Glut of High School Playoffs and Bowl Games

I want to talk tonight about my feelings on the high school playoffs.

There's too many!

Five games to win a championship is way too many. It will take almost all of November and half of December to have eight champions.

In other sports where you can play two or three games a week, the playoffs are over in three weeks.
Look at the NCAA Basketball Championships. Three weeks of high impact gut-wrenching drama and a champion.

Why in the world would I want my 4-6 team to have to travel to a team where I feel like I will be lucky if we don't lose by forty.

The playoffs are about teams with a chance to win, not teams to fill out the bracket.

In the NCAA bowl games, I bet you can't name two thirds of the bowls games.

Why in the world send a team off to a bowl game if they lose, they have a losing record?

The answer is money. In college football, TV pays the way to bring you the MidasPC.com Bowl.

Around Christmas, they can have live programming over starting to hit the reruns of the major show.
In high school, there is no TV money, so the NCHSAA figures that the more games played is more money in the bank.

Let me ask you this. Regardless of who Rocky Mount plays in the first round, when it is all over and both teams and the NCHSAA get their cut, who is going to stand up and say 'WOW, I'm glad we played this game'.

In the early rounds, the teams get a bigger share of the gate and the state a small share. As the playoffs go deeper, the teams get less and the NCHSAA more.

All expenses to hold a game is taken out of the pot from the gas for the visiting team to get to the game to refs and security.

If I am a 4-6 team, why would I want to get humbled to make a few hundred dollars?

The reason is, of course, money.

I would like to see no more than the top two teams from each conference get in the playoff.

You know how important Friday night's game with Fike would be if we had to win to even make the playoffs. The stadium would be jammed.

Since both teams are in, the importance of this game is a trophy.

You know the greatest game in the history of ACC basketball was the 1974 ACC Tournament game when N.C. State and Maryland played for the right to go to the NCAA tournament.

State was ranked second and Maryland third and the loser Maryland stayed home.

Cutting down the number of teams would help the quality in the first round and give fans a reason to go see a great game instead of a blowout.

I would rather see a good third place team get left out over 12 teams that are going to get kicked in the first round.