Wednesday, December 21, 2011

16 Week Season for the Next 2 Years

The WPIAL and PIAA are simply amazing. Saying that both organizations are stupid or dumb would be giving them far too much credit.

Last Thursday night they was supposed to vote on a 15 Week Season and tabled the vote to Friday Morning-before the State Championship games. In a Tally that needed 21 Yes votes, the final tally came out to 16 Yes votes to 10 No votes and 1 voter abstained-for whatever reason.

While some people was surprised by this ruling I wasn't. Why would a D5, D9, or any other District be willing to cut playoff qualifiers when the WPIAL was still going to be able to hold a 16 team playoff field in all 4 Class's. Fair is fair right.

Its obvious to me that no one cares about the kids and only about their own self interest, but at the same time they want a shorter season at the same time. So compromise needs to be in order somewhere.

So what's the next step in ending the season sooner. The East doesn't want to start the season earlier, the WPIAL doesn't more Class's because of the Heinz Field issue, and doesn't want to cut its playoff field in half.

This is really going to come down to who blinks first.

And lets be serious my fellow WPIAL fans, does a 3-6 Fox Chapel team really deserve a playoff spot? Or how about in some of those bottom tier schools in Class A? I mean what benefit does bringing in 4th place teams really do when they're more than likely going to lose by 30+ in the first round. Why risk injuries to a star player or 2 in these meaningless playoff games? And its really sad that I'm calling a playoff game meaningless for crying out loud.

Another thing we need to fix is the competitive balance in esp in Class A and 4A. McKeesport for example is definitely a quality football program but why have them compete with a North Allegheny when their enrollment was 515 Boys and NA's was 1078. NA has more than double the amount of boys than McKeesport has. In Class A its even worse. Schools like Mapletown, Geibel, and Imani has less than 70 boys competing against schools of over 180 boys in enrollment. But the competitive imbalance is very noticeable at the Class A Level.

I'd root for 5 or maybe 6 Class's for the PIAA. But until the WPIAL and its counterparts reach some compromise. And with the way things are going, its not going to happen any time soon. And its a shame.

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