FRANKLIN – The Tournament Management Committee is scheduled to meet next month to vote on a new football proposal.
Whether MIAA Football Committee chairman Jay Costa did enough at Wednesday’s meeting to sway the court of TMC opinion remains to be seen, though given the feedback during the hour-long session, it appears to be a longshot at best.
Costa spoke for several minutes about the new football plan in detail. Among the major focal points of the new plan are an 11-game regular season ending on Thanksgiving, the elimination of non-playoff games and a postseason consisting of the top eight teams in each division playing three games in 12 days to determine a state champion.
It has been a major bone of contention among members of the football committee as well as several of its coaches that football is the only MIAA sport in which the postseason begins before the end of the regular season. They feel ending the regular season on Thanksgiving would add significance to the games that day and also eliminate the consolation games which bothers some schools. They’ve pointed to the Connecticut model as proof that this can work as well in the Bay State.
“It’s been the charge of the football coaches to make changes to the current format,” Costa said. “I’m hoping that (the TMC) keeps an open mind about this.”
While many of the committee members lauded the time and effort the football committee, led by Milton coach Steve Dembowski, have put into this proposal, there are clearly detractors among the TMC. As soon as Costa finished speaking, several TMC members immediately expressed trepidation over some of the proposals put forward.
One concern was cutting the amount of teams who qualify for the playoffs from the current total of 16 to 8 per division. Many were outraged last year when Everett went 7-1 and wound up missing out on a 16-team tournament due in large part to the fact they played in a league (GBL) where most of the teams were at least two divisions lower and struggled for the most part. Dwayne Early, who serves as the athletic director for Springfield Public Schools, was less than pleased with the prospects of cutting the field in half and could see something similar happening to one of his teams.
“We have one team out here (Springfield Central) who is one of the best in the state,” Early said. “Last year, we came out east and played two of the best teams (Central Catholic and Xaverian), at least of those who answered my phone calls,” Early said. “We win those games and we’re ranked No. 1. We then got into our conference schedule, won all the games by 60 points or so and we dropped down to seven.”
There is a concern over the possibility of playing three games in 12 days. While Costa said he has not heard any negative feedback from the Sports Medicine Committee regarding safety issues, TMC chairman Shaun Hart quickly chimed in and said coaches didn’t like playing three games in 10 days years ago when championships were determined in such a manner.
Another major obstacle are the prospects of cutting into the winter season, a battle many athletic directors would prefer to avoid with their winter coaches. Wellesley athletic director John Brown said his district is against anything that affects the winter season. He said the season is long enough as is and feels the early start of football preseason may have played a role in numbers at his school being down.