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High school football loses its virginity on Saturday (SF Chronicle)

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by enigami, Dec 15, 2006.

  1. Columbo

    Columbo Active Member

    Wow....

    I had no idea that De La Salle was getting off on the cheap like that.

    What a fucking bogus story that is in retrospect.

    I wouldn't have put a word of that horseshit into my paper had I known that.
     
  2. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    I was always disgusted that it took Pennsylvania until 1986 for state playoffs. California should be ashamed.
     
  3. fishwrapper

    fishwrapper Active Member

    This needs to be noted. This is not a state playoff system California adopted.
    It's a state bowl system. They're selected to the games. The Northern and Southern Sections remain separate.
     
  4. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Technically, there is no one divide between NorCal and SoCal, except for the purposes of the CIF State Bowl selection committee.

    But there are eight other sections (Central Coast, Central, L.A. City, North Coast, Oakland, Sac-Joaquin, San Diego and San Francisco), in addition to the Northern Section and Southern Section.

    The State Bowl participants are selected from among all 10 sections.

    (No, that doesn't make it any easier to explain. ::))
     
  5. fishwrapper

    fishwrapper Active Member

    Right. It's a bowl system. One team coming from Northern California. One from Southern.
    They are selected by a committee.
    Wake me in ten years and tell me how many times a San Diego team is selected.
     
  6. These teams don't play in a playoff to get to a state title game?

    I've never heard of anything so ridiculous.

    What are the criteria? And who does the selecting? The CIF? Somebody else?

    How hard would it be to run a playoff?
     
  7. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    All right, I'll give this a shot:

    For the last half-century-plus, winning a CIF section title is the biggest thing a California prep football team can do. With all the talent that comes out of some of these sections (esp. the City Section, Southern Section and Northern Section), that's arguably a bigger accomplishment than winning a state title in many states.

    The umbrella goes like this: CIF-State >> Sections >> Divisions >> Leagues

    You play your regular season schedule (nonleague and league), then you enter the section playoffs (which are divided by division, acc. to school size). You win the section title, you're the section champ. That's what you're playing for.

    This year -- for the first time -- the CIF ranked all the teams during the season in order to hold SoCal vs. NorCal state championship games (three of them, divided by school sizes) after the season concluded.

    After the section playoffs finished last Saturday, the CIF "bowl committee" came out with their final rankings.

    The Division I game matched the top-ranked large-school team from SoCal (CC Canyon) vs. the top large-school team from NorCal (De La Salle).
    The Division II game matched the top medium-size school from SoCal (Orange Lutheran) vs. NorCal (Palo Alto).
    The Division III game matched the top small-school team from SoCal (Oaks Christian) vs. NorCal (Cardinal Newman).

    Thus, for the first time in 79 years, you had football teams playing for a state title in California today at Home Depot Center. All the SoCal teams won.

    All of these teams won their respective leagues, they all went through the playoffs to win their respective section titles and, today, they each won their SoCal-vs.-NorCal bowl game and can claim to be "state champions."

    It's not very simple. But it works. ... Sort of.
     
  8. FishHack76

    FishHack76 Active Member

    Welcome to the 20th Century ... (In Arnold voice) Caly-four-knee-ah
     
  9. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    Angola, in California, winning a section championship IS determining a champion. The Southern Section (including Orange County, among others) is bigger than many state high school federations. With a 10-game regular season, teams that won the Southern Section would have to have won three or four playoff games to get there.
     
  10. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    We have much the same sentiment in western Pennsylvania, where they play the District 7 championships at Heinz Field. It's suggested that coming to Hershey for the state finals is totally anti-climatic for those teams.

    Didn't see any of that attitude this past weekend, and I'm glad it seems to be fading away. The state championships are the state championships. Nothing before it SHOULD be considered bigger.
     
  11. Thanks for the explanation, buck. But how many more games would have to be played to get a state champion that way, rather than through a "bowl committee" (who's on that committee, anyway?).
     
  12. Smallpotatoes

    Smallpotatoes Well-Known Member

    You're right about that, but because the competition level can differ greatly from one part of a state to another, you're bound to have games played in rounds before the state finals that could be tougher than the state final.
     
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