At last an ally that doesn’t come from Carson High.
Anybody who knows me or has read my columns in the last 12 years, knows my distaste for the way the football playoffs are handled in Northern Division I.
The first gripe is the fact we have two divisions. The second is all but three teams out of 11 make the postseason. Are we in Little League? AYSO soccer? Whatever happened to earning you way in by winning more than you lose? When did that become so unimportant?
I guess it’s the Nevada way, but it’s the wrong way.
Let’s go back to one league, so the entire season counts and not just a few games. Deciding a Sierra League championship based on four game is ludicrous. Ditto for the High Desert which decides its championship based on five games.
There are two ways this could work.
My first idea is for the NIAA to expand to 10 regular season games, so you would only miss one team each year. Not a big deal. There are college conferences in which opponents are rotated by the year. That means everybody would have to play a Hall of Fame game. If yo don’t want to host it goes to your opponent.
The second idea would be to have just four teams make the playoffs, and that way you could add to the regular season. Going from eight to four teams takes one week away from the postseason and adds it to the regular season.
Another idea is why not expand to 10 regular season games, add an 11th game (Hall of Fame) if you want AND limit playoffs to four schools. One league is the answer. I just wonder if I’ll be breathing when that finally happens.
I was talking to Reed’s Ernie Howren on another matter, and he agreed too many teams make the playoffs. He did say, however, he understands why the NIAA has limits on games. “You are preaching to the choir,” he said. “I’ve been saying that for years that we need one league.”
Reed will play 11 regular season games because it played in the Sollenberger Classic against an Arizona school the week before playing in the Honor Bowl in Loomis.
If schools in California can play 10-game seasons, why can’t schools in Nevada? I’d love to know who makes these idiotic decisions. Certainly nobody who has ever coached football.
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Dan Gustin, veteran radio-TV personality, put together a package to televise football games live this year. While I think it’s great to give the high school game more exposure, I hate what comes with televised games. Commercial breaks disrupt the flow of the game, and for a working journalist, it’s a nightmare. On Friday, the Reno-Spanish Springs was done when the Carson-Galena game was finishing the third quarter. The Carson-Galena game started 12 minutes late. I’m not sure whether that was because Galena was so disorganized getting its Homecoming festivities under way, or whether it was a television thing. If it was the latter, shame on Gustin & Co.
If this is going to continue next year, why not look into starting the games earlier? In Division I, it’s varsity only on Friday, so starting at 6:30 instead of 7 shouldn’t be a big deal. If you start at 6:30, you could have an extended halftime, and you could run plenty of commercials in 20 minutes. Is there really a need to stop every possession, and I think the shortest break was still two minutes long, and some went at least four minutes.
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This is Nevada Day week, so it will be a short week for football teams. Carson has a bye this week, but Dayton has to play at Fernley on Thursday night in what is a meaningless game. The only sports activity happening on Nevada Day is the regional cross country meet at Rancho San Rafael Park in Reno. It’s nice cross country can dominate the news cycle for at least one day and not have to go head-to-head with football.
It’s also Douglas at Carson week with girls soccer on Tuesday, boys soccer on Wednesday and girls volleyball on Thursday. On Tuesday, is perhaps the biggest volleyball match in recent history, when Carson travels to Manogue in a battle for Sierra League supremacy. Both teams are 13-1.
