In Michigan its basically win 6 games and you're in, with a lot of 5-4 and even the occasional 4-4 teams getting in as well. But a winless program??
South Dakota, like Minnesota, has seven classes. Too many in both IMO. SD has three 9 man classes, MN one. The lower enrollment classes have the mercy rule and running clock, but the big schools don't. Makes no sense to me. Evidently everyone makes the playoffs in SD. Most of them do in MN, there might be a few if your section has more than 8 teams. It didn't used to be that way. Originally they only took four from each class. Well, that was a disaster. Then they went to four per section and many schools wanted a chance like in basketball. If they didn't have the Vikings stadium for the semis and finals I don't think that would happen- but they did play in the Gophers stadium when the Vikings were building theirs. Some darn cold games that year.
This is in South Dakota. No mercy rule, no running clock.
Pierre 103 Spearfish 0 (correct, 103 pts)
If I were the Coach of Pierre I would have took my foot off the gas once the lead got to 50 points. Slow it down and do your best not to embarrass the other team. It's not cool to kick someone when they're down.
Wow. Pennsylvania has six classes and people here are suggesting that there should be less than that. I can't imagine seven classes here, much less in a smaller state.
Lifelong SD resident here so I'll try to shed a little light on how this has come to be. SD has SEVEN classes of football in a state with a population just shy of 900,000. There are 3 9-man classes with about 23 teams each. Classification is determined by enrollment so it saves on no travel come playoff time. 16 teams make the playoffs in each class so blowouts are guaranteed in most of the games in the first 2 rounds.
11-man used to be 3 classes with even fewer teams in each, but the top division was split up a few years ago because the smaller "big" schools did not think they could compete with the much bigger Sioux Falls schools so now we have 4. Sioux Falls has about 20% of the entire state's population and the public schools there are 3-4 times bigger than the teams they are playing. For comparison Sioux Falls has about 177,000 people and Pierre has 14,000. I think a Sioux Falls area school has won every championship of the biggest class in SD since about 2004. All 8 teams in 11AA (where this happened) make playoffs and Pierre is very good this year.
There are too many classes of football in SD and there isn't a great solution for the small "big" schools in a state where the population is so heavily concentrated in one city. It would be really cool to see them have a "Hoosiers" type opportunity every decade or so and the rest of the state would be rooting for them for sure. But they were tired of having their heads kicked in by the big teams every year in the playoffs.
This Pierre team is very good and many think they could beat the Sioux Falls schools this year, but they will not have the chance. And the team they play in state SEMIFINALS...they beat 75-7 just a couple weeks ago.
I'm 99.999999% sure everyone in MN makes the section tournament. I know before they added a class 4 or 5 years ago some didn't because some sections had more then 8 teams. In my opinion you should have to finish 4-4 to make it, some of these first round matchups are just brutal. The only 1-8 upset I can recall is in 2004 when Lewiston-Altura qualified for state as an 8 seed but the 1 seed's record was only 4-4 so it wasn't a huge upset based on records, L-A's was 2-6.
I'm 99.999999% sure everyone in MN makes the section tournament.
I just looked at the nine-man brackets- it looks like all of the teams made it. I think each section can determine their own rules but I doubt if anyone missed out. I mostly just pay attention to nine man or the local teams if they are a higher class.
If I counted right, Minnesota has 463 football teams. One to many classes for me.
9 man- 67
1A-61
2A-55
3A-56
4A-46
5A-47
6A-31
If I remember correctly, when there were 6 classes, the reason why they added a 6A was because there was a nearly 2,000 student gap from the smallest big school to the the biggest school.
If I remember correctly, when there were 6 classes, the reason why they added a 6A was because there was a nearly 2,000 student gap from the smallest big school to the the biggest school.
A gap of 2000? Some of these schools are getting too big! We need to build some more one room schoolhouses!
Comment