Coaches and athletes thrive on doing things they are told can’t be done.
So please, don’t believe there’s not a way to add an open date to the LHSAA football season.
Wednesday’s Shreveport-Bossier Journal Coaches’ Roundtable focused on that concept. Nine local head coaches weighed in, each with wise observations, but not all with the same perspective.
There is agreement that adding an open date should not result in losing a playing date. The 10-game regular season is sacred in the eyes of the coaches, because those 10 outings (and hopefully more in the playoffs) are what their players work toward all year long.
And it is all year long now – especially for the football-only kids, who start offseason workouts after coming back from Christmas break. Then in May, it’s spring practice for 10 days, and summer has a steady slate of team workouts, 7-on-7 tournaments, offensive line camps, prospect camps for college recruiting, and in a few cases, summer school or online college classes.
For the multi-sport competitors, as soon as football ends, many have an immediate transition to basketball, wrestling or even soccer. It’s warm enough in the winter that baseball workouts hardly stop. There’s indoor track and field, then the outdoor version.
The kids love it, or they wouldn’t sustain the high level of commitment.
Why smack dab in the middle of the football season should they not play?
Their minds and bodies (not to overlook their coaches) could use a break. No other sport is as physically taxing as football. It’s far more than game night – it’s the steady routine of practices, some pretty rugged. Preseason begins in early August. For nine straight weeks now, they’ve been grinding.
At least another five weeks are ahead. For the better teams, the playoffs extend 1-2-3 more weeks, and for the very best, the goal is five playoff games ending with the Prep Classic at the Caesars Superdome.
That epic weekend is one reason coaches hesitate to consider adjusting the schedule and adding an open week. The Superdome hosts the New Orleans Bowl on the following weekend, which is also when the Christmas holiday break starts for schools all over.
Nearly everybody loves playing in the Dome. Adding a week to the season could render that impossible – but only if the New Orleans Bowl absolutely has to be played on a Saturday.
It doesn’t, despite what ESPN would say. There is absolutely no reason that game could not happen on a non-Saints home game Sunday, or the following Monday, no reason at all.
That would free the LHSAA to start the postseason a week later, which would solve the other end of the quandry local coaches cited when mulling how to implement an open date.
Nobody wants to play another week in the summer heat. Nobody wants to start practicing earlier because of state restrictions which prohibit outdoor football workouts past a high temperature threshold revolving around the “wet bulb” reading.
The irony is that while practices are not allowed, games are. Figure that logic.
But the preparation for those games, already too limited for coaches’ likings, would shrink if the season started a week earlier.
Or would it? A front-end option would be to eliminate the jamborees, the two-quarter mini-games that happen ahead of Week 1 regular-season play.
Teams already stage scrimmages against two other schools, one a week, in August. Considering the summer-long run of workouts and competitions that feature everything but blocking and tackling, seems that a couple of tuneup scrimmages, or one plus a jamboree, would be sufficient to be able to start the 10-game schedule a week earlier than now.
While that might work on a calendar, the heat can’t be beat.
The more logical approach is to extend the end of the season by a week. Push back the championship round to the third weekend of December – like they do in Texas, playing their state finals at JerryWorld, where otherwise, the Cowboys entertain/frustrate their fans.
The stretch toward Santa’s big day really would impact just 18 schools, those who are headed to the Crescent City for the game of their dreams. Yes, basketball players at those schools wouldn’t get to the gym until the holidays, but their district seasons would still not begin for a few weeks at least. Some smaller schools don’t start basketball until football ends anyway and if that’s not until Thanksgiving or later, hardly anyone cares because the football season was so fun.
It doesn’t have to be such a grind.
Implementing a midseason open date just requires a few options to consider at the January LHSAA convention where principals, athletic directors and coaches look ahead to the future and how things can be done better.
Despite the select/non-select split and all its nuances, they usually do. This isn’t rocket science. It’s not even bottle rocket science.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com