Who's Ready for the 6 Class Debate to Heat Up Again?

I know I am as an avid supporter of the 6 Class system. But there will always be those contrary to this issue especially on this side of the state.

I do hate the idea of playing our District Title games at Heinz Field. So I use Heinz Field as a terrible, terrible reason to hold back progress in this state.

There are some other issues that come along with the 6 Class debate, like when to start the season. I prefer the last Friday in August and not the Friday before Labor Day.

Fact of the matter is the only thing everyone can agree on is that the season is too long. Ending the week before Christmas is utterly absurd.

I have an idea that could cut the season by at least 2 weeks. 1 Cut the playoff field in half statewide, 2 (as I stated above) start the season the last Friday in August, like Ohio and other states.

But this is a little deeper than just when the season starts and ends. Lets talk about competition for a minute. On the Eastern side of the state you have most of your larger schools so the smaller 4A schools complain. But on the Western side of the state you have most of the smaller schools in the state.

Class 2A in the WPIAL is extremely large and could easily be fixed if we had more Class's. In 1A in the WPIAL, the level of competition is grossly unfair. Schools like Clairton, Rochester, Canevin, Springdale, Beth Center, and Monessen shouldn't take the field against the smaller uncompetitive teams like Avella, Mapletown, and West Greene. But it happens.

There are ways that the WPIAL can set up the playoffs and still have 4 WPIAL games at Heinz and still send 6 representatives to the PIAA playoffs.

The next Board of Directors meeting is on December 16th. I fully expect this issue to be brought up again and be highly debated this winter into spring and possibly summer.

I just hope the Board of Directors especially the WPIAL does what is the most sensible and goes to a 6 Class format.

Heinz Field- A Flawed Tradition

Last night watching the Steelers game reminded me of how much I hate the WPIAL finals being played at Heinz Field. The playing surface is downright horrendous and for other reasons I'm going to get into right about now.

I understand the average WPIAL's claim to tradition. But what is so bad about "in with the new and out with the old".

The WPIAL requires the Quarterfinals and Semifinals to be played at a neutral field with an artificial surface. What in the world makes the most important game(s) in our area to be different?

Is it really because the Pro's play there or what? Is it because of the FSN money because they refuse to go to more than one site?

Come on folks, this field not only has a terrible playing surface but the game day atmosphere is pathetic. Each game carries 5k to 10k fans in a 65k stadium. Are you kidding me?

Why not play the games at Cal U, or Robert Morris where the stadiums are much smaller, plus you have an artificial surface?

At the end of the day the kids aren't really going to care where the game is played. They're fighting for the right to be named the best team in the WPIAL, in their respective class's.

I think the people that care the most are the fans. Our -insert team- is going to the Ketchup Bowl, or our -insert team- is going to Heinz.

Lets talk about safety for a minute. Do any of you want any of your boys to get hurt in similar fashion that the one Miami Hurricane did in the Champs Bowl last season. He tore his ACL due to the playing surface being up to par.

The tradition is flawed plan and simple. The sooner Western Pa realizes this, the better off we all are.

Clairton vs Chartiers-Houston and Fort Cherry... Bitter Fued???

Back in the spring of 2008 when the realignment came out and Clairton was placed in the Blackhills Conference I was extremely excited for many reasons. One reason was I got to see the High School I graduated from, Clairton, take on schools that are very close to where I live.

I live in Houston, and in fact when i'm when I go to Chartiers-Houston games I find myself rooting for the Buccaneers. Its only natural, because I live here and have some friends in the area. I'm not going to go to the away bleachers and root for the away team in spite. I have family that graduated from Chartiers-Houston; including my cousin who played for the 2000 edition that beat Clairton in the first round of the playoffs.

My girlfriend at the time was a graduate of Fort Cherry and I attended some of their games as well. So I also rooted for the Rangers. Again it was natural and made sense.

But something has changed between now and then and it has become a bit hideous to say the least. Not saying Clairton is entirely innocent in all of this, but the rivalries between these 3 schools have turned a bit ugly. It all goes back to the 2008 game between Clairton and Char-Houston where Clairton did some push ups after the game. Then in the 2009 game against Fort Cherry there was a minor pregame innocent and a plethora of personal fouls during the game. And that game also ended with Clairton doing push ups on Fort Cherry's sideline. The 2009 game between Clairton and Chartiers-Houston featured a bench clearing brawl.

