Ever-changing Colorado, not unlike its famously fickle weather, may be on the verge of another reshuffling, this time by necessity in the upper classifications of schoolboy football.
Now in the second year of a two-year cycle and with minimal changes being seriously discussed for the next go-round in 2006-07, coaches throughout Classes 5A and 4A remain concerned about the game’s progression, adjusting to demographics that seem to change and expand by the minute, and the focus of what the game should be about for in-state student-athletes.
“This could be the time to do something in terms of evening out the state and evening out the leagues,” Overland coach Tony Manfredi said.
Pomona coach Jay Madden agrees, saying: “I think it’s time to do something. We’ve got to look at some other states that are doing a pretty dang good job. It’s amazing to think we have all the answers and not reinvent the wheel.”
From Denver to Pueblo, Colorado Springs to Fort Collins, Greeley to Grand Junction, Aurora to Jefferson County or Highlands Ranch to Boulder, the state’s largest schools have found themselves facing an inner core of broad issues that require addressing.
For example: The number of classifications for 11-man play (five, plus one each for 8-man and 6-man) may be too many. Classification enrollment requirements need readjusting. High cost of travel that is greatly affecting varsity play and ultimately may cripple lower levels. Needless bureaucracy within Colorado High School Activities Association member schools that at times takes what seems like an eternity to institute – or react to – change and is generally indifferent to any subjective allowances. Unbalanced leagues. So-called super leagues that have monopolized state championships and kept other programs from making any strides. Safety issues. And, one of the longtime favorites, playoff systems that are not easily understood, lack practicality and have created scheduling nightmares.
Repeated prescriptions of Band-Aids haven’t worked.
Multiple problems
“I’ve been on the football committee the last couple of few years and I’ve seen the problems in 5A and some in 4A, too,” 5A Poudre coach Rich Yonker said.
He pointed to the 1,661-student minimum for big-school play, a universal stickler if there is one for the top two classes of football.
“And we’ve had that one for quite a while,” he said. “I’m not sure that that 1,661 really makes a difference. There are some pretty good 4A teams.”
And some not-so-good 5A teams.
It has raised the same questions since Colorado went from a four-class system to five in 1990: Are there too many classifications? Should 5A and 4A be combined? Or is the mid-range considered too heavy and holding the upper classes back?
“The problem in Colorado with classifications of football or anything else is we have a bi-modal distribution of schools,” CHSAA commissioner Bill Reader said.
The state, he said, is “huge” in lower numbers (80-200) and the 1,100-1,400 range. A glut in schools with enrollments of 400-1,000 doesn’t help, either.
He added no real sense of realignment and reclassification from larger-school membership has passed his way, but it may be forthcoming, including with examples.
“Texas re-districts every two years,” Madden said of a system in which teams adjust schedules and classes based on previous results.
According to Madden, the idea is to keep it appealing as “it’s not that easy to get kids out for football anymore.”
Others states have a wide variance of strict and loose rules. Alaska and Hawaii split their schools right down the middle or on strength of programs. Pennsylvania, which has approximately three times as much population and twice as many football programs, has four classes, each with at least 140 schools. (Colorado’s 5A has 48.) California is so big that it has 10 districts and no outright state champion.
“We don’t want to be Texas, but we do want to do what’s right for us,” Manfredi said. “Unless you change the numbers, I’m not convinced we need to be a state of five classifications.”
Larger-school football also stands alone from the classification system for the state’s other 20 sanctioned sports – as Colorado’s most popular game, it is immune to the usual even split of 5A-4A in the next two traditional team sports for boys: baseball and basketball.
Hence, half a dozen schools compete in all 5A sports save for football – the sport has more teams that play up a classification than any other in-state sport, according to Reader – and it creates mixed feelings.
“Personally, I do not understand why CHSAA or these men and coaches from other schools don’t step up and take the challenge to compete at 5A,” 4A Lakewood coach Mark Robinson said.
