There’s no chance of spring football practice coming to Pennsylvania any time soon.
Says who? Says PIAA executive director Brad Cashman.
Cashman told the Pittsburgh Tribune Review’s Jerry DiPaola that spring football, so enthusiastically endorsed by the Pennsylvania Scholastic Football Coaches Association, is DOA. He repeated the same today to rodfrisco.com. Jerry’s story is here; our original report on the issue is here.
Although it the Board of Directors that will make any decision on spring football, Cashman, a former football coach, left no doubt where he stood.
“With all due respect to the coaches, I just don’t see the Board willing to come up with a spring football time block that is not in conflict withthe other spring sports,” Cashman said Friday. “To do so would be in violation of Article XVI (of the PIAA Constitution) which says, and I’m paraphasing, that no sport will operate to the detriment of another sport.”
In fact, Cashman has been using that very article to try to reduce the football season from 16 weeks to 15 weeks, ironically to no avail.
There are five boys spring sports: baseball, lacrosse, track and field, tennis and volleyball. That requires a lot of athletes, and there’s no doubt that there are football players among those sports’ participants, although no hard figures are available.
The PFSCA has said it would like to see the spring practice period in late May after the regular season for all spring sports has ended, thus minimizing the impact on the spring sports. PSFCA is also on record as supporting participation by football players in the spring sports.
Intrigued, I called the the Florida state association (FHSAA) to see how that state, which has had spring football for decades, handled its spring football.
Florida spring practice begins on May 1 and permits 20 practice sessions including a spring game. The spring games can be intrasquad games or school vs. school. Schools charge admission to the spring games, and they draw large crowds.
FHSAA media relations director Sonny Hester said the spring games generate approximately $1 million statewide annually, 20 percent of which (nearly $200,000) goes to FHSAA.
PIAA is struggling with finances as ticket revenue has dwindled during the weak economy, but Cashman said he is “not impressed” by the potential for additional revenue. “I have very doubts that the potential for additional revenue would sway the board. Maybe – maybe – that would open the door a little, but I doubt it,” Cashman said. “The bottom line is, will this be to detriment of those five boys spring sports? I believe it will be.”
Cashman, who was the head football coach at Northern High School in Dillsburg in the 1970s before joining PIAA, said he always considered track and field as his program’s spring practice, especially after he began coaching track. The addition of lacrosse, which draws a number of football players, has provided another spring outlet for football players.
There is another importance factor in Florida’s spring football situation.
“Football is king in Florida,” Hester said. “So we end all of our spring championships except baseball by May 1. That way we’ve avoided those conflicts.”
Of course, Florida is able to start its spring sports in February, something that is impossible in Pennsylvania.
Cashman is correct. Maybe it’s different in the bigger schools, but down in Single-A, the vast majority of prep football players are involved in a spring sport. (Sometimes more than one.) At the school I cover, the starting quarterback is the No. 1 pitcher for the baseball team, and will go to districts in the javelin. The linebacker/catcher (who also doubles in track), WR/1B, and safety/DH were all Big 30 All-Stars last fall.
The local baseball teams were barely halfway through their regular-season schedules on May 1, and the district playoffs don’t start until the 24th. It wouldn’t affect only the players, either — all three coaches for that team are also assistants on the football staff.
Just don’t see how they could make it work.
There are two points here. One, the state football coaches official position is to encourage spring sports participation. Indeed, PIAA could easily insert a provision that prohibits an athlete from joining football practice until his spring season ends.
The coaches will propose that spring football begin in mid-to-late May, not early May, once the regular season schedules have ended. That would reduce potential conflicts considerably.
Second, it seems the biggest argument against spring practice centers on the dual-sport athletes. That’s all well and good, but what about the football players who do not and will not participate in a spring sport? Should they be denied the option to improve their game and their exposure to college coaches because other athletes run track, and play baseball or lacrosse?
There’s a lot to consider here, and that’s why I’ve changed my mind on the subject over the years. And remember, PIAA can control the spring practice rules any way its wishes.
Both of those arguments have merit at larger programs, and ones more likely to include single-sport athletes talented enough to compete at the college level. Guess I’m just not used to seeing those programs up here in the wilds of District 9, where many small schools struggle just to field teams and those single-sport all-stars are a rarity.
In the last five seasons, two different schools in our league have had to forfeit football games due to low numbers, and there’s a longstanding rumor that another one may drop its program to enter a co-op agreement with its oldest rival. Think they dressed 21 players when I saw them last year. It’s the same across the border in New York, which lost two Big 30-area programs in 2009:
http://www.oleantimesherald.com/articles/2009/08/25/sports/doc4a9433da1c90e527587493.txt
Being the curious sort I am, I pulled the local team’s rosters. Including freshmen, there are 28 underclassmen on the combined varsity/JV football list. More than half are involved in at least one spring sport; think I see a total of three starters who aren’t. Could the remainder (mostly from the jayvee side) benefit from spring work? Absolutely. But when there are barely enough kids to run a 7-on-7, and the entire starting backfield and both backup QBs are off playing baseball — they’re all everyday starters for a team which has already clinched a playoff berth — I wonder how productive those sessions would be.
Going by anecdotal evidence from the games/meets I’ve covered this spring, I’m guessing most of the area teams are in the same boat. Should that impact the ability of the big-time programs in the state to hold spring practices? Hard to argue that. Guess I’m just saying that if it ever does happen, I can’t see too many schools around here being able to take advantage of it.
Either way, it’s worth giving some of the local coaches a call to see what they think. Thanks for the reply, and good luck with the site. I’ll miss seeing your byline in the P-N tab this August.