Why Doesn't the OHSAA Use Districts for Football?

B

BelowTheLine

Well-known member
So I was thinking about this today. With the expansion of the playoffs and now allowing 16 teams per region into the playoffs why doesn't the OHSAA break each division into smaller districts to help with travel? I know in region 23 at least two teams are traveling over 3 hours for an away game.

Wouldn't it make more sense to break each division down into 8 districts and have 8 teams make the playoffs in each district? It would give you more local matchups early in the playoffs, less travel for fans and likely more gate for the OHSAA. I can't imagine many people are wanting to travel 3:45 on a Friday night to see their team play.
 
 
BelowTheLine said:
Wouldn't it make more sense to break each division down into 8 districts and have 8 teams make the playoffs in each district? It would give you more local matchups early in the playoffs, less travel for fans and likely more gate for the OHSAA.
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Current setup gives you more local matchups all season.
 
BelowTheLine said:
So I was thinking about this today. With the expansion of the playoffs and now allowing 16 teams per region into the playoffs why doesn't the OHSAA break each division into smaller districts to help with travel? I know in region 23 at least two teams are traveling over 3 hours for an away game.

Wouldn't it make more sense to break each division down into 8 districts and have 8 teams make the playoffs in each district? It would give you more local matchups early in the playoffs, less travel for fans and likely more gate for the OHSAA. I can't imagine many people are wanting to travel 3:45 on a Friday night to see their team play.
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District-style play, akin to what's used in Texas, would never work in Ohio because of the number of schools in the state, the sizes of the schools, and the disparities between those sizes. It would cause travel costs to explode.
 
EHS 2001 said:
Changes that would also make sense
  1. Fewer divisions
  2. Fewer playoffs qualifiers per region
  3. Playing games on Saturdays instead of forcing everyone to play on Friday night.
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1. Current division amount preferred by coaches
2. Current qualifiers preferred by OHSAA
3. Current schedule prefers by coaches

just so everyone knows who to direct complaints to on which topic
 
EHS 2001 said:
Changes that would also make sense
  1. Fewer divisions
  2. Fewer playoffs qualifiers per region
  3. Playing games on Saturdays instead of forcing everyone to play on Friday night.
Click to expand...
Get the first two, but don't understand the advantage of #3 except for the small number of people who want to take in multiple games in a weekend.
 
reganaustinjames said:
District-style play, akin to what's used in Texas, would never work in Ohio because of the number of schools in the state, the sizes of the schools, and the disparities between those sizes. It would cause travel costs to explode.
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Why? literally all you have to do is take the current regions and divide them in half based on the location of the schools to create the districts.
 
I always though Regional where done to equal the 4 regionals equally into teams. But that's true because some Regionals have 34 teams and others 24 isn't fair.
 
BelowTheLine said:
Why? literally all you have to do is take the current regions and divide them in half based on the location of the schools to create the districts.
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Meanwhile, you eliminate lots a traditional opponents that schools like to play.

Ya see, the difference is that leagues are, by and large, voluntary affiliations. Districts are not. Why would you think that some administrative overlord has the authority to dictate schedules?
 
Oil Filter said:
Meanwhile, you eliminate lots a traditional opponents that schools like to play.

Ya see, the difference is that leagues are, by and large, voluntary affiliations. Districts are not. Why would you think that some administrative overlord has the authority to dictate schedules?
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Bingo! This is the number one reason why Ohio will never go to districts. As well as its history of mostly being heavily resistant to change.

Technically, the rule from the state is: "Here are the playoff divisions and regions based on enrollment figures. You know how the points work. You have ten weeks, for ten games. Schedule as you please." League affiliations, which as mentioned are agreements amongst schools themselves, take care of much of that, but the out-of-league element allows schools to do what's best for them. If they want to challenge a national power, they can. If they want to preserve a long-standing non-conference rivalry (think Napoleon-Defiance, they can). And if they need to schedule down to help rebuild, they can. Ohio's system's flexibility is arguably its greatest strength.
 
Oil Filter said:
Meanwhile, you eliminate lots a traditional opponents that schools like to play.

Ya see, the difference is that leagues are, by and large, voluntary affiliations. Districts are not. Why would you think that some administrative overlord has the authority to dictate schedules?
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I could be wrong, but I believe the OP is advocating for breaking into districts for the playoffs. Basketball and many other sports do it this way, with early-round (sectional) games played against local teams, and those winners funnel into the district level, which then goes to the regional level.

