The PIAA Board of Directors will discuss and (hopefully) vote of the 15-week football season proposal at some point this morning.
Currently, the BOD is conducting a hearing. Once the Board takes up the issue, we’ll blog it. I’ll tweet out the start of the the discussion.
PIAA executive director Brad Cashman is currently giving his report, which includes football. Among the items in his report is the approval of football championship brackets for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014. The brackets in the PIAA agenda are for 15 weeks, not 16 weeks.
Don’t get too excited: The Board will likely bypass approving championship brackets until it votes on the 15-week proposal, which is probably about a half-hour away (it’s 9:20 a.m. at this post).
Sorry for the lack of update, but the discussion now is about junior high kids playing football in community programs outside the defined season. It’s a District 1 / 12 issue and the rest of the Board is showing its disinterest.
Now we’re on to proposed PIAA by-law amendments that are not directly related to football. Should go quickly, but we’re still nowhere near the 15-week vote, and the next hearing is bearing down on the Board.
As expected, the second hearing of the day is taking place. The football discussion has been put off for at least another half hour (post at 10:10 a.m.)
Sorry to tell you, the hearing is still going on, and the football vote is getting farther and farther away. In fact, it’s possible it won’t be addressed this morning. The third hearing is on deck, and kickoff for the Class A championship game is 1 p.m. The window is closing.
The Mike McQueary testimony in Harrisburg is fascinating, though.
Wow! District 3 chairman Sam Elias goes off, ripping the Board for delaying the football discussion. Sam said that the matter should have been discussed Friday night, that it was clearly the most important matter of the meeting. Bravo!
Finally, the football issue … no, wait. The PIAA will first discuss the definition of boundary and non-boundary schools as they relate to the PIAA transfer rule.
Huge blowup in the room between Sean McAleer, counsel for the Catholic Conference, and PIAA president Rod Stone.
The definitions are tabled to January.
Now, football …
District 5 chair Virg Palumbo asks if a district can mandate an early start. District 1 rep Rod Stone asks if the district is generating a schedule. Stone says no.
Palumbo insists that if D5 wants to execute its Class A playoffs the way it wants, it MUST mandate an early start.
Elias says he doesn’t understand this new issue. He notes that the issue has been discussed thoroughly and that new interpretations of the proposal are (this is my word) specious.
Ron Kennedy of District 3 says there is a perception that there is new information on the matter. He notes there is at least one Board member missing. He’s suggesting this has to go back to the districts for another round of informational discussion.
Dan Cardone of District 7 says the schedules have to get done and out in February. He says the vote has to happen now.
Coaches rep Ron Kanaskie moves to table. It fails, 13-14.
Sam Elias of District 3 moves to vote on the matter. It is seconded.
Male parents’ rep Dale Myers surprises by saying he cannot support the current proposal. He’s a supporter of increased classifications and says that he doesn’t see that the 16th week is a problem.
This is crazy. This matter has been discussed and analyzed to death. The bottom line is that some districts who were going to lose qualifiers are getting cold feet. The sense now is that the matter will fail to pass when it comes to a vote. And it will come to a vote with a motion on the floor.
Call for question:
It fails, 16 yes, 10 no, 1 abstention
16 weeks lives. And here’s something funny: the PIAA has no brackets ready for a 16-week playoff. They will be simple enough to draw up, but it shows how crazy the whole process has been.
Have to dash over to the stadium for football.
Rod,
Any news on the McDowell hearing?
Thanks,
Tom
This is utterly absurd…
Rod,
The PIAA board has shown time after time that they have NO true leadership. I wonder if its time for the State’s elected officials to intervene.
Rod Any idea who voted against the cut to 15 weeks? What was the issue with the boundary discussion?
Rod,
I just looked at the brackets and saw that those scums in District 3 and District 1 tried to push district 11 and 12 into the west bracket in AAAA football. I bet I know who voted against the 15 weeks.
Fan,
You hit it. 12 just couldn’t vote for that. I’d chat more, but I’m busting it today. Thanks for checking in.
McDowell had some say, but the case was remanded back to D-10. It will come back to PIAA in January
Bob,
Sorry for the delay. Was tied up with work at PIAA football.
hard as it might be for you to believe, state government can only make it worse. As much as you and others might crave the strong hand of elected officials, the inherent problem with a state takeover is that every legislator – every one – will have constituents that want something done with high school athletics, many with suspect motives and agendas. Legislators are always more than happy to lean on a state agency or committee; see the Jake Corman amendment that popped up in late spring that threatened to put PIAA out of business unless they did exactly as Corman (a Corman staffer, actually) said on a given issue.
In the end, the Corman amendment that became actual state law was so poorly and loosely constructed that it took two attorneys to plug all of the possible holes in the law. The simple fact is that legislators will write to the emotion of the issue in an attempt to placate constituents. The Board of Directors, however contentious they might have been this weekend, usually take the time to hash out the ramifications of their own proposals.
That sometimes results in some overwrought legalese, but it beats a crappy amendment like the one that became actual state law this past summer.
As to the matter of leadership, I’ll allow your point (I know: how generous of me!), but really, have you ever tried to manage a 31-member board and a five-person executive staff, many of whom have cross-purposes, as was evident this weekend? I have some sympathy for Board president Rod Stone in that regard.
