SAN DIEGO — The CIF-San Diego Section announced its 2025 Football Divisional Playoff pairings on Sunday, November 2nd, utilizing a format that resulted in Southeastern Conference teams finding themselves — for better or worse — in playoff divisions other than those they started the season in, or even out of the playoffs entirely.

The CIF’s football playoff format was introduced for the 2024 season, with teams now divided into six divisions based on their current power ranking at the time of the seeding meeting, rather than their ranking within their pre-season divisional placement.

“The past two seasons, the seeding and divisions have been done by power rankings, where the top 64 teams and eight more in D V-AA all go to the playoffs,” said Southeastern Conference football committee representative and Imperial coach David Shaw.

The Sunday morning Zoom meeting yielded few surprises, according to Shaw, who is already seeing a pattern to the playoff pairings after two seasons.

“There were no surprises; everyone ended up where we thought they would going into the meeting,” Shaw said.

That included the Holtville Vikings, fresh off their Imperial Valley League championship game 54-24 victory over Imperial last Friday night, who may have even exceeded expectations by ranking 15th overall in CIF.

Holtville (9-1, 4-0 IVL) will now become the second Southeastern Conference team to play in the CIF’s Division I playoffs in the competitive-equity era of CIF since 2013, when they open the CIF Playoffs Friday night.

The IVL champion and eleventh-seeded Vikings will travel to meet the Division I sixth-seeded and Avocado League-East champion Oceanside Pirates (6-4, 4-0 AL), whose record includes four losses to top ten CIF-SDS opponents, at 7:00 p.m.

The next highest team going into the CIF Playoffs this week is the IVL’s second-place Tigers, ranked 22nd overall in CIF. They received the sixth seed in the CIF Division II Playoff Bracket and will host the D-II eleventh-seeded Cavers of San Diego High at Shimamoto-Simpson Field on Friday night.

The Tigers (9-1, 3-1 IVL) and the Cavers (5-5, 1-4 Eastern League) have one common opponent this season, as they both defeated the Madison Warhawks in home games, with Imperial winning 27-19 and San Diego winning 30-26.

Central (8-2, 2-2 IVL) is fresh off its hard-fought 24-3 victory over the Brawley Wildcats last Friday night in the 82nd edition of The Bell Game and is ranked 29th overall in CIF.

This Friday night, Central will have a CIF Division III opening-round bye before returning to action at Cal Jones Field next Friday night, where they will face the winner of this Friday night’s game between the D-III ninth-seeded Montgomery Aztecs (6-4) and the eighth-seeded hosting Bishop’s School (7-3) in La Jolla.

The IVL’s Brawley Wildcats (2-8, 1-3 IVL), who played the toughest non-league schedule in the Southeastern Conference, ended the season ranked 39th overall. They will start their second season on Friday night as the Division III eleventh seed, traveling to El Cajon to meet the D-III sixth-seeded Christian High Patriots (3-7, 1-4 Eastern League).

The Brawley-Christian matchup is unique as the two teams met in a game-like scrimmage to begin the 2025 season, as part of fourteen matchups in the 2025 San Diego Friday Night Lights Magazine’s Kickoff Classic.

Scoring on a long pass early in the scrimmage, Brawley then played their trademark tight defense to outscore the Christian High Patriots 7-0 at Hoover High School in San Diego on August 23rd.

“We (Imperial) have a home game, Central is a top seed, Brawley has a good draw… it’s the second year of this new system and everything lined up like last year,” Shaw said. “The IVL champ is in D-I, the second-place IVL team is in D-II, and the third and fourth place teams are in D-III, so it appears to be a pattern.”

For the second consecutive year, the defending CIF V-AA champion Calipatria Hornets will have a home opening-round CIF Division V-AA playoff game under first-year head coach Rick Stewart, when they host the Clairemont Chieftains (1-9, 0-4 Central League) on Friday night at Veterans Field.

The Division V-AA fourth-seeded Hornets and fifth-seeded Chieftains have already met once this season, in a wild shoot-out at Clairemont, with Calipatria winning 68-56 in September.

Also in the 2025 CIF Divisional Football Playoffs is the Southeastern Conference’s Desert League champion Palo Verde, led by coach Wally Grant. They were awarded a spot based on being ranked 66th overall and meeting the requirements, including school population, to compete in CIF’s Division V-AA.

The 2025 Division V-AA’s second seed, the Yellowjackets (6-4, 3-0 DL), will host the D-V-AA seventh-seeded O’Farrell Charter School Falcons (4-6, 3-3 Sunset League) in Blythe on Friday night.

For the first time in his six years as head coach of Calexico, Fernando Solano finds his Bulldogs (3-6, 0-4 IVL) out of the CIF Playoffs by the thinnest of margins, as they were power-ranked 65th, just outside the Division V bracket.

Also out of the playoffs for the first time in recent memory, despite sprinting to the 2025 season finish line by winning their final three games, the Desert League’s Vincent Memorial Catholic Scots ended the 2025 season power-ranked 71st.

The Scots (3-6, 2-1 DL), under co-head coaches David Wong and Fernando Santana, were not power-ranked high enough to make the CIF’s field of 64 teams.

In their first year under head coach Bo Seibel, the Southwest Eagles (2-8, 1-2 DL) also failed to make the CIF Playoffs, finishing with a ranking of 77th.