Early start for football just another bad PIAA idea

Week 1 of the high school football season is in the books. Why? There is no need for Weekend 1 to come a week before Labor Day weekend. That goes for college football, too, which also kicked off before August was through.

College football calls it “Week Zero,” a fancy name for an adjustment (Proposal 2015-79) to the NCAA scheduling exemption that allows for an extra regular-season game for schools traveling to Hawaii for the first time, which is why BYU, Colorado State and San Jose State were allowed to open their seasons Saturday.

It’s also why Stanford and Rice were able to play Saturday night in Sydney, Australia. It gives those teams an extra week to overcome the jet lag. OK, it’s stupid, but at least it makes a little bit of sense.

What’s the excuse for PIAA high schools? Well, it’s the playoffs.

Since the PIAA insists on having an everybody into-the-pool mentality for its state-wide playoff format, teams that want to play the maximum of 10 regular-season games have to play the weekend before Labor Day weekend, or limit their schedule to nine games because the playoffs start the first weekend in November.

That’s simply insane. There is no need for a playoff format to last six weeks, which is the equivalent to 60 percent of the regular-season slate. Five weeks max is enough. There is no need for 16team district playoffs like we have here in District 1 for Classes 6A and 5A. That’s too many teams.

The high school football season should not start before Labor Day weekend. It’s that simple. And judging by some of the small crowds that showed up for many of the games over the weekend, the fans seem to feel that way, too.