Having said that, I’ve never seen the BOD so angry and contentious as this weekend. Even considering the emotion that surrounds the football issue, it was striking.
You kick the legislators but when you try to make District 11 and 12 teams travel over 3 hours to play 3 of 4 playoff games and 1.5 hours for the other you got to admit someone needs to bring reason to the PIAA. Without the legislators the private schools would be kicked out too.
The football saga has been all about the politcis of the various districts. So we are the last state in the country still playing football, it is a joke. District 1′s crazy seeding process has thier #11 seed, who was a top 10 team in the state all year, in the state final. They then want everyone else in the state to suffer so they can keep their own playoffs. I won’t even talk about District 7.
Give us some more details about the football discussion. Who did vote against it and what was said.
Fan,
Have you ever seen the General Assembly / PIAA process when it winds up? What happens is legislative staff, generally an insufferable collection of egoists, start tearing and clawing at PIAA much the way a cat pulls apart a downed bird. They do it for sport.
The problems with the PIAA are legion – the organization clearly needs to redistrict, or at minimum regionalize in football, both of which are fantasies – but they would ultimately be worse than the schools running it. PIAA Board politics are dirty; General Assembly politics are the absolute worst.
Having said that, here’s a link to a story I authored for the York Daily Record. The votes of the Board members is at the bottom of the story: http://www.gametimepa.com/ts-ya/ci_19564561
PIAA has its problems, as evidenced by the AAAA bracketing, problems that appear endemic. But a board of 31 with direct ties to high school athletics will always be preferable to a governmental body of 150+ and even more power-hungry staffers. I’ve seen that act first-hand, and it sucks.
Rod:
Please link your articles like that in the future, whether it be in the YDR or elsewhere. Your followers, myself included, are going to be interested in them.
As far as redistricting, I think that D8 is down to 6 schools, is there any way that the PIAA can force D7 to take them? I’d get rid of D5, combine them with the southern D6 schools. Combine the northern D6 schools with D9. Would make 4 districts for the western half of the state, 6 for the eastern half. Would seem to be a reasonable blend of distance and population. Plus I’d move Berk County to D11.
Sam Elias hit the nail on the head, very poor leadership to push off the most important issue to the end of a meeting that has a firm end time restriction.
I’m looking forward to a wrestling chat.
No to the state take-over. You are right, politicians are people out to 1) make bucks 2) get re-elected 3) make more bucks. Cashman’s leadership is pathetic and good-riddance. Since Philly and Pitt want expanded brackets fine start the season a week earlier. I have no problem with either one. One last dig – get Sam Elias a tissue. He cannot stand not being able to manipulate everything as he does in the MPC.
PCL – if you think the Legislature does such a good job, why don’t we go with 18 districts – exactly congruent with the congressional districts? That would pretty much solve a lot of problems, cause we know what a fair job the Legislature did there. And we would get redistricting every 10 years.
Here is a URL to a PDF that will show you how fair it would be. Some folks are complaining about 3 hour drives for State Semifinals – but a 4 hour drive for a first round District Game (West Perry v Delaware Valley in D10. Maybe even worse in D5,
Rod,
The only true way to resolve this is to elimnate the Districts all together and have 4 equal divided Regions in the state. If we have 500 teams playing and 125 in each class. 4 Regions of 30+ teams would make resolved this. Leagues could remain as is, but a computer point system similar to how Ohio runs it would determine playoff teams. It’s a dream that will NEVER occur i’m sure without true leadership in this state. Teams would actually earn the right to play in the playoffs and NOT just qualify because teams are needed to fill the brackets with 500 records.
It’s a dream….
Bob,
I have been a proponent for either redistricting – or in the case of football – regionalizing for many years. The biggest problem with the PIAA, quite frankly, is the vast inequality between districts.
The districts were set up nearly 100 years ago. District 7 was the first to organize and wisely brought several counties into its sphere. As a result, it remains the most powerful district in the state even in the face of declining population. That’s because it is the number of schools, not the enrollment of the schools, that matters when it comes to determining votes on the PIAA Board
On the other hand, Districts 5 and 8, tiny districts that really have no business being in existence, actually wield outsized influence when their votes have exactly the same weights as Districts 2, 4, 6, 9, 10 and 11, districts that have considerably more members but not enough for a second vote on the board.
The answer to this and many other issues affecting PIAA is regionalization. And you definitely don’t want the state legislature doing the carving. Have you seen the Republicans’ proposed new Congressional districts? Laughable. (And the ones proposed by the Democrats, which will never see the light of day, are just as bad.)
But rather than throw darts at the Board or the executive staff, the real problem is the schools themselves: they don’t desire a change in structure, at least not in a big way. Several years ago, the PIAA made its one sincere attempt to look into redistricting, and the answer from the rank-and-file was clear: No.
So, unless sentiments have changed drastically, what is there to do? I see only one solution and it’s fantasy: Leave the districts in place for all sports but football, regionalize football and devise a completely new playoff structure.
In addition, a revenue-sharing plan would have to be devised to ensure that the districts have money returned to them.
And that, simply, is a dream and nothing more. It will never happen.
With the ongoing budget issues public schools have, many school districts might have to consolidate soon. That would change the map and make redistricting look like a more viable option.