First of all, my apologies for the lack of previews and reviews the past week-and-a-half. I would certainly have preferred to be breaking down Estill or Green Sea or making extraneous CRANKSMACK references than covering a trial, but sometimes duty calls. I’ll give my previews and picks for the first round of the Class A playoffs tomorrow, but there are a few other matters that need to be discussed first.
I’m sure you’ve heard by now about the situation The OC (Oceanside Collegiate) finds itself in. In the course of thumping Phillip Simmons 70-0 the other week, they inserted a few JV players into the game. That would be fine had those players not also taken part in a JV game the night before. The South Carolina High School League did away with the eight-quarter rule a few years ago, which allowed athletes to play in a JV game on Thursday and varsity game on Friday (ideally as a back-up or special teamer). The OC’s head coach (Chad Grier) said he misunderstood the rule. He claims he believed that players were allowed four quarters of participation, which could be spread out over JV and varsity games. Now, I’m not going to question his integrity or honesty here…I think he was in North Carolina when the eight-quarter rule was abolished in our state. However, the primary thrust of the rule was player safety and built on the concept of recovery time between games. Recovery time is precisely why the rule was changed. I’m a nimrod blogger and newspaper scribe and I know that. It is part of a coach’s job to understand the rules he is playing by. If neither he nor anyone on his staff knew the intent of the rule, that’s completely on them and with player safety being of paramount importance in the eyes of the SCHSL, running afoul of that should bring a stiff penalty. To the League’s credit, they delivered one. They ruled that The OC had to forfeit four games (JV players apparently dressed but did not play in three other games) and were slapped with a $16,500 fine. That’s significant, but this is where the laws of unintentional consequences come into play. On the field, The OC was 9-0, won a region title and the number one playoff seed that comes with it. Had they stayed at number one, they would’ve faced Latta (a six seed) in the first round. Had they won, they would’ve then faced a stiff test from either Bamberg-Ehrhardt or Mullins. Moving on from there would likely have meant a third-round showdown with scary, unbeaten, holy-crap-are-they-awesome Barnwell. Surviving that one would have gotten them to the AA lowerstate title game. Instead, they dropped from a one to a four seed, so they get a much tougher first-round game than they would have otherwise (against one-seed Andrews, the Region VII champion), but if they win that one, they’ll play either Whale Branch (a four seed) or a Phillip Simmons team that is only a two seed because the forfeits imposed on The OC moved them up from third in their region to second. The OC, as already noted, gave them a 10 touchdown flogging already. If they win there, it’s then Woodland/East Clarendon/Johnsonville or Calhoun County (good teams but not in Barnwell’s class), then a perspective matchup with ONE of the heavyweights they’d have had to run the gauntlet of if seeded first. No knock on the teams in the lower end of the bracket, but their path got considerably easier thanks to their punishment. We also need to examine how any of this is fair to Andrews. They followed the rules, won a region title and by all rights should be playing an actual four seed in the first round, not a one seed dropped to a four because of forfeits. I know some folks are of the “well, you gotta play ‘em sometime” school of thought and that’s fine, but there’s an angle those folks don’t consider. Andrews would likely have dragged the rightful four seed from Region VI (a three-win Burke team that got one win via forfeit from The OC), then moved on. If they now don’t get out of the first round, they stand to lose a considerable amount of gate revenue that would have been generated. A loss in the first round that wouldn’t have been a loss otherwise hits them in the wallet. Oh, and aside from the second round, The OC, if they keep winning, will be at home until state, which they wouldn’t have been otherwise. So, while I appreciate that the league put some actual heft behind their talk about how seriously they take player safety, I don’t believe they went far enough. Let’s not forget that The OC has already gotten their wrist slapped this season for hitting with shields on the first day of practice. So, combined with the four games in which they violated the four-quarter rule, they essentially have five rules infractions on their resume in about a three-month span. Actually, if you look at each instance of a player who dressed on Thursday and Friday as a separate violation, The OC is guilty on dozens of counts. Much as it would suck for the kids and despite what they actually did on the field, The OC should have been hit with a playoff ban. There is certainly precedent on that front. Blythewood, in 2007, (as memory serves) ran afoul of rules about when they could go with full pads when practice started and had an earlier infraction in spring practice. They