Originally posted by WMFootballFanatic:
Either reconfigure the class system or reduce rounds in the playoffs for football to begin with. Look at rules that punish kids for wrong-doing by the adults.
The NCHSAA put a proposal out to reduce the 1A playoffs to four rounds. This would have cut the field in half, ended the playoffs a week earlier with a championship day all to 1A, cutout some of the travel and teams with terrible records making the playoffs, but still leaving the sub-divided classifications allowing for two champions. The schools (coaches and ADs) overwhelmingly responded not interested. NCHSAA then presented a first round bye for top seeds therefore lowering the qualifiers to 48 from 64 with everything else remaining the same. Same response. Some of the reasons was why should 1A be treated different than the other classes and why should less teams qualify. HELLO, 1A coaches pushed for subdivided playoffs and had them in 2001 before the others followed in 2002. They then were the ones that complained about the early round travel that resulted in the pod system. Two of the worst things to ever happen to NC playoffs and they do not want to be treated different.
I personally like the five rounds but there are too many brackets. Six divisions using a different setup than current in place that would do away with eight sub-classes. Qualifiers go from 256 to 192.
An idea looked at for issues such as Dudley was to suspend coaches but in-house and outside legal counsel informed the NCHSAA that this would probably not hold up if challenged because the coaches/ADs do not work for the NCHSAA and the suspensions would need to come from the responsible school systems. The admin has an issue with being a body that suspends and removes teams but they (and the board of directors) have not come up with a different way although there have been discussions. They are status quo with the other state associations but great entities make changes that other would not so I hope they strive to be great.
