Regular-season games canceled by COVID-19 outbreaks have been painful enough to teams and their fans in the 2020 high school football season.
But once the playoffs begin, canceled games will be season-ending to teams that can’t play, Georgia High School Association executive director Robin Hines said Thursday.
In an interview on a range of topics with GHSF Daily, Hines said the GHSA would have no choice if a team couldn’t answer the bell once the postseason begins.
“We’d have to press on at that time; that’s when a forfeit would kick in,” Hines said. “The team they’re supposed to play would pick up the win and move on.”
Canceled regular-season games normally result in forfeits, but the GHSA eased those rules because of the pandemic. About 5-10 games per week have been lost because of COVID-19 infections or contact on teams over the first three weeks.
The playoffs can’t be so forgiving, though.
“Hopefully, we can get all this worked out and there’s continued improvement, but we have to be prepared for that,” Hines said. “There’s flexibility in the non-region schedule, and then the regions have flexibility during the region schedule, but when the playoffs kick in, if one team can’t play, then we obviously wouldn’t be able to populate that side of the bracket. That’s unfortunate, but I can’t see any other way.”
Canceled region games also pose problems, potentially causing teams to have an uneven number of games in the standings.
“That’s totally the regions' responsibility to determine who their [four] playoff seeds are,” Hines said. “They make those rules before each season and what the tiebreakers are going to be. You’d be surprised at the different ways regions work though that. Some use points. Some have a night of mini-games. It could be any number of things to break ties. We stand ready to help with those discussions if they want our help, but ultimately, it’s up to each region.”
Hines said the GHSA would award byes instead of at-large qualifiers when a region doesn’t have four playoff teams. A full playoff bracket is 32 teams, four per region.
Only one region currently has fewer than four teams playing, and that’s 2-A Private with Eagle’s Landing Christian, Whitefield Academy and Landmark Christian. The fourth team, Our Lady of Mercy, is not fielding a team because of the pandemic.
Two other regions have fewer than four teams playing full region schedules. That’s because Savannah’s eight public schools are playing intra-district only in the regular season. Savannah teams still will be eligible for the playoffs, Hines said, but he noted that this wasn’t a GHSA decision, but the choice of the Savannah teams' regions.
In Region 3-5A, Benedictine will be the No. 1 seed, and Savannah schools Islands, Jenkins and New Hampstead will decide seeds 2-4 in games among themselves. Similarly in Region 3-3A, Southeast Bulloch and Liberty County will be seeded 1-2 while Beach, Groves, Johnson, Savannah and Windsor Forest will determine the 3-4 seeds with their own round-robin.
Hines also talked about recent rulings by GHSA appeals committees that denied eligibility to two high-profile transfers. Grayson quarterback Carlos Del Rio and Carrollton linebacker Chief Borders, both committed to Florida, are not allowed to play their seniors seasons.
Hines said that the GHSA’s transfer rules – which require that transfers make bona fide moves into their new school zones to gain immediate eligibility – are effectively the will of the membership, which makes bylaws through their representatives on the GHSA’s executive committee.
“People often don’t understand what the GHSA is,” Hines said. “I’m the executive director, which all that means is that I run the day-to-day operations. I’m not the one who makes up the rules. The rules are made by the association, which is made up of 470 schools. What I do is apply the rules.”
Hines noted that transfer students who are denied eligibility can appeal to a hardship committee, then an appellate board, then to the full executive committee, before exhausting all rights.
Hines said he was pleased with how the football season has progressed.
“I think it’s gone well,” Hines said. “We said we’d have some bumps in the road, but the overwhelming majority of teams have been able to play and go forward, and we’re picking up more teams every week, it seems. From that standpoint, I feel really good about things.”
Briefly ...
Fellowship Christian on Thursday canceled its game with Trinity Christian, calling off a meeting between top-10 Class A Private schools. Trinity Christian was able to get Hampton as a replacement. … Augusta schools were let out at noon Thursday and the Screven County-Butler game that night canceled because of area flooding. Tonight’s Hephzibah-Warren County game also is off, but others involving Richmond County schools remained on as of late Thursday. ... Perry, unavailable the next two weeks because of a positive COVID-19 test on its team, will play its game with Veterans a week later, on Oct. 2. ... Madison County, which lost a game earlier this month while in quarantine, has picked up an Oct. 2 game with Monroe Area.
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