Football Follies

This will read like sour grape juice has been spilled over the page.

These words will read as if fed by the desire to take the ball and go home.

But in Florida high school football, the BCS thrives and isn’t that a three-letter name in college football.

Last Monday, Port St. Joe High School’s quest for another year punctuated by a playoff berth was brought to an abrupt halt in a tiebreaker played in Liberty County.

Let’s admit upfront that this was a first. Through years of covering football, a tiebreaker to determine a district championship was a new one for me.

Sure, the players decided it on the field, but in a brief dance that is the football equivalent of music sampling.

To call 12 minutes on a Monday evening after a Friday night game the proper assessment of a team’s playoff bona fides is to say Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test results and school grades are a proper measurement of a school’s performance in a given year.

In one half of football, Liberty County won the district title, Blountstown the runner-up spot. Both head to the playoffs.

The Tiger Sharks, after losing a meaningless game to Tallahassee Maclay last Thursday, are off to basketball season and other extracurricular activities.

How the tiebreaker was framed is the first yellow flag.

Liberty County “earned” the right to host and be the No. 1 seed by having the best overall record.

Yet, Port St. Joe handed the Bulldogs their only loss.

And due to the a history of success, while Liberty County played the likes of Bozeman, Cottondale and Graceville out of the district, schools in the same or a lower classification, Port St. Joe was left having to schedule a trip to Bay, hosting Rutherford and spending six weeks on the road.

Interlachen may not have been much of a contest, but it was a step up in classification and a long trip to boot.

Blountstown, meanwhile, lost to a team, Marianna, which both Liberty County and Port St. Joe beat.

Yes, a Port St. Joe regular-season victory at Blountstown would have made it all moot, but when three teams end up tied atop the district, they have taken turns beating each other during the season, there has to be a better way to decide things than this cockamamie tiebreaker format.

This, by the way, also includes a Kansas tiebreaker, each team getting the ball at the 25 and alternating possessions for points until a winner emerges, if the score is tied after the initial quarter.

To find a better way of picking wheat from chaff is exponentially important in the current times.

This year the Florida High School Activities Association approved then rescinded a decision to reduce schedules in all sports but football. Districts around the state are cutting sports, equipment budgets, travel budgets, etc.

In Gulf County, the district pays next to nothing, beyond coaching supplements, for athletics, meaning each sport must be all but self-sustaining.

Port St. Joe High School has one of the best girls’ track teams in the state but they run in the red because 1) there is no track at which to host meets and 2) travel costs money and track gates are not exactly overflowing attendance-wise for visiting teams.

Football is the king of revenue producers, but Port St. Joe played just four home games this year. A home playoff game – guaranteed for at least one round with a district title – or two could mean the difference in hurting and really hurting on the revenue side.

These are tough times for high school sports programs, as they are all over. Support by seats in the seats is essential, whether football, volleyball, soccer, basketball and on and on.

So there are even higher stakes – if there can be any more pressure in high school sports these days – when it comes to a football district tiebreaker.

Therefore, a modest proposal for the FHSAA, though it greets outside input like fresh fertilizer, to change the tiebreaker format.

Add a week between the end of the season and the playoffs. Essentially an 11^th week. Mandate that district competition begin no later than the third week of the season.

That provides a chance for teams to get their feet wet before district play starts, but also a week on the back end for those playoff teams to heal and prepare for the postseason.

That additional week also provides a week for all tiebreakers, which must constitute complete games.

Seeding, in the case of a tiebreaker such as with District 2-1A, is determined by coin flip at a neutral location.

The third seed plays the second seed on Monday of that final week; the winner plays the top seed on Friday. Higher seeds host.

The games are single-elimination, you lose you go home.

The playoffs open on schedule the following week.

The season is not currently unduly long that adding another week will be a hardship, except for basketball coaches, though the hoops season doesn’t truly engage until Christmas anyway.

Considering that the football playoffs bump into the Thanksgiving holidays now, school hours missed would not change much either way for players on a team that made the playoffs.

This may not be a panacea, but it is sure better than a system that rewards play for 12 minutes with a district title.

Might as well leave it to a random group of voters like the BCS.