Early start to high school football season perplexing

If you anti-tardiness, you strongly believe in being early.

Yours truly would be in that category but even I have limits. As the 2018 high school
football season beckons, I have looked at various websites such as calpreps.com and
maxpreps.com. I cannot help but notice that the first games on the season are beginning
on Aug. 17.

Seeing that early start to the season makes me feel like Rip Van Winkle waking up from a
bad dream -- and I love football. Having graduated from high school in 1991 and playing
three years of football, I cannot remember any of our season openers starting before Labor
Day. With the earlier start date, nearly one-third of the season will be in the books by Labor
Day.

The theory behind the change is the CIF State playoffs were instituted in California in 2006
and have expanded at various times. While the implementation has created excitement and
revenue, the pitfall has been seasons continuing to end progressively later.

In 2006-2007, the State playoffs were just Div. I-III. In 2008-2009, it expanded to the Open
and Small School divisions in addition to Div. I-III. Since 2010, there has been the Open
Division as well as Div. I-IV.

In April 2011 the Federated Council voted in favor of the addition of Regional Bowl Games
beginning with the 2012 football season. This move allowed for 20 total schools to be
selected and able to participate in the CIF State Football Championship Bowl games.
Beginning with the 2014 football season an adjustment was made so that Divisions I-IV all
played Regional games, with the Open Division bypassing the Regionals and heading straight
to the State Championship.

Keep in mind, California discontinued State Championship football games after the 1927
campaign. The Section’s Boards of Managers had instructed their delegates to vote against
continuing the games on the ground that they caused too much strain on both schools and
players. Each Section, however, could continue holding its own playoffs to determine a
Section Champion.

While I am all in favor of not wanting to drag the State Football playoffs until Christmas, I
see yet another problem. Early season high school football games in California, especially
the central portion, can be downright oppressively hot. Keep in mind, Central California
climates often do not cool down at night, unlike the coastal region. The heat problem is only
going to get worse, especially for venues that don’t have lights. It will mean fewer cold
weather games but so be it, that’s how football is meant to be played.

My solution would have been simple. Shorten the damn Section playoffs because they are
pathetically watered down flatter than yesterday’s frisbee. I can only speak for Northern
California because that is the region I follow. I mainly follow the CIF Sac Joaquin and
North Coast Sections but with four Napa Valley schools vacating the former for the latter, I
probably will not follow the SJS as ardently in the future.

Seriously, how many times you see a postseason bracket and see the number of teams with
sub-.500 win/loss records? The NCS has six divisions (Open, I-V). The Open division of the
NCS football consisted of four teams last year -- De La Salle, San Ramon Valley, Pittsburg
and Clayton Valley. De La Salle and Pittsburg meet for the title on Dec. 2 at Dublin High. I
have no complaint with the Open division because those teams are the crem de la crem. By
design, Div. I-V are constructed for 16-team brackets.

Divisions are broken down based on enrollment. Teams that win their league title get an
automatic berth into the playoffs while non champions can apply for an at-large bid. Two
things stood out to me when I looked at last year’s playoff brackets in the NCS and this was
not an isolated incident. For openers, only Div. II and III had enough teams for a 16 team
bracket while Div. I had 14 teams, Div. IV had 15 while Div. V had 12. In the meantime,
the NCS has 21 teams in Div. I, 20 in Div. II, 23 in Div. III, 22 in Div. IV and 16 in Div. V.
Of the 73 teams playing in the playoffs, 31 had losing records entering the postseason.

So why are those teams making the postseason might you ask? Fair question. In the NCS,
if you are a .500 team against opponents within your division or league, that gets you into
the postseason. If a team wins its league and has a losing overall record, I'm open to making
an exception for them because it's not their fault that the league is terrible.

During a casual conversation I once had with a Lake County coach during my tenure on the
Upvalley beat, we had the same discussion of why the playoffs are watered down worse than
a flat beer. This coach replied, “I’ll give you one word — money.”

OK, so if teams are getting first round byes as a result of not having enough teams to fill a
bracket, where is the revenue? You can’t make money if you’re not playing.

The fact that there is not enough teams to fill a 16-team bracket should tell you something.
It probably means more teams with losing records know they have no business being in the
postseason so they are not applying for at-large bids in the first place.

Unfortunately time and simple solution don’t seem mutually exclusive.