Texas realignment: Why the fuss?

When I was in high school, we played (usually twice a year) league football games that were 343 miles away. Same day. No hotels unless it was the playoffs.

I feel your pain, Texas.

 

you up to IDing your state?

i just google mapped the farthest i traveled for a nonplayoff game in washington state and it came up at 185 miles.

 

At least in Texas, playoffs are done on a regional basis and usually the teams choose a neutral site, so you don't have to seriously travel until the late rounds.

I don't know if it's changed in Arkansas or not, but they used to do the playoff bracket by draw, and one year it resulted in Texarkana traveling to Blytheville for a first-round game — from the southwest corner to the northeast. That's about 330 miles one way.

 

What I can't figure is why Cooper didn't just request to stay 5A.

I'd also say I can't figure why Abilene doesn't have a story about that aspect of the realignment, but that would probably send this in a whole other direction.

 

The UIL won't let you elevate unless you're in a school district with eight or more high schools, or for extreme travel reasons. Part of the reason being that some schools that would otherwise be 5A would be pushed down to 4A and thus would have a numbers advantage. Cooper's coach probably knew his request would be denied, so he didn't file one.

 

That and Cooper hasn't been doing very well lately, so in 4A they will have a much better chance of going to the playoffs.
Oh, and an example of why Abilene didn't have much on realignment: They have been so short-handed lately that they had one person working on a Tuesday night (heaviest basketball night). They didn't even cover Cooper's home games that night.

 

Every time someone posts something about the Reporter-News a think to myself that it couldn't possibly get any worse there. And then two weeks later it's rinse and repeat.

It's a damn shame what the Reporter-News has become.

 

Region I has some serious travel, even in the early rounds of the playoffs. That's the region that stretches from El Paso to San Angelo to Amarillo to DFW (used to be just Tarrant County, now it also encompasses Plano and Allen).

The first round isn't bad unless you're in Districts 1 or 2. But when you hit the second round this year, you have situations where Southlake Carroll and Odessa Permian might need to meet in Abilene, which is 180 miles for both of them.

But yeah, it's better than the situation you mention in Arkansas. I can't imaging El Paso Montwood drawing one of the far East Texas schools in the first round. That would be a nightmare travel-wise

 

A school in our coverage area is challenging the ruling so we'll see what comes out of it. They dropped down to 4A and their road trips are going to send them driving for a while. They used to be 5A.

 

Texas should just split into 20 different states. This would solve all this shit. Also, we'd have more power in the U.S. Senate that way. And think of all the jokes we could make with 69 states in the union.

 

Maybe some of the others can help with this question, but is it rare for the UIL to change a classification based on an appeal?

 

why does your publisher care?