Sports

Borough seeding doesn’t add up

I want to like what the PSAL seeding committee did with its borough playoff pairings. For once, it isn’t all about chalk and the city’s supposed elite teams. There are sleepers galore everywhere you look.

Brooklyn is the only borough that has five ‘AA’ clubs, a deserving fact since the fifth seed, South Shore, has beated top-seeded Lincoln and No. 3 Thomas Jefferson. Queens and Manhattan has four ‘A’ teams and Bronx three.

But the inconsistency is impossible to ignore.

For the first time, the PSAL took a team from the ‘B’ league– 17-0 Frederick Douglass Academy III of The Bronx – which I applaud. FDA III has two Division I-bound players in Moussa Kone (Hofstra) and Kevin Douglas (St. Francis College), but the Lions were given the fifth seed, ahead of ‘A’ stalwarts Columbus, Alfred E. Smith and South Bronx.

Is FDA III better? The argument can be made. But those aforementioned teams should be rewarded for playing tougher competition. This didn’t happen in any brackets; all the higher division teams were seeded that way. If the Tigers are so good, why have they yet to reach a ‘B’ final? And with so much talent coming back, shouldn’t they have been moved up to the ‘A’ league?

Then, there is the matter of Bronx Science, which claimed the Bronx B West crown. Three teams were taken from Bronx B East – Columbus, South Bronx and Smith – traditionally a superior league. Those three teams did beat Bronx Science by narrow margins in crossover contests.

Keeping Bronx Science does make sense – I want the best teams in the boroughs like everyone else – if this principle was followed in Brooklyn.

Defending PSAL Class A champion Bedford Academy was not invited to the boroughs even though it split Brooklyn A East with Acorn because there were only three spots in Brooklyn and the league chose to take Acorn, Brooklyn A South champion Midwood and Brooklyn A West winner Grand Street Campus.

I’ve seen Grand Street and Bedford both play and there is no comparison who would give Lincoln more resistance in the quarterfinals on Tuesday. So, to summarize, in The Bronx, the committee bypassed one division winner, but didn’t follow the same guidelines in Brooklyn. Bronx Science is, in fact, the only ‘A’ division winner not to be involved in the borough playoffs.

It doesn’t make much sense to me whatsoever.

That being said, I’m looking forward to the upcoming week. I see several possible upsets and the opportunity for these lesser ‘A’ schools and the ‘B’ program I mentioned to make a name for themselves. Four years ago, Thomas Edison rode a Cinderella run to the Queens crown, a promotion to the ‘AA’ division and several deep postseason runs. It is a week that can make a program.

Picking these teams isn’t easy and I’m sure I would do worse if the job was mine. According to a source, the committee takes into account strength of schedule, records and quality wins – the same criteria it uses for the citywide playoffs.

But the key is consistency and that’s clearly missing here if you ask me. Let’s hope that changes as soon as possible.

zbraziller@nypost.com