High School League Alignment

Yeah no that would not work because here we have it by school numbers. Some schools in the smaller divisions have huge rosters but then in the playoffs it was JV+Varsity and a huge overloaded roster. But I mean JV just sits on the sideline and does nothing during playoffs. But I mean if you have 1500 you should be having at least 30+.

I agree with this. A school needs to get their chit together if they have an enrollment like that and only 18 kids on a roster. The state shouldn't have to reorganize the divisions to accommodate them. A school with low numbers in this state can petition to move down to a JV schedule for a season or two in an effort to get the program back on track. 

In Southern California school size or roster size means NOTHING anymore. Your league, by which I mean the group of 5-8 teams which you play every year, is decided by the teams they group together and regulate themselves.

Now it used to be these were roughly same sized schools within close proximity (logical) and the best teams from the league would go on to playoffs against schools from other similar sized leagues in a divisional playoff (ie division 5 or division 10).

Well, thats all gone now. Now playoff divisions are based on a given teams recent (2-year) window of success. So me at a small school of 250 can (and have) match up against a school of over 2500 if that school had a bad team the year before, or if we did good.

Its called competitive equity, it rewards failure and punishes success, its not very good, and it puts small schools at risk of injury.

Then you don't get to expect to be very good unless you get in a generational coach/administrative team and change things. You don't get to play "down" in games that matter. If you can schedule some wins for yourself in non league play by all means go for it.

Thanks for the feed back guys. I expected to see a lot of comments about "toughing in out", "coaches aren't recruiting". "Its your problem"

This issue has been affecting our region for the last 5 or more years and all teams are feeling it not just the lower level football schools. In fact the middle of the pack teams have been hurt more.

We have granted some teams relief and allowed them to play in lower league, forcing other teams to move up and change places. This has really hurt some teams for having to play up to sacrifice for lower level team.

The teams that were granted relief in a lower division did just as poorly and in some cases wound up forfeiting many games. Sacrificial team moved up for no reason in these cases.

We also tried to move all small roster, lower level teams to their own division. When this happened 5 additional schools requested to move into that league the following year. We were moving in a direction where this league may become the majority of our teams. We scraped it.

We are having teams drop football at a rapid rate. It's our feeling that losing teams will affect football in the entire region. Now we are in a crossroads and are trying to create a league were the teams that are of similar ability play against each other not lose by 50 to a superior team. This is not about having lower level teams win championships, its about giving them a chance to improve and build their program. Losing by 50 every week, year after year prohibits that opportunity to build and recruit.

My team isn't one of the lower level teams. I'm just trying to find different examples of this across the country to see if there is any direction our coaches association and section leaders can take from others experiencing similar problems.

We don't play in the state tournament. Our season ends at the regional level. We have 50 schools varying in enrollment from 200 -2000. Our demographics have changes drastically. Our population has become more diverse with cultures that aren't familiar with american football and are scared to participate our don't understand the game.

If anyone has seen similar problems -- I would love to hear ideas about how they tried to improve a bad situation.

Old school way - of just shut up and play isn't going to fly. Superintendents, community members, and parents are forcing the issue and we are trying to do whats right.

How does NJ set up their leagues?

Let me give you a scenario. We have 1 league were the same team wins every year. They go undefeated and play zero close games most of the games are over in the middle of the second quarter. They do everything right, have great coaches, players, admins, parents, and community support. They have roster size of 40-50 every year. They are playing schools with outstanding coaches but smaller teams 20 - 25 man roster. We also have a team in that same league with below 20 players and loses all their games every year by 30 or more. Nobody wants to play either of them because its a waste not competitive and not useful in developing skills, or competition. In these types of contest both teams and refs are just waiting for clock to run out and hope no-one gets hurt. Playing in games like this causes more injuries because its a nonsense game.

We have been meeting as an association to try and find best solution for everyone.

Is best solution to just play in enrollment number leagues and tell low level school to just drop football if they can't field a competitive team?

I'll be blunt here coach, I don't see them doing what's "right", they're doing what's "easy". It's harder to drop a program down to a sub varsity schedule and have them start building their program, versus just taking them and mashing them together into a different league. 

I see the powers that be creating the same issue, just within a different league as it's all relative. The well-coached teams within the league will dominate and those that are pushing the issue will be angry because it's not "safe". But, they've created a monster they have to live with until the team improves its numbers. Once a team improves its numbers, it'll move back into the big leagues where it may or may not be successful. If not, numbers will drop again and they'll be right back down in the league that's been created and the cycle will repeat itself. 

And, the folks that are creating this league are also establishing a culture of complacency with respect to the kids' attitudes towards football. Yes, there will be some kids that want to get out of the minors and move into the majors. But, if the kids are winning/competitive within this league then why would they want to move up to the "normal" division just to lose games or become average? Again, more kids may come out for the program but it'll be a vicious cycle. I can see a few of the 50 schools getting their chit together and becoming competitive in the normal classifications but I see far more being comfortable with winning.

We had a school in our largest classification forfeit a varsity season; they strictly played freshman and JV schedules for a season. Bear in mind that this school was AWFUL for years; they hadn't won a game in years and were considered one of the worst teams in any classification. We played them every year and it was pretty clear why they weren't winning; they weren't coached for crap. Their numbers were low but they had some athletic kids; just extremely poor coaching. We watched them on film one year and knew that a good coaching staff could bring that team a three-win season THAT YEAR. 

Well, they found a coaching staff that could do that. After one year on a JV schedule, their numbers jumped, they moved back to a varsity schedule and they won four games the next season. The administration and the school had to do some serious searching to get a quality coach and staff in place. The had to stop hiring whoever was willing to coach, open up the position on a national level and find a guy who could get the job done. And, they had to back the new HC's plan which involved revamping the weight room and helping him improve off-season participation.

So what's wrong with that?  Looks like a negative feedback loop, like you'd want to control machinery with.

Better than that would be a formal promotion-relegation system.  And yes, teams do bounce back and forth in those, which means they're at the level they've found, around the top of the lower level and the bottom of the higher level.

You're going to have teams cut players to keep the roster size low.   Count on it.