When it came for post season awards for the Blackhills Conference, Fort Cherry and Chartiers-Houston made sure that no Clairton player would receive an All Conference Award. Remember the Clairton Bears won the State Title and featured 2 Pitt recruits in WR/DB Kevin Weatherspoon and QB/DE Desimon Green. LB Eddie Ball was the AP Class A Defensive Player of the Year and RB Deonte Howard was the AP Class A Player of the Year. Personal grudges shouldn't have gotten in the way when it came to honoring the best players in the conference but it did and its wrong.

Fast forward to last Friday evening. Clairton beat Chartiers-Houston 48-0 in Clairton. Clairton used its backup QB and threw a touchdown pass late in the 4th Q. Clairton then lines up like its going to go for 2 and takes a knee. I call that perfect sportsmanship, but HC Terry Fetsko obviously disagrees with me in his post game intereview.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailynewsmckeesport/sports/s_701317.html

I completely understand his frustrations to a point. His teams has been completely overwhelmed by Clairton the past 3 seasons and had some extracurricular involved in the prior 2 meetings. But to claim that the team that just beat his isn't that good and will get beaten by Rochester is a little over the top. Maybe he's right and Clairton isn't as good as past years, only time will tell. But a comment like that seems to be more or less sour grapes than him being honest with himself and the rest of Western PA.

I'll find it really hard to root for Chartiers-Houston and Fort Cherry in the future, when they're not playing Clairton of course. Has these games reached a boiling point, I might have to say yes. I mean there isn't any respect involved here. You got coach's that isn't humbled when they lose, not voting for players of a Clairton due to grudges, post game push ups, etc. At least when Clairton and Duquesne had their rivalry there was some form of mutual respect, even though those games was much more heated than the current series.

This isn't even fun anymore. I was anticipating these games with all of the enthusiasm in the world. Now I just wished these series would end.

Florida Schools Blowing out the WPIAL Shouldn't Be a Surprise

Any one else tired of seeing Pennsylvania getting destroyed by Florida schools and the rest of the nation respectively? I'm really tired of seeing scores like Cocoa beating Thomas Jefferson 43-7 and Manatee beating Gateway 39-16. And to top it off the WPIAL's record vs Florida is 117-23.

Is this the best the WPIAL and PA has to offer? Could schools like North Penn, Bishop McDevitt, and other top schools out east do any better? That question hasn't been answered yet. But I suspect that they may not fair much better.

But the WPIAL and the rest of the State needs to do something to even this playing field. Just look what they do in states like Florida, Texas, and many states down south. They have spring football for one(which includes a spring game/scrimmage vs a neighboring school in some states), and they start the season a week earlier than we do.

I say either we change our ways ie; having spring football and starting our season a week earlier. And if we don't change then we need to stop playing these games. I'm sick and tired of the WPIAL's Tradition excuse everytime issues like 6 Class's makes it to the floor. Events like Rally in the Wolverena, Rally in the Valley, Kirt Herbstreet Challenge are the furthest thing from traditional.

Anyone that follows football(on any level) will tell you the biggest improvements on any football team is between Week 1 and Week 2. This will also be benificial for the entire state just because we'd be ending the season a week earlier, and if the PIAA and WPIAL could get together and reach an agreement we could end the season 2 weeks earlier but thats another story.

It's all about the money isn't it WPIAL. Its time to at least allow our schools to be more competive. Stop being political when its really your cashflow is stacking higher and higher. Swallow your pride and change, or STOP PLAYING THESE GAMES!

Clairton "Stamps" in its First Win of the Season

Leading into the game there was alot of trash talking, but Clairton did its talking on the field.

The Little Prexies simply had no answer for the Bears swarming defense. Their offense was so anemic their offense gained -24 total yards and gained 0 first downs.

I have to question Mike Bosnic's playcalling in this game. Never did he try to go into a shotgun or do something different to put the Bears defense off balance. Every drive for Washington looked the same; 3 run plays up the middle.

In a game where Clairton wins 41-0, its hard for some to find mistakes in their game. But 3 3rd Quarter turnovers and 2 muffed punts, a few avoidable presnap penalties, its easy to say that the Bears was far from perfect.

Desimon Green had to be the player of the game. He amased 3 sacks, was on nearly every tackle in the first half, 5-5 passing for 105 yards. Josh Page had 5 catch's for 96 yards and 2 TD's; including a spectacular run after catch for a 54 yards.

Clairton used a plethora of RB's with Tyler Boyd leading the way with 6 carries for 100 yards.

Clairton opened the scoring late in the 2nd Quarter on a 13 yard run by Brandon Small and never looked back.

If this is how Clairton treats average 2A schools in the WPIAL, one has to ask does any Blackhills school stand a chance?

