Defending NY football champ forfeits playoff win for NOT dressing hurt player

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/sports/high-school/football/2014/10/31/judge-rule-aquinas-forfeit-case-today/18235031/

 

That's a horribly designed website. You've got to click through to 12 pages to read the entire story. The front page is hard to navigate. I wasn't interested enough in the story to fight it. (No offense to the one who posted the story; this is just a criticism of the site itself.)

 

I will ask what might be a stupid question because I'd never heard of the rule before - Why do they have a requirement that a player participate / appear in three regular season games to be eligible for the postseason...? I'm in Rhode Island, which is obviously at a different (lower) level when it comes to football, but there isn't anything like that out here. In fact, it's usually "all hands on deck" for the playoffs, with coaches adding in JV players up to the maximum roster limits for all sports, for worst-case injury scenarios. (i.e. Losing two starting point guards in a varsity basketball playoff game and having to play a JV kid who had 0 varsity minutes before, which I did see once.)

 

1. Wasn't there another thread on this?

2. As sgreenwell notes, in many states it is customary for varsity teams heading into the playoffs to bring up their entire JV (and sometimes freshman) rosters. Few or none of these players would have dressed for three varsity games during the season.

At least at one point in Michigan there was no roster limit for HS football teams in the playoffs; I remember some teams dressing out 90+ players like college. One game was 30+ points in the second half and they started running the JV and freshmen, in complete units, just so they could say they played in state semifinals, etc. Funny thing was, the freshman team held its own.

I seem to vaguely remember there may be a 65-player limit now, but I could be wrong.

With lots of schools statewide struggling to get 20 people in uniform, it's probably way down on their priority list.