I went to a Nebraska Class A high school football game the other night and something else broke out.
Something kind of sad.
The home team’s stands were packed. There were a dozen or so cheerleaders, a large band, a sideline full of motivated, developed football players.
Across the field, on the visiting sideline, there were 31 players.
No cheerleaders. No students. And about 22 parents watching.
The game was 35-0 at halftime. A running clock for the second half. Never mind the final score. It didn’t matter.
Is Class A football broken?
It’s a question a lot of people are asking. The folks at the top would say no. The rest of the schools chasing them with zero chance to win a state title would say yes.
But haven’t we seen this before?
When I arrived in Omaha in 1991, there were two big dogs of Class A: Creighton Prep and Lincoln Southeast. A few years later, it was Prep and Millard North. Then Millard West. And so on and so on. It seems there have always been two or three teams better than the rest. It goes in cycles.
But there is something different about today’s high school football.
The disparity from top to middle is greater. Transfers are going to the top schools. The best coaches are going to the top schools. And blowouts have become a weekly epidemic.
The NSAA has responded with a new scheduling model that drops district play and prevent games between top teams and bottom teams unless they schedule them.
Is that going to help? What else can be done? I called on an expert, Steve Warren, for answers.
Warren, who coached at Concordia and Northwest in Omaha, has worked with the top high school players in the metro for a decade at his developmental Warren Academy. His son, Braylen, is starting quarterback at Westside.
We had an interesting conversation. Two of the topics: should the top teams become private academies and play regional schedules? Should some of the bottom schools drop football?
Warren doesn’t think the current situation is going to change anytime soon.
“I feel like there’s a disparity in development and structure of programs,” Warren said. “Some programs do a really good job of being organized and having a clear cut vision of who they are. Those programs have coaches who have been around longer and have resources. That plays into it more than anything else.
“I feel like Westside has a clear cut vision and structure. Now, Millard South is just completely loaded. But then at the same time they do a very good job of program structure. You match that talent with a good program and you’re going to get what you’re getting.”
Warren acknowledges that transfers are a factor. But he says of the 12 Division I players on Millard South’s roster, nine of them have been together since “elementary school.”
“I know that because they’ve been around my program,” Warren said. “I know this is not all recruiting. Most of those kids were together growing up.”
Transfers aren’t necessarily the issue, Warren said.
“There’s so many layers to this,” Warren said. “Transfers are making a difference. But open enrollment is not new. The transfer thing is really not new.
“The problem now is you have one or two teams that are really good and people feel like it’s the transfers. When in actuality there’s not a ton of kids transferring into those schools — but a lot of kids growing up playing together.
“Now they’re in a good program and good system. It’s important to them. You can’t deny that transfers made a difference. But a majority of kids at Millard South started as ninth graders. It’s open enrollment more than transfers.”
For the record, Warren is one of those parents who chose a high school based on what they thought was best for their kid.
“Every parent has the right to do what’s best for their kid,” Warren said. “If you don’t want kids to transfer in, are you really for kids?
“Some kids are transferring because they’re in a bad situation. Maybe they’re in a place where (the school doesn’t care) about football. Maybe they want more. Maybe they want to be in a winning program.”
I’ve always wondered what would happen if the NSAA had a rule that you had to play for the school where you lived. Warren doesn’t think that will ever happen. I agree.
I posed a question. When two kids from Kansas City transferred to Millard South for their senior year — to reunite with former youth teammates — it didn’t seem unusual. If this is the new normal, should the top teams in Class A break away and become regional academies?
“I don’t think you can do that unless Nebraska creates or someone comes in and builds an IMG Academy type facility and has a charter school,” Warren said. “I don’t think any school would ever be good enough to do that. Unless it was a private school that had the money to do that and travel and upgrade a lot of things.”
Instead, Warren looked at the other end of the spectrum.
“I personally think maybe the thing to look at is, do all high schools need to have football?” Warren asked.
“I know people say if we don’t have football we’re going to lose x amount of students. You don’t really have football now.”
Warren, a former coach at Northwest, wondered if some schools in the Omaha Public Schools district should drop the sport and send players to other teams, essentially “combining schools.”
He knows it won’t ever happen because of “ego.”
“Do all schools need to have football?” Warren said. “I think that’s a bigger discussion. Or, should some of these schools that can’t get more than 100 kids out combine programs? Why not?
“Let’s be honest, Northwest and Benson are going to struggle no matter what. Bryan. If it’s really this big of a problem, they need to think way outside of the box.”
Because the lower schools are in a hole they can’t get out of, Warren doesn’t see the NSAA scheduling plan having much impact.
“They’re doing the right thing and trying to match up programs more competitively,” he said. “I don’t know if this is going to help.
“All that’s going to happen now when you switch districts is the two lower tiers are going to play each other but because of power points have no chance of making the playoffs. What kids are going to want to go there and play?
“It’s all about power (strength of schedule) points, right? Say one of these teams has a great record. Can they still make the playoff? Also, it doesn’t make any sense to have all these (lower) teams play each other and make the playoffs and get beat by 70 points.
“You’re just prolonging the butt whipping.”
Warren has a solution: Split Class A. Take the top teams in that class and let them play on their own level, with maybe a smaller state playoffs and have their own champion. Then let the bottom half of A play for their state title.
I would take it a step further: move the top half of B up to that second “A” and move the lower half of A down the new “B.”
You would have an upper Class A, or A1, an A2 and a B. But how you divide them up is the trick.
“The only way to fix this is to split Class A,” Warren said. “I’m around all these kids in the off-season and I can tell you as a fact, some of these schools are never coming back in football because kids don’t want to go there because they don’t want to lose or the culture is bad or there are no resources.”
But might they stay if they had a chance to make the playoffs and make a run? Who knows?
Then again, Nebraska high school football realignment is easier said than done. Imagine the chore of deciding which schools go in which classes.
“The way it’s going now is the way it’s going to be,” Warren said.
Whether that’s a good thing depends on what side of the field you’re on.
tom.shatel@owh.com, 402-444-1025, twitter.com/tomshatelOWH
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Tom Shatel
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