The Centennial State’s football is ruled by the Centennial League.
And it has been for decades. Since 1982, 17 big-school titles have been won by teams from the suburban league, which at one time ran from Boulder to Castle Rock and into Littleton and Aurora, and now is made up of five Cherry Creek School District schools and Valor Christian.Three of the final four in this year’s large school playoffs are from the Centennial.
But as much as the schools and competitors love their league and as much as I’ve relished covering it since moving here in 1980, we pretty much know what must happen.
If Colorado big-school football is to gain any kind of balance, the league’s gotta go, man.
That was painful to type, but it’s true.
It’s part common sense and part prevention, as in attempting to give the schools, who set the governing rules, the opportunity to save some face from self-generated poor leadership. Hopefully, they’ll take it.
No Class 5A Centennial would be, well, weird in football, as we have a Centennial in virtually every other sport. However, like it or not, football is handled differently from all other sports.
The league’s teams realize they face relative gauntlets for schedules, but they won’t change unless ordered to do so. They live for the competition.
And yet recall last year’s “waterfall” proposal, in which the two-year layouts would be based on previous showings, and was championed by the Centennial League.
The Centennial League makes geographical sense. The southeast corridor of the metro area and a reach into Highlands Ranch works. And it does have its good points for Colorado, particularly in making the high end of state play stronger, drawing attention to top-flight athletes and maintaining an elite level.
Consider the Centennial’s depth — Eaglecrest, which was 2-3 in league play, nearly took down eventual semifinalist and Jefferson County champion Ralston Valley in the second round of the playoffs. And Cherokee Trail, winless in the Centennial, came within 10 points of another league’s runner-up in the preliminaries. We nearly had all four semifinalists from the Centennial as opposed to the three we got.
But the rest of Colorado isn’t handling any of this well or learning from it. There’s conflict, philosophical and otherwise. The CCSD schools embrace large student bodies, as 2,000-plus is the norm, soon to be more than 3,000 for as many as three of those schools; other districts panic once enrollment approaches, say, 1,800 and cry out for new schools.
And the on-again, off-again talk by out-of-touch administrators of creating a Class 6A is ludicrous. They don’t know their history — 6A football, which ran here from 1990-93 and contained little more than two dozen schools, was a bad idea that hasn’t gotten any better 21 years later.
Clearly, putting Valor Christian in with the Cherry Creek schools in hopes they would beat each other up didn’t work. Ditto for reuniting the top Jeffco schools with Mullen. No, all of them are stronger for it and won’t get any weaker anytime soon.
Ask those in the Littleton schools. The Front Range schools. The Douglas County and Boulder-area schools. Even those on the Western Slope and in Colorado Springs. Surely, they realize improvement won’t come by playing only against themselves. If the parity that certain officials crave and are convinced they can legislate is to happen, a realistic reshuffling is necessary.
Sadly, the Centennial’s gotta go. It’s too good. And that’s whether we like it or not. And I don’t.
Neil H. Devlin: ndevlin@denverpost.com or