Big East Has an Expansion Problem

I must admit that even I wanted to see a school like Memphis or ECU in the Big East a year ago. Even I want to see the Big East being proactive. We all say why isn't the Big East proactive here. But can we look at the bigger picture for a minute.

No expansion candidate is a perfect fit. All BCS ready schools are in the MWC. Some say that we should invite a school and let the grow with BCS recruiting similar to Cincinnati. Fact of the matter is Cincinnati compared to ECU and Memphis are totally different situtations. Cincinnati is practically a MAC All Star Team. Its no coincidence that during the Bearcats rise that the Mac steadily has declined. The local Memphis and ECU area simply doesn't feed recruits like the Cincinnati area. Shoot Cincinnati doesn't even need to compete with OSU for recruits and they should be a top 3 school in the Big East. Can we say the same for ECU and Memphis. Looking deeper at the candidates and ECU and Memphis have 1st year coach's so things could get worse or better for those programs.

I'm a big advocate of Temple but they're also not the answer. There is no guarentee that Golden is going to stay at Temple. They're fan support is slowly growing but its not where anyone wants it to be.

Now lets look at UCF for a moment. Face value they may be the the best choice. They're located in the epicenter of football recruiting and a nice media market, plus they have a massive amounts of alums. Lets dig deeper for a moment. Adding UCF holds back the growth of USF because they'll be competing with each other for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier recruits in Florida. Almost every school in the east taps into Florida for recruits from Alabama, Georgia, to the Big East schools. Adding UCF not only hurts USF for recruits, but also our own schools. We need USF to start growing into the program we expect it to before we add UCF.

Lets talk about Big East Network for a brief moment. Look where the snowbirds and Northeast transplants are located. They moved mostly to the Carolina's and Florida. Most of those transplants and snowbirds are also Big East school's alumni. That tells me that a Network(if created) will most likely be provided in Florida and the Carolina's with/or without schools in those area's. The demand for a Big East Network is already in those states.

Remember one thing Big East fans(and CUSA fans that are lurking), we just don't have room for error here. The Big 10 added Nebraska, the Pac 10 added Utah and Colorado. All those schools are highly respected and won a BCS Bowl or National Title the past 20 years. Adding the so called normal prospects doesn't help out cause to grow. Each prospect has a glaring weakness, wether its market size, level of play on the field, first year coach's ect.

The major eyepopping problem here is that the Big East is probably going to be forced to expand. You have the Pac 10, Big 10, Big XII all going to a 9 game conference schedule. I'm not sure if the ACC and SEC are far behind. Thats a problem because we're not going to have enough quality opponents to fill out our conference schedules. We need one of the normal prospects to seperate themselfs from the pack. Temple seems to the the prospect to do that if they can win a few MAC titles in a row. Larry Porter can certainly get Memphis on the right track.

There are 2 prospects that are superior to the other prospects out east. Those 2 prospects are TCU and Houston. But the problem with those 2 schools are that they are 2 far west. I think they could instantly compete in the Big East. But could geography really be the problem here?

What if One Day the Dollar Crashed

This is totally a fictional story that can be reality if the Government continues to overspend.

So what could happen if one day the paper money we have in our wallets became worthless? And we suddenly our IRA's, our stocks, and bonds become worthless? How would we survive such a sudden turn of events?

On miniscule aspect would be our entire way of life would change. Gone would be the days of "Living the American Dream" for one. There wouldn't be electric, gas, running water and so much more. Therefore the days of playing video's games, tv, computers, sporting events, and the normal daily shopping sprees.

Our buying means would be our assests. And i'm talking about real assets like fruit, vegetables, guns and ammunition, water, and gold and silver.

I think its a good time to prepare for this catastrophic event, even if it doesn't happen in our lifetime. I challenge women to learn how to bake, can, and garden. I challenge men to learn how to hunt, fish, and other things that can be useful in a post-industrial society.

So how would society in general respond to this event. I'd assume there would be a very high crime rate, with robbery and murder having the highest rates. Our country in general could have 2 or more scenerios. We could live under a Facist, Communist like regimes, or a Military Dictatorship. Heck we could live under the current Democracy with Sheriffs running everything on the local level, similar to the Wild West.

All of those scenerios are scary with similar outcomes. We would worry about being spied on in every aspect of our lives. Police would most certainly rule our lives. I say this has a 50% chance of happening. I'm not extremely worried about this. But I want everyone to be aware of such dire cirucumstances. Instead of worrying about Chelsea Clinton getting married earlier today, pay attention the real news going on in our country. Since last week there has been an oil leak in Michigan, a dam breaking in Iowa and so on. Lets be an informned society, instead of a dumbed down society.