High school spring football?

Boy, I'd just love to hear the philosophical reasoning behind THAT decision ...

 

I'd guess because the smaller schools wouldn't be able to field baseball, golf, tennis, track teams if the athletes were in spring football.

 

Because the spring schedule in Texas is insanely long and the thinking is that most schools smaller than 4A would be too thinly-stretched to pull off spring football with baseball, softball, track, golf and tennis going simultaneously.

The bigger 3A schools that could pull it off already have a numerical advantage over the smaller ones who couldn't, without compounding the advantage with two extra weeks of practice. (The 3A superintendents can decide at any time to conduct a vote on it.)

As far as our coverage ... We usually do a story at the beginning and cover the end-of-spring scrimmage, and that's it. We're normally too busy to do much more with everything else going on. The way the schedule is collapsed after May 11, it's going to be even worse.

Arkansas has spring football in May, and lets all schools participate. But the spring season there is normally over by the first weekend in May, save for the Meet of Champions (decathlon). The slate is clear for everyone. EDIT: I think they still play the state baseball and softball finals a week after the state tournament at a centralized location. All seven of them per sport.

 

I believe Georgia has it as well. Or it did a few years ago, at least.

 

It's actually 18 practices over 30 days. Any kind of spring game counts against the practice total.

That's why it's so popular with most coaches -- 18 practices now vs. five in August.

Most of the schools I've dealt with that had spring ball waited at least until after district competition in all spring sports. That way, only the guys involved in postseason competition are affected and most football coaches are smart enough to work the schedule to where there is no practice on a day the baseball team is having a playoff game. The only other real conflict would be the state track meet, which usually wrapped up the day before Mothers Day (except for this year, of course).

 

Florida.

And the real newspapers make a mention that spring practice has started for returning players (this afternoon, I think), do a player feature and then cover the jamboree/exhibition games that are about three weeks away at this writing.

Kentucky also has spring practice (late March between basketball and baseball seasons) but no exhibition play.

 

jps, Football_Bat, Angola!, and pressboxer have all described the Texas situation superbly.

We cover our two biggest (read: inside the city limits) 4As separately in spring ball. Everybody else gets lumped together, typically.

The past two years I've gone to Monday-Wednesday spring practices and the weekly Friday scrimmage, writing a short update for each of the following day's papers. Plus, the afforementioned spring game, which usually falls around May 20 here.

I enjoy covering spring football. I quickly tire of high school baseball because so few teams play clean (no errors, good pitching), and people love football so much it makes it even more fun to cover. My main school's in the middle of a coaching search right now, though, so no spring camp reports four days a week this year.

 

My situation is lot like how e_bowker describes. Mississippi allows schools up to 15 practices in the spring, but I'm usually too tied up with baseball during that time to give spring football a lot of coverage. I'll do a story next week on one of our bigger schools that is expected to be really good next fall, and I'll probably write a column later just generally touching on the subject, but that's about all I'll have time for.

 

Louisiana has it (for now) and it gets very little coverage. It's a 15-practice, one spring game thing that overlaps with track and baseball, so it ends up being a split squad for the most part. For the past two years, the LHSAA committee has had two votes to do away with spring football and the vote has gotten closer to passing each year. I expect it will eventually pass and they'll do away with spring, especially because a lot of small schools get very little done due to baseball teams making the playoffs and state track not running until May.

 

Florida, as has been mentioned.... one story w/short caps to kick it off... then some coverage of actual scrimmages with other teams. Love it when the SE says, oh just do one story, but do these three teams in it. Even though, of course, the storylines for each are not remotely related to the others. Sigh...

 

Barsuk is correct, South Carolina does have spring football. We typically write a feature about each team -- whether it be player profile, a new offense, competition for an important position. Last year, S.C. changed the rules so there could be full contact during a certain amount of practices, so a lot of our schools had "spring games" and we covered those. The only problem, every school had a different definition for spring games. Some scrimmaged and some just had glorified practices and charged people to watch.

 

In Texas it is 18 practices in 30 days.