Are you ready for some football?
Welcome to the official blog on high school football for the 2013 season.
During the off-season let’s talk about players, recruiting news, teams and everything about high school football.
During the season each week let’s talk about match-ups and how teams did. Let us know what player(s) stood out each week.
2,248 Responses
Huck
D7’s insistence on having 16 teams in their payoffs is why the rest of the state is stuck with a 16 week season. Since they don’t get a semi final spot if the PIAA drops to 15 weeks D7 can only have an 8 team playoff or play only 8 games. We all suffer as they threaten to leave the PIAA over it. I would call their bluff.
@ Huck’s
I hear your point but still, I would say 8 to 12 of those 16 teams in the D1 playoffs aren’t true blue state champion contenders. There’s several teams that are just filling spots. Just a hand full are for real. Believe me, I’m all for the state playoffs. It’s prime time. It’s just that it shouldn’t require 6 or 7 wins in order to accomplish that. A 10 game RS with 5 playoff games is perfect. A 16 game season is too long, it just is.
@ Ron Sounds like some of that George Curry ” influence” getting that kid to come to Berwick. I know Berwick had a bunch of good senior wr last year so I’m wondering with CJ entering his senior year and a whole year in the system do you think George will be more of a ground and pound team this year or will he let CJ fling it around? Who else is going to be good in the WVC this year?
PCL Fan:
My bad. I stand corrected. I knew 16 D7 teams made playoffs. I just assumed they had it set-up like D1 and had one of their teams in the state semis.
D7 only plays a 9-week RS. Last year amongst their 16 “playoff” teams they had (4) 4-5 teams and (2) 5-4 teams.
D1 had (3) 7-3 teams as their worst representatives. Like I said earlier, I think D1’s system is ok and fair.
Huck
D7 does not get a spot in the state semi, they only get into the quarter final.
@Jake Dain Kowalski played at Central Columbia last year. Parents are divorced, mother lives in Central school district, father lives in Berwick school district. Dain wanted to come to play at Berwick his senior year. Dain could be best running back in wvc this year. Dain is 6ft 1inc 190lbs who has speed and power,with bulldogs offensive line could lead Berwick to d2 title.also may start at db
Thank you Huck! For anyone who wants to post about D12 having a bye week in the future please read Hucks post before saying anything. LaSalle is the ONLY team in 4A public or catholic that does not play a thanksgiving game. It’s not a bye week it’s a week left open to play your traditional rival, which for many schools makes a lot of money for their programs. Any district is allowed to do this. If D11 thought it was an advantage to do this they could go to a 9 week RS and have an extra week for teams that play a thanksgiving game. Same with D1. Huck in other news SAY IT AIN’T SO!!! I think you know what I’m talking about.
Also I agree with D1 having a 16 team playoff. Most years 7-3 is the record of the last seed. It’s not like teams who are .500 or below are getting in. It also allows teams like North Penn and others to play marquee non conference games which I think everyone enjoys.
If you’re a fan of football, then why would you want less games? I don’t get it. With a 16-week schedule D-1 needs to have 16 teams. It’s a large district and by being large they get four weeks of playoffs and place a team in the state semifinals every year. Just like Disrict 7.
With the implementation of the new PIAA playoff point system whereby a team gets points from a loss based on the amount of wins of the team to whom they lost, the injustice of teams not qualifying for the playoffs due to a brutal schedule should be eliminated.
Phillyboy, it’s not a PCL issue, but a District-12 one. D-12 does it this way to accommodate the tradition of the Thanksgiving Day games. IMO, these games don’t have much meaning anymore. They used to be special. Not that much anymore. In theory they could increase their playoffs by a week to eliminate a bye. But that would be overkill with bad teams making the playoffs. D7 does that now. Another issue is finding enough RS games to have a 10-week RS. It’s difficult and that’s why they only play 9.
Also, I think 16 teams in fine in D1. If the PIAA goes to a 15-week schedule, then 8 could work. D1 is a big district and the schedule is unbalanced. Some leagues are more difficult than others. A 7-3 team could be stronger than one that goes 9-1. The goal should be to crown the best team. Not reward those teams from weak leagues, who don’t play anyone in the league or N-L for 10 weeks.
I agree with Buddy. There’s no way there should be 16 teams in the D1 playoffs. It’s too much. 8 teams is plenty enough. And if a team doesn’t make the cut, so be it. To have the right to compete for the championship a team has to show their mettle during the regular season. That’s part of the deal. For a team to win the state title it has to win 6 consecutive games. I mean what is this the NCAA basketball tournament. The way it was before was perfect. I think 15 games should be the maximum for one season.
