OSSAA: Friday finals by design
Heritage Hall coach Brett Bogert posed questions in a conversation with another coach earlier this week many fans have asked.
Why can’t Oklahoma’s high school football championships be spread out over a weekend? Why can’t they be played at one site, offering a chance to watch more than one game?
Texas makes it work. So do other states. Oklahoma used to as well.
“Play three games a day or whatever,” Bogert said.
Those days are long gone.
A dozen high school football games will be played this weekend at the same time at different locations. Fans and coaches will be unable to watch multiple games, unless they set the DVR at home or purchase payper-view broadcasts.
But it’s by design from the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, which has not scheduled a Saturday football championship game since 2015.
“The feedback that we’ve got back from the member schools is that they would prefer that,” OSSAA associate director Mike Whaley told The Oklahoman.
“It’s the traditional Friday night (for) high school and not having to worry about conflicting with other levels of play on Saturday.
That’s always part of the thought process.”
It’s unclear if sites used Friday were available Saturday. But this weekend’s Big 12 championship game is set for an 11 a.m. kickoff, leaving time in the afternoon and evening for title games.
The Oklahoman spoke with five high school coaches playing in 11-man championships Friday night. Four said they would have played Saturday if given the chance.
“I really don’t care, personally, because I don’t have another game afterwards,” Tuttle coach Brad Ballard said. “I would never be upset with an extra day of rest at this point.”
Stillwater coach Tucker Barnard balked at the idea.
In the school’s first championship game since 1977, the Pioneers will travel to Owasso to face Bixby.
The idea of a Saturday doubleheader with Class 6A-I’s Jenks and Broken Arrow at the University of Tulsa was floated by the OSSAA.
Barnard preferred playing a few blocks away at OSU or playing Friday night elsewhere.
“I didn’t really want to,” Barnard said. “I just didn’t want to deal with the whole Saturday 1 o’clock game being out of our realm of comfort.”
For Bethany coach and athletic director Jon Arthur, this is all new.
He said he never heard from the OSSAA this month about neutral sites or dates for the Bronchos’ semifinal or championship game. He and his staff spent each Saturday anxiously refreshing the OSSAA website in search of their next destination.
“We would have played whenever,” Arthur said. “We were curious to why that was, but we would have played whenever. We didn’t really have a preference.”
Arthur feels like the creating one site for each weekend would be like basketball state tournament weekends at The Big House.
People would come, whether associated with a school or not.
“It’s really affecting the schools not playing or the general football fans,” Arthur said.