The N.C. High School Athletic Association will release the football playoff brackets on Sunday as teams wrap up their seasons this week.

While you wait for the official brackets, HighSchoolOT Insiders are able to get updated playoff projections. These allow you to see where your team is expected to land in the playoffs, the matchups, and more.

Things look a bit different this year than in years past. Hurricane Helene caused the NCHSAA to extend the regular season by one week, allowing schools impacted by the storm a chance to make up as many games as possible.

Games are allowed to be played through Saturday, as some teams have to play multiple games this week and are required to have 72 hours between games. That means the brackets, which are normally released on a Saturday, are now scheduled to be released on Sunday afternoon.

We expect the NCHSAA will begin the process in the early afternoon hours of Sunday, possibly around 1 p.m. It usually takes a couple hours for the NCHSAA to get all the needed information, such as conference records and RPI rankings, and ensure they are accurate. Schools and coaches can ensure a smooth Seeding Sunday by making sure their MaxPreps records are accurate:

• Make sure all games are entered into your schedule and include final scores.
• If you are playing an 11th game, make sure this game is not included on your MaxPreps schedule. 11th games, which were allowed for schools not impacted by Helene, do not count towards RPI.

If any of these things are not reported accurately by a school, it could cause significant delays in releasing the brackets.

Here’s how Sunday is expected to unfold

Around 1 p.m., the NCHSAA will begin the bracketing process. The first step is to collect all of the final conference standings from the various leagues. Then the NCHSAA will get final RPI rankings from MaxPreps. The conference standings and the final RPI rankings will be published on the NCHSAA website when they are available.

Once this information is complete, the NCHSAA will begin determining automatic qualifiers based on conference finish, then at-large qualifiers based on RPI rankings. There will be 32 teams in the East and 32 teams in the West in each of the four classifications.

After qualifiers are determined, the NCHSAA seeds the brackets. All conference champions are seeded first based on their RPI rankings. Then all the remaining qualifiers, including automatic qualifiers who finish second in their conference and all at-large teams, are seeded together based on their RPI.

Once this is done, the NCHSAA will release preliminary playoff brackets. This usually happens within a couple hours of the process starting, as long as there are no reporting errors that cause delays.

Preliminary brackets are not final and are subject to change. The NCHSAA releases preliminary brackets to give schools a chance to check for errors and report them to the NCHSAA. Schools usually get about an hour to check preliminary brackets. It is possible the NCHSAA will release multiple versions of the preliminary brackets if errors are found.

After the deadline to report errors passes and any issues are corrected, the NCHSAA will declare the playoff brackets finalized. These will be the official pairings used for the state playoffs.

Once final brackets are released, HighSchoolOT will publish our interactive brackets, which will update in real time during the playoffs as results come in.

The playoff schedule

Because the regular season was extended by one week due to Hurricane Helene, the playoffs have been pushed back by one week as well.

Here is the schedule for the 2024 high school football playoffs:

• Nov. 10 – Brackets released by NCHSAA
• Nov. 15 – First round at higher seed
• Nov. 22 – Second round at higher seed
• Nov. 29 – Third round at higher seed
• Dec. 6 – Fourth round at higher seed
• Dec. 13 – Regional championships at higher seed
• Dec. 20-21 – State championships at UNC & NC State

Once again this year, UNC’s Kenan Stadium and NC State’s Carter-Finley Stadium will play host to the NCHSAA football state championships. One game will be played on Friday night, Dec. 20, and three games will be played on Saturday, Dec. 21. The NCHSAA will release the schedule for the state championships after the regional champions are determined.

Helpful links to follow the playoffs: