Euclid coach Tom Gibbons isn't a big fan of the new set-up for the Division I football playoffs.

Well, the good news is if the new regional set-up for the 2013 season was used last season, the Panthers, 7-3 in 2012, would have been playoff-bound. As it was, Euclid missed the playoffs last season. Still, for Gibbons not much has changed in D-I.

"It's the same old grind," he said of the new format.

More bad news for Gibbons: Euclid would have been the 16th and final seed and played its first-round playoff game at St. Edward. That would have been a tough matchup, but at least the Panthers would have been in the dance.

Nonetheless, the new format - two regions divided into a north and south region - is a bold and innovative move by the Ohio High School Athletic Association. Sixteen teams from each region, the 35-team North and the 37-team South, make the playoffs starting this fall. Read more about new set-up in D-I here and here.

What will be interesting is the potential for much different first-round matchups, geographically speaking. The North Region matchups for the first round of the playoffs had the new format been in place last season, with seeding in parenthesis:

Euclid (16) at St. Edward (1)
Westerville Central (15) at Toledo Whitmer (2)
Brunswick (14) at St. Ignatius (3)
Cleveland Heights (13) at Mentor (4)
Findlay (12) at Canton GlenOak (5)
Austintown-Fitch (11) at Warren Harding (6)
Hudson (10) at North Royalton (7)
Canton McKinely (9) at North Canton Hoover (8)

- Mark Podolski | @mpodo