So why go straight to the regional level when week one of the playoffs could essentially be a district semi-final, week two a district final, and then week three would be a regional semi-final, as it is now?

My guess is the difference is that *only* 16 teams per region make it and not a certain amount per district (or, in the case of most sports, all teams make it).

Breaking regions up into districts (for travel purposes) could only be done after the regular season, and I imagine the OHSAA wouldn’t want to make those calls with the potential for complaining by some. Or all, lol.
 
I get the argument for districts and it could help a decent amount of schools with travel, but there would still be some schools with significant travel. I look at Northwest Ohio since that is where I live. Many of our schools fall into D-6 or D-7 for football and D-4 for basketball, baseball, or volleyball. There is 1 league made up of larger schools, but even that league has D-3, D-4, and D-5 schools for football. A district competition would repeat regular season games, which I am not a fan of for football. And the district is only good when the teams in that area are even eligible for the playoffs, if not you’re back to long road-trips. I would suspect southeast Ohio would also have a similar issue.
 
serpico said:
Breaking regions up into districts (for travel purposes) could only be done after the regular season, and I imagine the OHSAA wouldn’t want to make those calls with the potential for complaining by some. Or all, lol.
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If they can handle that mess in Michigan, they can handle that little mess in Ohio. Been posting the idea for years because in NWO, being small population in the big schools we often get long travel times. But, just being a fan, I don't get a vote.

I can't say for sure the jump to 16 teams exacerbated the first round travel or improved it. District, even one round of it should improve. It's not that hard to take the data from the last two years, pretend they had been districted then see the results, put it in front of the AD/Coaches and say, "what do you think?"
 
I believe, for District events District Boards get the money and for Regional Events the State gets the money.

Sectional and District events ran by the District Boards and Regional and State events ran by the State.

That is way you see different sports with different setups, at least that is how it was explained to me many years ago.
 
Having districts for the playoffs wouldn't necessarily solve the problem of long trips the first 2 weeks of the playoffs. For instance, Canfield was formerly in D-II Region 7 with all the Columbus area schools for about 8 years or so...

I am not sure which school was even the closest to Canfield, but most of them are over a 3 hour drive, likely over a 4 hour drive by bus at the time (school buses had governor set at 55 mph and the speed limit for buses was 55 on all interstates)

Region 7 Schools
Zanesville
Columbus West
Centennial
Marietta
Chillicothe
Columbus East
Northland
Franklin Heights
St. Charles
South Urban Academy
Columbus Independence
Briggs
Mifflin
Watkins Memorial
Pickerington Central
Pickerington North
Teays Valley
Dublin Jerome
Beechcroft
Marion Franklin
Dublin Scioto
Walnut Ridge
Central Crossing
Fairborn
Mount Vernon
Thomas Worthington
North Springfield
Whetstone
Logan
Xenia
Brookhaven
Lancaster
Lincoln
Beavercreek

Amongst those schools above @BelowTheLine what teams would you have put in the district with Canfield and would it even help at all?

Conversely an opposite problem is in some densely populated areas it is difficult to draw a line somewhere that makes sense to split the teams up. That is, their is a cluster roughly in the middle of the region of schools very close to one another and then the remainder are on the edges and outskirts of the region area very spread out. So if you simply split the region in half, you would get rid of a lot of very short trip possibilities, but I suppose you would get rid of a few longer trips, but the net result would still be a higher average trip technically because of all the shorter trips you wouldn't have anymore.

The only solution that makes sense to limit driving and long trips if that is your ultimate goal is to do the pairings by geography by region after all the teams are selected or to select the top 64 teams per division irrespective of region, and then do all the pairings by proximity to limit travel times. The problem with this is this would likely be unbalanced as certain regions traditionally are stronger and weaker than others, sometimes due to perceived inequities. That is for instance as an example you would likely find more NEO schools make it in some divisions due to perceived scheduling advantages.
 
serpico said:
I could be wrong, but I believe the OP is advocating for breaking into districts for the playoffs. Basketball and many other sports do it this way, with early-round (sectional) games played against local teams, and those winners funnel into the district level, which then goes to the regional level.

So why go straight to the regional level when week one of the playoffs could essentially be a district semi-final, week two a district final, and then week three would be a regional semi-final, as it is now?

My guess is the difference is that *only* 16 teams per region make it and not a certain amount per district (or, in the case of most sports, all teams make it).

