First night of high school football

Kansas only has nine games (and, of course, with the Districts set-up, only three games that really count for anything) and doesn't start until September 5.
Frankly, reading about all this stuff that happens in other states, this doesn't annoy me in the least.

 

It will be my first time covering high school football in Kansas and the local team I cover could be going to the playoffs. The schedule has a bi-district playoff game on Tuesday night, which is something I'm not used to.

But this week will be covering scrimmages for the weekly paper I work at.

 

Not just the teenagers, says the parent of a high school football player whose team made it to the state final last year. We spent Thanksgiving morning taking a team picture -- the team members and the families -- as a thank-you for our support, though most of us wanted to get the heck out of there, especially those who were hosting Thanksgiving dinner.

And it's not just August to November (or December). Workouts for the current season, which begins Friday, began in the last week of May. Of course, I'm not in a state that has spring football.

 

In California, a lot of teams will play 10 games over 11 weeks, so there is a bye week thrown in there. Some schools will forgo playing the so-called Week 0 game and go 10 weeks straight (some 8-man teams will only play nine regular season games). After that, the playoffs are a symptom of sections that have way too many schools and have tremendously lax of standards to get into the playoffs. Where the Central Coast Section only has three weeks including the championship (not counting the state bowl games), the Southern Section has four weeks with teams that might only win two games the whole season.

 

In my state, high school season for most starts the last Friday of August or first Friday in September with games running through the middle of December.

Regular season is 10 games with no breaks and larger classes play four rounds of playoffs with smaller classes playing five rounds.

Because of seedings and such, some classes will get a first round playoff bye.

First week gets a little squirrely as you have kickoff classics that will be played on Monday, Tuesday or Thursday as the schools and organizers are jockeying to get the most media coverage and attendance. No games ever on Wednesday, church night in the South.

When my brother-in-law's team made a playoff run a couple years back, the booster club had a team Thanksgiving meal on Thursday after practice.

Which is kind of cool for the players but it screwed up family plans.

 

I'm curious when the NFHS releases its state-by-state numbers where the growth came in high school football, whose participation numbers went up for the first time in six or seven years. Kids aren't quitting because of concussions. For a lot of them, it's the time requirement, especially if you know you're not going to play, like three guys from my son's team who quit because they got jobs that were worth a whole hell of a lot more than sweating and taking beatings for the right to stand on the sideline every Friday night.

 

Our first football Friday night was this week as well.

Several games around the state got postponed or called off completely because of the weather. It was a scorching hot day, with the heat index over 100 for most of the day, and some starts got pushed back 30 minutes.

Then thunderstorms hit most of the state, causing a crapload of games to be postponed to Saturday, Sunday -- or in an area team's case -- today.

A bunch of games were called at the half or second quarter and not made up, and others got moved to later in the season because teams had the same open date.

Talk about a crazy weekend.

 

In Virginia they give you 11 weeks to play 10 games and have a 5-week postseason with state title games played the 2nd Saturday in December. Regular season play kicks off Friday, Aug. 29 with most games in Southwest Virginia which began school last week. Most Richmond area teams do not start until after school opens. I've covered about 8-10 state finals and the weather in mid-December is usually what you'd expect. At or below freezing and if not it's raining. As for current weather, it's been a very mild summer in eastern Virginia. Only maybe 7 days in the high 90s and none in triple digits. Last year we had several triple digit days and plenty of days in the 90s

 

16-team brackets in all five divisions in the Central Section, where they let anyone who wants to participate. The real shitty teams will bow out, but every now and then one will opt in.

What makes California's season a little longer, too, is two weeks of state playoffs. Committee will determine top two teams north and south and have a playoff game, with winner advancing to the state bowl at StubHub Center in Carson (who said the BCS was dead?). Open division, for the likes of Concord De La Salle and the OC powers, has just the one game, CIF announced today.

 

As HH and Batman can attest, football in Mississippi is a year-round deal, unless a kid plays basketball, soccer or baseball (soccer is a fall-winter sport here).

Seriously, the returning players get about a week off, then they're in the weight room lifting. Then there's a three-week spring football practice session. In the summer, it's just about every day of "voluntary" workouts, which are unofficial practices in shorts, plus a lot of schools now do the 7-on-7 camps.

We've got kind of a two-way playoff system here. The top four teams in each region make the playoffs, which means 16 teams advance in 6A, 5A and 1A (only four regions of 8 or more teams), and 32 in 4A, 3A and 2A (eight regions most of which have just six teams). And, yes, we have had a 1-10 team win a tie-breaker with two other teams and make the playoffs.

That means the 6A, 5A and 1A schools get 12 weeks to play 11 games, although last year some schools played all 12 weeks. The rest can play 11 straight weeks, although some of them choose to work a bye week in the middle of their non-region schedule, so they only play 10 regular-season games. Playoffs for 4A, 3A and 2A start the first week in November, the rest the following week. State finals are the first week in December, and, for a change they're playing at Starkville, at Mississippi State (next year, they're at Oxford), instead of at Jackson.

It will be interesting to see what the weather's like that weekend up in North Mississippi. Although we're known for temperate winters, it can still get pretty damn cold here in December and about five years ago the Class 6A final (always the Friday night game) was played in a steady snowstorm that left about two inches on the ground when it was all over.

 

Virginia also had a handful of games last weekend, but schools had to get permission to play that early. That included an ESPN game between Oscar Smith in Chesapeake and Booker T. from Miami that started at 9 p.m. Saturday night for TV purposes. The game didn't end until after midnight.

 

How many more intrastate games are you all seeing in football? I know the elite programs and Catholic schools have done this for years (six of 11 games on the schedule for Trinity of Louisville are against out-of-state teams), but my son's school for the first time is hosting an out-of-state team, from Indianapolis, and not one of the big programs there, either. (Though it's the big program for Indianapolis Public Schools.)