High School 9/21-9/23

Most of this week's games around here were played on Thursday or will be played tomorrow because of Rosh Hashana.
I went to one of the few games that was last night and it ended up 41-7.

 

Most of ours got rained out last night and today. But then again, most of our state is under water right now. We've had at least 5 deaths since the flooding started last night, and it's not gonna get any better.

We just got news here that a mother of two kids who was married drowned. And a local girl, whose family still lives here, was 25 and drowned in Lexington. It's been a damn bad day here.

 

I had to talk through a 1.5-hour rain delay at halftime on the air (basically, kill time for eeons), while waiting for the second half.

By the end, my color guy and I were talking about legendary rain games from 1985 and 1991.

Thankfully -- especially for the guys on deadline -- the winning team took the air out of the ball in the second half and we got out of there pretty quickly once things restarted. Many of the other games in the area were postponed.

Some in southern Indiana had to be postponed to Monday -- and the IHSAA refused to allow those games to be completed, due to a rule that two games cannot be played in the same week (this is the same organization that used to schedule first-round TOURNAMENT games on Tuesdays, with the second-round games on Saturdays).

Then, after doing a four-hour broadcast, we called a quadrupleheader on Saturday and were on-air for almost 11 straight hours.

(thankfully, this week, we get a game between what are probably the top 2 teams in Indiana as our reward, one of which is the Warren Central team from Indy that is probably the best HS team I've ever seen in these parts, with a gazillion D1 recruits on the roster).

 

The rule in Texas is 5 days between games. I covered one Monday game once; the following games for each opponent had to be pushed back to Saturday. After Rita, some teams down south were even playing on Wednesdays to catch up.

 

Here's something stupid from the Kentucky High School Athletic Association.

Trinity and St. X play just 10 minutes of their game. It's suspended with Trinity up 10-0.

This game draws more than 30,000 people each year. It's by far the biggest game in Kentucky and held at Papa John's.

As my fellow Kentuckians and Hoosiers noted, the rain didn't let up. Unlike a score of other high school games, this one couldn't be played on another field or they'd have to refund 30,000 tickets. Both schools decided just to cancel the game.

But the KHSAA said that since the game started, they have to accept the result after only 10 minutes of play. Now, I hate both schools but what kind of bullshit is that to have a football game stand after only 10 minutes of play?

 

Papa John's during the storm...

I hate what the KHSAA is doing. Could they not have played this Sunday afternoon since it didn't rain like the forecast called for? One of our games was finished Saturday, just before another monsoon came through and Kentucky State's game at Commonwealth Stadium was rained out.

Or, can't they just throw out the decision? That's what happened with the John Hardin/South Oldham game... I mean, the Trinity/X game isn't a district game, so what does it matter?

 

It could have an impact in playoff seedings, since they use non-district wins as a tiebreaker.

And I'm not sure what the agreement was with Papa John's and U of L. Maybe Friday was the only day, though that really doesn't make sense since U of L has a bye week this week and won't play at home until mid-October.

 

There was supposed to be a Bands of America marching band show at PJCS that next day. But they wound up cancelling that too. And in Lexington, all the games that had to be rescheduled for Saturday were cancelled as well.

As far as Trinity/X, they should still throw the game out just like they wound up doing with JH/South Oldham. And that game was farther along than Trinity/X. I'd hate to see either JH or SO miss the playoffs because of the game that never was...

 

In Texas, the rule is the game has to make it to halftime to be official unless the coaches agree to let the result stand. I've seen that goofiness 3 times in the last 5 years, all because of storms.

Once, the game was stopped in the third quarter and ended a 7-7 tie. Another, the game was stopped early in the second and was declared a no-contest. Both of those were non-district.

A district game I covered 5 years ago ended at 7-0 when the squall line rolled in about 5:00 into the game, and both coaches were happy with that (it was a major mismatch). The rest of the district was not pleased — the losing team needed to take a 48-minute ass whipping just like everyone else. So the other superintendents forced them to resume the game at 4:30 p.m. the following Monday.

 

Really sick story:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=2604874