Breaking regions up into districts (for travel purposes) could only be done after the regular season, and I imagine the OHSAA wouldn’t want to make those calls with the potential for complaining by some. Or all, lol.
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Yes. This is EXACTLY what I was
serpico said:
I could be wrong, but I believe the OP is advocating for breaking into districts for the playoffs. Basketball and many other sports do it this way, with early-round (sectional) games played against local teams, and those winners funnel into the district level, which then goes to the regional level.

So why go straight to the regional level when week one of the playoffs could essentially be a district semi-final, week two a district final, and then week three would be a regional semi-final, as it is now?

My guess is the difference is that *only* 16 teams per region make it and not a certain amount per district (or, in the case of most sports, all teams make it).

Breaking regions up into districts (for travel purposes) could only be done after the regular season, and I imagine the OHSAA wouldn’t want to make those calls with the potential for complaining by some. Or all, lol.
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Yes, this is what I was talking about. Only playoffs.
 
BelowTheLine said:
Yes, this is what I was talking about. Only playoffs.
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But my question still remians would it be helpful at all for the situation I described and how would you seperate those teams from region 7 in the early 2000s into 2 districts? Either way Canfield is still a huge geographical outlier.
 
So let’s go opposite direction.
Get rid of the 4 regions and 64 teams per division for playoffs , and just go Top 32 in comp points per division. Cause obviously OHSAA doesn’t give a crap about travel distance between schools with NW and SE regions.
 
EHS 2001 said:
3. Playing games on Saturdays instead of forcing everyone to play on Friday night.
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Who the heck really likes this other than a small group of fans that want to go to two games in one round? The overwhelming majority of parties hate Saturday games (coaches, players, Ohio State fans, local journalists, and yes, even referees). I don't know of any other states that play pre-championship rounds on Saturdays.
 
sbfan10 said:
#1 reason is because they only charge $8 for district games and $12 for regional games
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lol you got your OHSAA slam wrong. The issue would be Sectionals and Districts are run by OHSAA District Boards, where the money remains. Regionals and States ar run by the main OHSAA office. When you see it in other sports, that is why the designation as a District or a Region has meaning.
 
cometrules said:
I always though Regional where done to equal the 4 regionals equally into teams. But that's true because some Regionals have 34 teams and others 24 isn't fair.
Click to expand...

I asked Beau Rugg at the OHSAA about this, and he said that since the change was made to 16 teams per region qualifying, they changed the emphasis from equal number of teams per regional to keeping the regions as geographically compact as possible.

But I agree, there being a difference of up to 10 teams between the largest and smallest regions in the same division is far too much.
 
I actually kind of like the idea of splitting the 16 teams that qualify into 2, 8 team "districts" based on geography to lesson travel in the first couple of rounds. Of course there will be instances where one side is much stronger than the other, but that happens as is now depending on how the seeding falls.
 
@kingpin2010 How would you handle the specific example I gave of region 7 from one year in the early 2000s? How would that help when you have one team that is 3+ hours from all the rest?
 
simkon said:
@kingpin2010 How would you handle the specific example I gave of region 7 from one year in the early 2000s? How would that help when you have one team that is 3+ hours from all the rest?
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It's not a panacea and going to solve every single problem, but I am certain doing something like this would cut down a significant percentage of miles traveled (save money) and increase local playoff matchups (increase attendance/money).
 
EagleFan said:
lol you got your OHSAA slam wrong. The issue would be Sectionals and Districts are run by OHSAA District Boards, where the money remains. Regionals and States ar run by the main OHSAA office. When you see it in other sports, that is why the designation as a District or a Region has meaning.
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While that’s technically true, all of the money is still under the control of the state office. It’s all the same Tax ID number, the same organization, and the board of directors in columbus having ultimate authority over the District Boards, even if that’s “where the money remains.”
 
EHS 2001 said:
Changes that would also make sense
  1. Fewer divisions
  2. Fewer playoffs qualifiers per region
  3. Playing games on Saturdays instead of forcing everyone to play on Friday night.
Click to expand...
Look at the numbers for the schools in Division VII....you don't want to throw them in with even bigger schools.
 
I think the travel time discussions are overblown sometimes.

My brother teaches at a very small private school on the Navajo reservation in northeast Arizona. By default, any tournament play requires 5+ hour bus trips due to the absolute scarcity of teams in most every part of Arizona besides the main population centers.

We're supposed to be Ohio football, some of the highest-grade high school football in the country, pound for pound.

A two or three hour bus trip is too much? Really? In a sport that preaches toughness and physicality, we draw the line at having to travel too far? The horror. How can these kids ever survive such a terrible reality. What's next, we make these kids engage in physically aggressive athletics that involve tackling each other? What if it hurts!
 
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