@Joe
On your example of playoff game locations, when you make a statement can you at least try to understand the rules. yes the top half of the bracket is the home team but that only applies if the districts are adjoining districts. If they are not next to each other the game should be played in a district in between which was the case in in the examples you noted. The rule cuts down on travel. Before you use D12 and D11 as an example of this rule not being followed, it has been agreed to play in the home district as the travel is not much and D1 has no viable locations.
@buddy
Really starting the bye discussion already??
Hey-
Coatesville was #9 seed. springford was #7 seed. My bad.
http://district-one.net/football.asp
@buddy-
Uh, No.. Coatesville played at Unionville in first round. That means lower seed I know they were. I follow it. They were 11th seed I think. They we’re 8–2. Lost to D East and Malvern Prep. They were the away team in the D1 final. springford was the #8 seed and was the home team.
Also, PPL had 6 in playoffs. You can see the brackets from last year under Team info… 2012 Playoffs. It’s right here.
The issue is not the 16, it’s the bye week……AND having teams with LOSING or .500 records in the Playoffs. This isn’t the NHL!! LOL.
@Joe,
Saturday night 2:45, not thinking so straight. I see your disdain for D12. Before joining, D11 participated in 4 straight and 5 of 7 state finals. After D12 joined, not so much. I guess you had the same bad taste towards D1 in the 90’s.
@Joe,
Sorry you said Wood would be AAAA in district 1 not Pittsburgh. Still curious as to why?
@ Joe,
District 8 has 7 teams. I always thought Pittsburgh was district 7. Why would Wood have to move from AAA to AAAA if they were in Pittsburgh? I’m not completely up on this stuff as far as Eastern finals go, but who in AAAA LVC is the D12 champ getting a by to? I’m not 100%, but it seems like D12 plays suburban one or chest-mont in the final game lately.
Couldn’t the PCL have their bye week between the last regular season game and the first playoff game? Wouldn’t that solve the problem?
GO JAGS!!
@Joe, please stop with the LVC bloodying themsevles and sending a corpse into the playoffs. The LVC over the past 5 years has done nothing but prove they cannot compete with D12 in AAAA; that may change in the future but today, that is the reality.
It has nothing to do with the LVC being bloodied because I truly believe the #3 team in the PLC would win the LVC.
St. Joe Prep would have kicked Parkland around worse in my estimation than LaSalle did due to their team speed. I’m confident that Roman Catholic would have easily handled Parkland also.
D11 needs to do it on the field; until then all theyh have are empty excuses.
@Ron who is Kowalski from Berwick? I don’t remember him being on the roster last year
The bye is not so etching that is PIAA generated. It’s a district decision to accommodate the teams that play on Thanksgiving. The issue is that the D12 teams winning recently don’t play on Thanksgiving. I don’t like the bye because the complaining gets tiresome. Also, having a week off isn’t always the best of things.
D12 plays under the rules and playoff brackets that the PIAA governs. They do nothing wrong here.
Was Costesville’s 4-game run to the east final really that much difficult than LaSalle’s? What team did Costesville play during that stretch was better than SJ Prep (Top 5-6 4A team in state IMO)?
LaSalle played Roman-SJ Prep-Frankford-Parkland. Coatesville played Unionville-Wissahickon-Neshaminy-Spring-Ford. Big difference? I think not.
Why not make District 12 just the city of Philadelphia? Like Pittsburgh is District 8? Wood, Lasalle so forth would be in district 1. Let them go thought the 4A grind is district 1 playoffs. Really all the PCL teams is win their league in 4A get a buy and wait for the Lehigh Valley teams to beat the crap out of each other. The PCL 4A champion should always go to the state final. They have to wait for an LVC team who just got bloodied through a tough regular season schedule than you get a District 1 team who just went to battle for 4 weeks in the district playoffs. I say make the PCL teams not in the city play in the district they are located in.
@ steve:
Yep, this will be a down year for NP I believe.
I don’t think it will last too long though.
NEXT year will be tough for them too. They re-bracket and will be playing the Neshaminy’s, Pennsbury’s etc again like they used too ( and should).
@ Pub
Coatesville would have made the playoffs last year if there were only 8 teams, they were seeded high enough.
The ONLY year North Penn would have not made playoffs with only 8 teams going was 2 years ago.
Ironically, they went to the states that year.
The PPL only sent 4 to playoffs last year.
16 is just too much. Even if NP would bot have made the playoffs 2 years ago, too bad.
Gotta win during the year to qualify.
I agree, don’t think it will drop back to 8 anytime soon. But they should do something about that bye week in the other bracket.