Playoffs may be moved all to Fridays

The days of wondering whether your high school football team will play its playoff games Friday or Saturday might soon come to an end.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association on June 1 will vote on a measure that, if passed, will put all football playoff games aside from the state championship round on Friday nights.

The vote will take place as part of the board of directors’ monthly meeting.

“After looking at all the data over the last several years, we came up with this idea,” said Tim Stried, director of communications for the OHSAA.

“This is a real item the board is going to look at.”

Historically, four of the OHSAA’s seven divisions in football played on Friday nights in the postseason, while the other three divisions played on Saturdays.

Up until last year, Division II teams played their playoff games on Fridays and Division I teams played their playoff games on Saturdays, with the other divisions rotating between Friday and Saturday on a yearby-year basis.

In 2016, that changed up a bit, with Divisions I, II, IV and VI playing Friday and Divisions III, V and VII playing Saturday.

If this new legislation passes, everyone will play on Fridays.

Stried said the OHSAA’s research has uncovered three reasons to put all of the playoff games on Friday nights:

• Attendance is better on Fridays than Saturdays.

• It’s more difficult to find stadiums for Saturday games played on neutral sites.

• Coaches who were surveyed preferred keeping their regular-season schedule of playing on Fridays.

If passed by the OHSAA’s board of directors, all playoff games will be on Friday night. The only exceptions will be first-round hosting teams who don’t have lights on their fields or venues that serve as home sites to multiple playoff-qualifying teams that would necessitate games on Saturdays.

The state finals week will continue to have games on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Stried said. This year’s state finals are at Tom Benson Stadium in Canton.

“This should have been done years ago,” said Mentor coach Steve Trivisonno, giving his pre-vote stamp of approval for Friday-only playoff games. “It’s common sense. Friday games are much more crowded. I think we saw that last year when big-school games were moved to Friday.”

Stried said the data supports Trivisonno’s claims. Division I playoff games played prior to 2015 on Saturdays dimmed in comparison attendance-wise to the Division I games played on Friday nights in 2016.

Each division had similar results.

“Getting teams to play on Saturday was never an issue,” Stried said. “If a team is in the playoffs, they’ll play at 6 in the morning if they have to. But the data shows attendance for Saturday games is poor.”

It is poor for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is considered to be the desire to stay home and watch college football on television.

Ohio State normally plays four or five night games a year, as do many other marquee FBS programs.

Going head-to-head with college games doesn’t make sense.

“There are so many great college games on Saturday nights now — Penn State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, USC — a number of teams,” Stried said. “The more and more Ohio State plays on Saturday nights, the less and less sites we have available. Sites have a hard time getting workers for Saturday games.

“We agree, Saturday is a college football day.”

Stried said OHSAA assistant commissioner Beau Rugg has discussed the playoff scenario with a number of high school coaches, many of whom are in favor of keeping with the routine of playing on Friday nights in the playoffs the same way they played in the regular season.

Two potential problems with the measure were snuffed out by Stried.

While first-round playoff games are hosted by the higher-seeded teams, the regional semifinals, regional finals and state semifinals are all played at neutral sites. Having sufficient venues fit for playoff games could be deemed a problem.

So would a perceived lack of football officials to staff a full slate of playoff games around the state.

Stried said both issues have been considered.

“We could not have done this five years ago, or even 10 years ago,” Stried said. “Now we have more playoff sites capable of hosting a game than we’ve ever had. More and more stadiums are getting turf and have upgraded their facility to host.

“We have more Class 1 officials now, too, so there are enough officials to do this on one night if we want.”

In a meeting last week with the OHSAA Media Advisory Committee, OHSAA Commissioner Dr. Dan Ross said the OHSAA would like to “give it a try and see how it works.”

It comes down to a June 1 vote.

“I know it sounds crazy, but when it comes to playoffs, I’ll play on the moon on any day,” Euclid coach Jeff Rotsky said. “I’ll play whenever. It was cool when it was on different nights, so if you’re a fan and want to watch another game you could do that.

“To me, it’s six of one, half-dozen of another. It doesn’t bother me.”