LHSAA to consider tweak of football playoffs

  
  BATON ROUGE – Setting aside its constitution and bylaws for the moment, it appears that the Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s Executive Committee will approve a measure to combine classes 5A and 4A into one playoff division for the 2013 post season.
    Committee members were in favor of scrapping the constitutional mandate that calls for five classes of championship competition as the association opened its summer meeting on Wednesday. This pivotal change was made necessary by a Schools Relations Committee, which the LHSAA commissioned to study the effects of Proposal 18, passed by the association’s member principals at the annual meeting in January.
    The proposal called for five playoff divisions for non-select schools – or traditional public schools – and just two playoff divisions for select schools, which consist of private, religions, magnet, charter schools without open enrollment policies and dual-curriculum schools with more than 25 percent of their students living outside their attendance zone.
    Instead, the School Relations Committee recommended five playoff classes for both select and non-select schools, partly to avert a pending bill in the Louisiana House of Representatives that potentially could have forced state-run public schools to withdraw from the LHSAA for what it considers a discriminatory decision that segregates a number of member schools.
    Teurlings Catholic principal Michael Boyer presented the School Relation Committee’s 11 recommendations for consideration and vote. The first two items call for the number of select school divisions be changed from two to five. That would mean 10 championship games would be played in the Mercedes Benz Superdome. Also, charter schools that do not have a select admissions policy would be removed from the select school category and place in the non-select grouping.
    But because five select playoff brackets would leave Class 5A with just 10 teams and Class 4A with six – or perhaps seven (depending on how Edna Karr is classified) – the playoff brackets would be adversely affected. First, all teams would qualify for the playoffs, and most in each of the two classes would not begin competition until the quarterfinal or semifinal round.
    Boyer suggested the Division I and Division II brackets be combined into one common playoff division, an offer the executive committee found difficult to refuse. And although they were not in favor of changing the letter of the constitution, it appears the executive committee might vote to allow a joint division for the 2013 playoffs.
    In that case, the new Division I playoff bracket would combine Jesuit, Byrd, Catholic, Brother Martin, St. Paul’s, Scotlandville, Archbishop Rummel, Archbishop Shaw, Holy Cross and St. Augustine from Class 5A and St. Thomas More, Vandebilt Catholic, St. Michael, Teurlings Catholic, Loyola and possibly Warren Easton and Edna Karr from Class 4A.
    LHSAA Commissioner Kenny Henderson said that under the five-class plan, games in the Superdome would have to be played from Thursday through Sunday, which is possible because the building’s primary resident, the New Orleans Saints, are out of town that weekend.
    “There would be two games on Thursday, three on Friday, three Saturday (both days starting at noon) and two on Sunday, starting at 2 p.m.,” Henderson said.
    But if the executive committee approves the consolidation of Classes 5A and 4A, the Sunday date would be eliminated. “We play three games on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with a probable starting time at noon,” he said.
    The Executive Committee is also expected to approve nine other recommendations to be placed on the agenda for the LHSAA’s 2014 general meeting. They include:
    – Reviewing all current residence and transfer rules to include a proposal that attendance zones for schools be parish boundary lines.
    – Considering the use of some type of playoff success factor for every classification cycle.
    – Allowing schools to play up to the highest classification.
    – Changing the current playoff system from five classifications to four divisions for both select and non-select schools.
    – Stipulating that schools providing financial aid to students must use an approved financial aid processing service.
    – Securing funding to hire a private detective to conduct investigations for recruiting and other possible eligibility violations.
    – Making random, unannounced rules compliance visits throughout the school year at member schools.
    – Reporting alleged violations during a 10-day time period prior to the end of the regular season and not wait for a school alleged to be violating the rule to participate in the playoffs before reporting the school.
    – Prohibiting student athletes from competing in the same sport at two different schools in the same sports season.
    The "playoff success formula" the LHSAA is considering is modeled on one used by Indiana, which awards points to a school which has success in the playoffs. Point values are awarded for each playoff victory. If a school accrues a target number of points over a two-year play, it will be played in the next higher class for the subsequent reclassification period.
    “If we used this formula over the past two football seasons, Edna Karr (4A), John Curtis (2A), Neville (2A), Parkview Baptist (3A) and Ouachita Christian (1A) would have be placed in the next highest class,” Henderson pointed out.