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2018 Football Forum

Written by: on Monday, January 1st, 2018. Follow David Mika on Twitter.

Are you ready for some football?

Welcome to the official forum on high school football for the 2018 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.

2017 Football Forum

881 Responses

  1. Kevin

    Why would you be in favor of playing 4-5 games in AUG/SEPT then transfering sitting out a few weeks and playing a couple games and playoffs for another team?

    6 state champs with only 96 teams in each classification is watered down, no matter how you format the playoffs…

  2. @ jj D2

    Per the PIAA website….there are 570 schools participating in football in PA within the PIAA. Add a handful of others playing at the independent level, you have aprx. 600 schools participating in HS football in PA.

    @ TomF

    Changing demographics, kids/parents not wanting to/or having their kids to play football, opting for soccer, basketball, and lacrosse, and in the expense of running a football program, yeah, the numbers and quality are going to go down.

    I’m assuming you were not at the 6A Eastern final between C’ville and SJP @ Downingtown?? Full house in a large stadium, raucous, energized crowd, fun crazy game, should of ended the season there on an up note, but no, we had blowouts and empty stadiums for 3 days the following weekend in Hershey.

    @ Buddy

    Still prefer the 6 classifications. Those who say its watered down, it is the playoffs system that makes it watered down. Like I posted previously, go with 32 teams (the best and most qualified teams at that as well) in each classification for the playoffs, that is about a third of all schools in each classification. Now its like 2/3rds of all schools that participate in the playoffs/post season.

    @ D12 FAN

    I wouldn’t. You misread my post or maybe I wasn’t clear. Any kid transferring from October 1st to the end of the current season would not be eligible to play that year, period. I’d institute 4 game sit out/wait period for any transfer transferring between game one and Sept. 30th.

  3. @buddy

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    This is a complete list of senior high schools in the state of Pennsylvania, United States.

    There are 952 public high schools and 549 private high schools.[1]

  5. Football and wrestling are taking a major hit in Pa. Teams struggling to field teams, the multi sport athlete Disappearing. Quality of football and wrestling athletes on the downtrend. Kids sick of losing and transferring to winners. I thought 5 classifications would have been fine. 6 is a watered down version with teams being in the playoffs that will get mercy ruled in the 1st or 2nd round. I long for the old days when BECA and CB West played in front of 20,000.00 fans, the titanic battles between Erie Cathedral Prep and CB West, Berwick taking on all comers. I don’t think we will ever see Pa football like that again.

  6. Has the PIAA committee even considered dropping down to 5 classes? I never understood the jump from 4 classes to 6. California & Texas has 6 classes, but they have 2000 & 1800 high schools respectively. Pa. has under 1000.

    Wouldn’t that solve this re-alignment fiasco? You gotta keep an East vs West team in the state final.

  7. i agree you potentially have the best two teams meeting up in the semi-finals with the bracket change. But i actually like the idea of changing up the matchups every couple years. Get some different teams playing somebody else. District 3 never runs into District 1, so that will be a nice change up for two seasons. I think they should change up the smaller classes as well, give them so different matchups.

  8. Kevin

    As much as I love PA football for a very long time the fact is, loss of population and player participation has diluted the level of play. Add (right or wrong)the private schools attracting more of the talent pool and drop to only 96 teams per classification and you have an even more watered down system. We don’t have to agree, 4 classification playoff system started in 1988, a heck of lot more kids playing HS football then and over the years, the only thing I can think of that drove the move to 6A was more balance between size of schools, so more trophies, and more chances for trophies. Now that there are 6 classifications several conferences are finding it hard to support the current system with the their number of teams. Nots sure what it accomplished? Still have a big disparity in several classes top to bottom, and ECP, PREP, BG, WOOD, SC, PARKLAND, and the D7 winners still rule…

    Why allow an October transfer to play for 2 teams same season….

  9. @ D12FAN

    Maybe I’m not the common sense HS football fan that I may think that I am, as I actually like the move to 6 classifications. In fact I believe it was long over due IMO. People will always find something to complain about, especially when things don’t go their way.

