louisiana's high school football playoff brackets are set by the LHSAA's power rating, a number built from each team's wins, the strength of its opponents and bonus points for playing up in class. The regular season ends Saturday, Nov. 7, and the Louisiana High School Athletic Association announces playoff pairings on Sunday, Nov. 8, according to its 2026 football season calendar.

That leaves one more Friday of regular-season football for most of the state, and for a lot of teams this week's final score will move them up or down the rankings.

Every football school in the LHSAA plays in one of eight brackets. Schools are split into Select and Non-Select tracks, and each track has four divisions, numbered I through IV. A team competes for a spot only against schools in its own division and track, so a power rating that looks modest in one bracket can be strong in another. The two tracks crown separate champions, which is why the Caesars Superdome hosts eight title games this December.

The power rating itself is spelled out in the association's 2026 football bulletin, which reprints Section 14 of the LHSAA handbook. A win is worth 10 points and a loss is worth zero. A team earns two extra points for each class and division it plays up, win or lose, which rewards schools that schedule bigger opponents. On top of that, every game adds a strength-of-schedule figure: the opponent's wins divided by its games played, multiplied by 10. Add all of that up for the season, divide by the number of regular-season games, and round to two decimal places. The result is the power rating that newspapers and fans have been tracking week by week.

A few details matter at the margins. The rating table lists a tie, worth five points, only for games against out-of-state schools. A game against a junior varsity or "B" team does not count toward the rating at all. Games against out-of-state schools do count, with the other school's class set by its enrollment. The deadline to add a game for power rating purposes passed on Oct. 24.

The rating does two jobs. First, it fills out the field. Each district chairperson reports the team that finished first in the district as soon as that is settled, and the bulletin asks for those reports by Friday, Nov. 6. The handbook calendar lists Saturday, Nov. 7, the last regular-season date, as the day district representatives are named, which covers districts still deciding a title on Saturday. District champions get in, and the rest of each bracket is filled by power rating, highest first. Second, the rating sets the seeds within each bracket, district champions included.

Bracket sizes differ by track. The LHSAA's most recent posted playoff bulletin sets 28 qualifiers in each Non-Select division and 24 in each Select division, with the top four Non-Select seeds and the top eight Select seeds getting first-round byes. The Shreveport-Bossier Journal reported last week that the same sizes and byes apply this season, with seeds five through 16 hosting opening-round games in Non-Select brackets and seeds nine through 16 hosting in Select. That is why one spot in the final rankings can decide whether a team gets a week off, a home game or a long bus ride.

From there the rounds come quickly. Bi-district games are Nov. 12-14, regionals Nov. 19-21, quarterfinals Nov. 26-28 over Thanksgiving week and semifinals Dec. 3-5. The finals are in the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans Dec. 10-12, with the Division IV Select title game kicking off at noon on Thursday, Dec. 10, and the Division I Non-Select final closing things out at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 12, according to the LHSAA's schedule.

The bulletin also allows schools that miss the playoffs to play in an approved postseason bowl game, limited to one per school.

Fans can follow the weekly ratings on the LHSAA's football power rankings page, and local papers around the state have been reprinting them for their area teams. Once the final scores are in and the districts report their champions, Sunday's pairings will show where every playoff team plays next week. Under LHSAA rules the higher seed hosts each playoff game, though the two schools can agree to swap sites.

For more Louisiana football, Bayou Weekly's Oct. 24 weekend roundup covered LSU's trip to Auburn, and our feature on the Bayou Classic's history looks ahead to Thanksgiving weekend in New Orleans.

Photo: Billy Hathorn, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (resized). Doc Elliott Stadium in Farmerville, photographed in 2010.