Lakewood is scheduled to jump to 5A in 2006, and Robinson was a starter on the 1985 Tigers title team that dressed only 27 players yet still managed to crush Cherry Creek, the state’s largest school, 47-8.
As for travel, gasoline at $3 per gallon and counting will make it difficult for school districts to afford starting the buses, let alone traveling in them.
“The ‘geographics’ are tough and it diminishes a really good product,” Arvada West coach Casey Coons said.
Don’t just hop on the bus anymore
Ask Fruita Monument coach Billy Moore, a veteran coach “too old to keep riding that long on buses.”
And that is the least of his worries. The Wildcats, the only 5A team on the Western Slope, are in their second season of playing eight of their 10 nonleague games in 2004 and 2005 against Jeffco teams, including four against perennial power and top-ranked Columbine.
Fruita Monument won’t play a league game until Week 6, when it will re-enter the otherwise 4A Southwestern.
“Obviously we’re a school of, say, 1,720. Compared to playing the kind of competition it takes to be competitive, I don’t think we’re a school of 1,720,” he said, adding that his players are “not being brought up as 5A football players.”
Moore knows there isn’t another 5A school within more than 200 miles. How is his team supposed to play a big-school schedule?
It may be answered for him.
“Once gasoline keeps going up to $4 a gallon, they won’t let us travel to play,” he said, and his school’s lower levels may be first to go. Any more cuts, he said, that would trim the number of his freshman or junior-varsity games to five or so “wouldn’t be true to the kids.”
In addition, Fruita Monument and others that travel significant distances don’t have their lower levels play the same schools. For example, when the Wildcats play Columbine or Arvada West, their junior varsity and freshmen don’t. “And that’s not right,” Moore said.
A frustrated Coons was blunt, saying: “I’m to the point that I don’t care what we do, but we need to do something.”
Reader said “we can’t force change … or twist arms” and he’s correct – CHSAA members decide what’s best for themselves through a series of proposals and votes, although it can be time-consuming.
“It’s a frustrating process,” Manfredi said. “You can be diligent (on a proposal), but it won’t happen the first year and probably not the second year. It’s almost like they want to see how serious you are.”
Time for new leagues?
The idea of realignment of leagues may be gaining momentum. The current 5A-4A layout includes five to eight league games, is dependent on league titles and victory-point totals in a wild-card system to advance to the postseason, and has forced Zero Week games, an extra early slot that cuts into summer drills.
While a change in the system to award additional points for 5A teams playing 4A toward postseason standing is in place for 2005, more costly travel has made staying local even more of a priority. It also could enhance or renew rivalries.
Yonker, who said he’s open to “realignment or reshuffling,” agreed the time may have come “to get away from some of the old leagues. You’d break up the Centennial or Jeffco (that have dominated big-school play for more than a quarter-century), then maybe adjust them around to make some pretty good leagues.”
Said CHSAA assistant commissioner Bert Borgmann: “We need to be able to create a situation where everyone can get a full schedule. But what that is I don’t know at this particular point. If I’m a 5A school, I’m concerned about making sure we’re able to get a game.”
Said Coons, “Before we do anything, we need to get the leagues straightened out.”
The next scheduled significant change to 5A football is the 32-team playoff setup for 2006 that would seed teams 1-32 in an elimination bracket and pit the remaining lesser programs in a season-ending matchup.
It has its good points, such as more of an emphasis on regular-season play. But critics have gotten louder with suggestions of catering to the top leagues, diminishing the postseason and putting teams in the lower end of the elimination rounds at huge disadvantages.
Reader said he has “faith in the membership” to do what’s right for Colorado and is satisfied “(larger-school football) is not live at all costs. The kids are still playing for fun.”
Others second the notion and crave ways to make it better.
“It would be nice to figure it out,” Madden said.
Staff writer Neil H. Devlin can be reached at 303-820-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com.
