AURORA — Ordinarily, it’s easy to dismiss the second of two annual Colorado High School Activities Association’s board of control meetings as a bit of a yawner.
The first gathering in January usually deals with major changes or passes off mostly minor modifications to sports proposals to the spring meeting, which will take place in a week. Otherwise, administrators get at least another day away from school and its cafeteria food.
There had been excitement about next week’s meeting, that it might include changing sites in upper classifications of Sweet 16 basketball from the neutral, cavernous and ridiculous to home sites, based on seeding, but much of that buzz will be lost if a certain executive committee move is approved.
Warning! It may be here.
An across-the-board cut of 10 percent for all sanctioned sports’ regular seasons, beginning with the two-year cycle of 2010-12, will be on the table.
I wish they would knock it off.
Of course, the economy — what else? — is being blamed, the only E-word that seems to matter these days. And most of us are fearful of administrators’ caution with funds. If it comes down to Bunsen burners or baseballs? Forget it. Today’s school leaders are more preoccupied with liability, opinion and perception than concentration on actualities.
Next school year would be safe, as contracts mostly are in place, but 2010-11 would be first in line for the now relevant furlough (haven’t you taken yours yet?) that has reached beyond paychecks and bitten into bottom lines of high school sports.
If the executive committee’s proposal passes and the E-word doesn’t improve, today’s sophomores will have a senior year minus at least one football game or swimming meet, maybe three fewer volleyball matches and basketball games. Nothing would be safe — field hockey, skiing, tennis . . .
It’s happening nationally, including in New York, but I was hoping Colorado’s Old West would resurface with a posse of passion.
Where have all the cowboys gone?
If officials can avoid sudden bouts of panicked prudence, they’ll vote down a bad idea that would shoo who knows how many student-athletes through ridiculously empty corridors.
Cuts? The same meeting will have proposals from multiple leagues that want to increase the number of games for baseball and softball, and add a third classification of tennis.
Guess they didn’t get the memo, huh?
If anyone should be cutting games, it’s the professionals, although we know that won’t happen.
Trust me, most of the money for high school sports comes from team fundraising, as opposed to athletic directors handing out checks to cover everything.
Nationally, participation numbers in high school sports are at a record level. Locally, attendance reached a new high for upper classes of the state basketball tournament. Football centralized four championships in the Denver area, and the wrestling tournament took only a minor hit in crowds.
The interest is there. So is the importance. So why cut now? To show schools appear to be doing their part? Because it would make them look good? And if the cuts don’t work, what’s next? Do we go to half-seasons? Will there be club sports only for ensuing cycles?
I think not.
This is a path that should be avoided like the flu. Ask the baseball coaches of the 1970s, when the end of bell-bottoms and start of an energy crisis took away more innings than Colorado’s bad spring weather. Programs didn’t get them back until the 1990s.
Why pick on kids? Lines will be drawn. An immediate threat? The non-revenue-generating sports would be nickeled-and-dimed to death. Fairness? If you think athletic directors and the like are pressured now, wait until they have to tell parents in certain sports that field hockey or soccer had to drop more games than in, say, football and basketball.
Which opponents would be dropped? The heated rivals or the cream puffs? Do schools only play those in their areas? And what of the larger leagues that have fewer, if any, nonleague opportunities? Another realignment or an incomplete schedule?
Or do we slice into the playoffs Coloradans have been fooling with and expanding for decades?
Plus, we would go well beyond any class system. The have-nots would be driven even further from the haves.
No, now’s not the time.
Hold out longer.
Neil H. Devlin: 303-954-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com
