Aurora – Football pads will not be popping during the spring on Colorado high school fields anytime soon.
The Colorado High School Activities Association board of control Thursday voted quickly against allowing 12 days of springtime football practice, including scrimmages, at its biannual meeting at the Radisson Hotel Southeast.
“I think the fact that there was some overlap there with spring championships probably was a red flag for some people,” said Johnnie Walker, the CHSAA’s football advisory committee chairman and athletic director at Grand Junction High School.
CHSAA set up seven outreach meetings, representing more than 250 schools, to examine and debate the issue. Individual board members came into Thursday’s meeting locked into a “yes” or “no” vote according to their respective leagues.
“We had really good debate at those outreach meetings about the football issue,” CHSAA commissioner Bill Reader said. “I think it was evident throughout the course of this meeting that these guys voted based on some pretty good background knowledge of all of the issues. Football was such an interesting topic, I think people knew full well what their position was going to be when they came into the room.”
In a separate measure, board members voted for some major tweaks in fall football. Playoff brackets for classes 3A and 2A will be seeded after the 16 qualifiers are in place. Previously, seeds were determined in those two classifications by league finish.
“It’s not going to be something etched in stone, as it was in the past,” Walker said. “There will be some flexibility to move teams around within the brackets. … I think that’s becoming more en vogue with the football committee.”
As part of the same vote, the 5A football postseason will be modified so teams from the same conference, if possible, will not meet in the first round. Also, 2A will move from a nine-week to a 10-week season, beginning in 2008, and will look to establish a championship weekend at a common site for the 3A and 2A title games.
Just as the board did not want to play football in the spring, it did not want to play baseball after Memorial Day.
Fifty-six of the 67 members opposed extending the baseball season into the second weekend of June, which would schedule title games after graduation for some seniors.
In other proposals, the CHSAA voted for expansion of cross country and boys golf. Cross country will go from three classifications to four beginning in the 2008-10 cycle, and boys golf will expand from two to three classes.
An attempt to allow in-state schools to participate in tournaments during the winter dead period failed, as did a measure to allow contact between coaches and athletes on Sundays.