    I do agree with you on the rest of your points………(except maybe wait until after October 1st for a transfer sit out the rest of the current season, and say 4 games from the start of practice to Oct. 1st??)

  10. @ WPIAL Rules

    I agree, at least with the 32 team part. I’ve mentioned this some time ago, do away with the districts (really like trying to put a square peg in a round hole for football playoff purposes), and figure out the best 32 teams in each classification (I really don’t care how they do, it will still be better then letting every mediocre Tom Dick and Harry team into the post season), and get it done in 5 weeks. Seed each team 1 to 8 in a regional/geographical 4 bracket common sense manner, while attempting to avoid early round re-mateches (enough of SJP and LaSalle meeting ever round week 2 for example) and then you can either move the finals up to the first weekend of December, push the start of the season back to Labor Day weekend, have a mandatory bye week, or even an 11 game regular season schedule. I’m tired of all these mis-matches, routes, mercy rules games, and re-matches of the same teams every year. Mix things up for once guys!!!

  11. I don’t think any common sense high school football fan agrees with any of the last 3 big decisions by PIAA.

    1. 4 classes to 6: PA football already watered down by demographics, going to 6 did nothing, people still complain about larger school enrollment in each class. This decision is part of the reason for the realingment decision this year, one bad move leads to another…

    2. Transfer rule: 21 day sit out period. Just simply say once season offically starts in August you can’t play for another team period.

    3. Realigment: Completely transparent move to give D1 and D3 teams a better chance of getting to Hershey. It totally disadvantages D11, having to get through D7 and D12. Also, creates a very likely scenario best 2 teams in state will meet in semi’s especially in 5A and 6A.

    Doens’t matter to Prep and Wood they will play anywhere, but these three decisions lack common sense for all schools and continue to make PIAA football less appealing for all.

  14. @Zack
    Of course they have the potential to be “epic”, but why should SJP or LaSalle have to play a neutral site game in front of 187 people against a team from Pittsburgh in a state semi-final to make that happen? Quite frankly, I would like to see more of these out of conference games but I suspect the opposite will happen. If Coatesville (or other D1 power) and CV (or other D3 power) have the potential to meet in the playoffs I suspect they may be less apt to want to play each other during the regular season.

  15. The PIAA ruling directly helps teams in District 1. Not having to play the Non-boundary schools before the championship game is a comfort.

    D1 and D3 battles will be epic. Good showdown will be Coatesville and Cumberland Valley in week 3 again.

  17. JC, but why have a team from the furthest east play a team from the furthest west? Pull a 6A from Central PA to fill the number of teams. Balance out the numbers that. PIAA is just pissed that most of the championship teams are from one of the 3 district. I’m spotting D11 from 2011.

  19. I think it’s time for the PCL and WPIAL to get out of PIAA. Have their own state title game. Best in the PCL Vs best in WPIAL. PIAA has become irrelevant.

  20. Berwick football schedule 18-19:
    Abington Heights
    Pittston
    Williamsport
    WVW
    Selinsgrove
    Valley View
    Hazleton
    Crestwood
    Dallas
    WB Coughlin
    Toughest schedule in District 2

  21. @WPIAL RULES: I’m inclined to agree, as this really screws D11, who now has to get through D12 and D7 just to make the final. 2011 was the last time a team outside of D7 or D12 won the title in the highest classification; common sense says keep them on opposite sides. If this is a response to the number of 6A WPIAL schools declining to 9, it feels reactionary.

  23. Lackawanna Football Conference (LFC) schedules have been released (sort of):

    http://timestribuneblogs.com/football/hs-football-2018-lackawanna-football-conference-division-i-schedules/

    http://timestribuneblogs.com/football/hs-football-2018-lackawanna-football-conference-division-ii-schedules/

    http://timestribuneblogs.com/sports/hs-football-2018-lackawanna-football-conference-division-iii-schedules/

    I think the most interesting match up is Dunmore (2A) playing Scranton Prep (3A) to start the season.