More Georgia high school teams will win state titles and make the playoffs in the coming years thanks to the addition of a seventh classification and the public/private split in Class A.
The Georgia High School Association doesn’t want to pour cold water on the trend, but executive director Gary Phillips is calling for practicality ahead of Monday’s GHSA executive committee meeting in Macon as his office deals with increasing logistical challenges of staging playoffs in 23 sports.
Several proposals before the executive committee address the issue of how many state champions and playoff teams are enough.
‘’Somewhere in the span of four years, we’ve gone from five state championships to eight in most sports,’’ Phillips said. “That’s a fast change. The number of our member schools hasn’t really increased that much. If you look at it and are familiar with our operations, you can see the impact that seven classifications and eight championships can have.’’
In Class A, there is a proposal from Region 4 to increase the number of state-playoff teams in the lowest classification to 64 (32 public and 32 private). In football, for example, that would bring to 256 the number of playoff teams in all classes, more than 60 percent of the 420 football-playing schools.
Currently, only 32 Class A teams qualify in the public and private divisions combined. The GHSA agreed last fall to bump it to 24 beginning this fall. Phillips doesn’t want 32.
‘’We’ve not even played with 24 yet. Why jump to 32 right now? Let’s see how 24 works,’’ Phillips said. ‘’People say we’ll make a lot of money [with a full round of playoffs]. That’s not necessarily true. Sometimes you get mismatches [in the first round], and they’re not well-attended. It’s not this huge windfall.’’
To ease the strain on the GHSA, Phillips’ office is proposing a return of the state-basketball quarterfinals to high school venues and away from neutral-site college arenas. There now could be 64 boys and girls quarterfinal games in basketball – up from 40 just five years ago. Securing facilities for the four days required to run quarters and semifinals in one week over seven classifications is a burden to the GHSA and to the colleges, Phillips said.
The GHSA also wants to stick with only six state champions in boys and girls soccer and volleyball and not expand to seven or eight. That would entail combining classifications near the lower end for those sports. The GHSA also wants to trim the softball state finals to a final four instead of an elite eight in Columbus. That would knock a day off the three-day event and save on travel and time out of class.
But some member schools want more champions. In wrestling, for example, there is a proposal to take the top three individual finishers in every weight class of every classification and stage an all-classification state tournament the next week.
’’One argument is, OK, more champions, more teams in the playoffs, that’s good for the school, it’s a morale-builder,’’ Phillips said. “Being a former coach and principal, I understand that stuff, but there’s also the argument that less can be more meaningful. The fewer playoff teams and champions, the more people will get out of it.’’
Here is the agenda for the full GHSA meeting:
http://www.ghsa.net/sites/default/files/documents/executive-committee/AgendaApril2016.pdf
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