were banned from the playoffs. Boiling Springs, from what I’ve been told, got a playoff ban a few years back for having an eight-grader take one snap in a spring game. And we all remember Goose Creek getting hit with a playoff ban for VERY limited use of one ineligible player. This isn’t any different…in fact, I’d argue that this is considerably worse since it violates what is now considered the most important tenant of League policy; that being player safety, health and well-being. Athletic-centered charters like The OC already get a gigantic leg up on traditional public schools when it comes to attendance area, getting to cap their enrollment (thus deciding which classification they will compete in), having a greater percentage of their student body made up of athletes and non-traditional school days (half of their day is dedicated to athletic training and practice). That doesn’t even touch on coaches that don’t have to teach. Now, on top of all that, they have run afoul of League rules multiple times and still get a playoff slot. The League’s website used to be emblazoned with the saying “A champion is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” I guess that doesn’t apply anymore. Back in 1A there is a problem with who made the playoffs as well, but it has nothing to do with breaking the rules. Of the eight teams competing in the first round of the upperstate bracket (multiple teams have byes), three of them have winning records (and two of those play one another). In the lowerstate, there are two. Now, 1A teams will generally have worse records than those from larger classifications because they often play AA and AAA team out-of-region, teams that have a built in advantage in terms of number of athletes walking the halls. But we aren’t talking about 4-6 teams with three “up” losses on the ledger. Dixie, at 1-9 is in the field. Ware Shoals and Williston-Elko, each at 3-7, are in the field. Military Magnet made it with one win and Hemingway, winless 0-10 Hemingway, is not only in but hosting a game. We have this situation for a number of reasons. First, in the last realignment, the SCHSL made Class A too small. I’ve held forth on this at length on many occasions, but I think they did so to give the tiniest schools in the state (Calhoun Falls Charter, North etc.) some kind of puncher’s chance at being competitive. Unfortunately, there isn’t a classification you can draw up that will make schools with 100 kids competitive in much of anything. Many Class A schools, at this point, are small charters and academies that essentially play a sport or two and don’t field football teams. That’s not healthy for the class as a whole come playoff time in most sports. There’s also the issue that Class A schools are the most likely to have teams fold for lack of participation (the baseball and softball playoff brackets featured some two-team districts for that reason, which is ridiculous) or have schools closed down altogether (Lincoln, Creek Bridge). For that reason alone, Class A needs to be larger. Then we have preset brackets, which are total, steaming garbage piles. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, that is where it is decided ahead of time “OK, Region I, you get X number of teams in the playoffs, Region II, you get X many” and so on. It’s also decided in advance that the number three seed from this region hosts the number four team from this region in the first round. Not to pick on a young Hemingway team I’m certain will be considerably improved next year, but with Creek Bridge closing, Region VI has four schools and only three of them play football. The “top three” from that region (so, every team) make the playoffs. The number one seed gets a first-round bye and each of the other two host. So even though Hemingway did not win a game, they not only get a playoff game, they host it. One solution is for Class A to be made larger in the next realignment (which I sadly don’t see happening). Failing that, the structure of the playoffs needs to change. It’s ludicrous to assign playoff bids based on “well, you play in this region, so congrats, Bo.” We need to go back to a points system, which rewards a full body of work and puts the best teams in the field. This year, there would still have been a glut of teams with losing records in the field, but, just for example, Timmonsville could have gotten in instead of Hemingway. Granted, Timmonsville was only 2-8, but that’s two more wins than Hemingway had (and one of those two was against Hemingway, incidentally) and one more than Military Magnet or Dixie. But they aren’t in because their four-team region gets three bids and Hemingway’s three-team region gets three and Dixie’s five-team region gets four. It also wouldn’t hurt my feelings if, minus making Class A larger, we went to 16 playoff teams. Right now, 24 of the 29 football-playing schools get in. That’s watered down worse than a liquor drink at Applebees. To me, a playoff bid should be a reward for a good season and pit the best against the best. It’s hard to say we’re getting that under the current system.
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November 2021
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