OHSAA’s moves leading to dollar signs

Money matters.

That’s certainly not the message the Ohio High School Athletic Association wants to or intends to convey, but it’s happening whether the governing body of scholastic sports in Ohio likes it or not.

In the first sixth months of the calendar year, the OHSAA has:

• Gone against the recommendation of the state football coaches association and doubled the size of the football playoff field. Keep in mind the OHSAA approved a measure this past school year it gets 100 percent of the gate receipts for postseason games, regardless of sport.

• Mandated that member schools must now pay $50 per OHSAA sanctioned sport in which said school participates beginning with the 2021-22 school year.

• For the first time, mandated that admission fees be charged for all sectional and district baseball and softball games. Again, keep in mind the OHSAA gets all gate receipts for postseason games, regardless of sport.

Whew.

Now granted, the coronavirus pandemic hit everyone hard, including the OHSAA. The OHSAA’s financial records for the 2020-21 have yet to be filed, but rest assured the organization had its share of financial troubles last year along with everyone else.

When the pandemic halted the 2019-20 winter tournament season, thenOHSAA executive director Jerry Snodgrass said the association stood to lose $1.4 to 1.5 million if the tournaments were canceled, which they were.

No doubt, the financial coffers took a hit when last year’s spring sports season was wiped out altogether. And even though sport returned this past school year, they did so with crowds limited by order of the Ohio Department of Health.

But what in the name of William McKinley, Benjamin Franklin and Ulysses Grant is going on here? Well, money matters.

At least that’s the message being portrayed — right, wrong or whether or not the OHSAA intends to portray it, which it undoubtedly doesn’t.

That’s the widely regarded perception.

The most recent — or perhaps most prolonged — issue is the expansion of the football playoffs from eight teams to 16 teams per region.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the OHSAA allowed every team to qualify for the football playoffs in 2020. Prior to that, the playoff field consisted of the top eight teams in each region.

There are seven divisions in football in Ohio and four regions comprise each division.

The OHSAA, against the recommendation of the state coaches association (OHSFBCA), doubled it starting this fall. In doing so, it backtracked from a reported agreement between the OHSAA and OHSFBCA to qualify 12 per region.

Now 16 per region will qualify.

Said OHSAA executive director Doug Ute in April when the expansion was announced: “Last fall we received overwhelmingly positive feedback when we allowed every team to enter the football playoffs due to the shortened season because of COVID-19.”

But the OHSFBCA counters that it did a survey with member coaches and that nearly 70 percent (486 of 711 who took part) were against such expansion.

“They decided to go to 16 anyway, without any further guidance from us,” said OHSFBCA president Brent Fackler last month in a News-Herald exclusive. “I think a lot of our membership feels maybe we are not being listened to.”

That rift between the OHSAA and OHSFBCA is a whole different beast. The coaches association met with the OHSAA again this week, asking for a pause on the 16-team model and to reconsider the 12-team model, but the OHSAA declined.

The relationship between those two entities has some fixing to do, for sure.

The OHSAA trumpets the football expansion as more opportunities for schools, teams and players to experience postseason football.

But is that just window dressing for a money-grab?

The state coaches association sure thinks so. It point-blank said it in a news release in April denouncing the expansion to 16 teams per region.

“It is abundantly clear that this decision is financially motivated,” the statement concluded.

Expanding the football playoff field from 224 to 448 means there will be 224 first-round games that hadn’t existed before.

Say there are 2,000 fans per game — some smallschool games will be less, but some big-school games will have more — and based on $12 per fan (or whatever next year’s tickets cost) ... that’s new revenue of $5.37 million the OHSAA will make the first weekend of November alone.

The coaches association also has reservations about extending the season further — teams playing in the state title game will play up to 16 games this fall — and the that potential lopsided first-round matchups (such as No. 1 seed vs. No. 16) “would not be good at all,” according to Fackler.

Then there’s the implementation of membership dues.

When the OHSAA announced it was going to start charging schools per sanctioned sport, it said dues would range from $300 to $1,300, depending on how many sports a school has.

Split at the midpoint — $800 — and multiply that times the number of membership schools in the OHSAA (820), that’s a ballpark figure of another $656,000 headed to the OHSAA.

“That financial model has not been sustainable,” Ute said in announcing the new fees, “and the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly not helped.”

Charging admission for district baseball and softball games isn’t altogether new, but sectional gate fees are.

Add it all up, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility the OHSAA’s new measures — doubling the football playoff field, implementing membership dues and charging for all sectional and district baseball and softball games — could bring in $6 million or more this year in new revenue.

Granted, there are expenditures the OHSAA incurs. The financial reports from this past year’s COVID-ravaged year have not yet been released, but the 2019 reports show a deficit of $34,026.

And again, it’s safe to say the OHSAA might be trying to recoup money it lost during the pandemic year.

Still, we’re talking the potential for nearly $6 million — give or take — in new revenue that the OHSAA will be bringing in on top of what it previously did based on the moves they’ve made recently.

To be sure, the OHSAA provides tremendous opportunities for scholastic athletes. Their people work extremely hard, and the memories high school athletes have last a lifetime.

They’re memories you cannot place a price tag upon.

But ...

While the OHSAA marches under the mantra of “Respect the game,” the increasingly visible fine print reads, “Money matters.”

Because whether or not they OHSAA wants to portray that – and it doesn’t — that’s the message their moves this calendar year are putting out.