Why does Minnesota HS football only play 8 games?

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Gopherprof

Gopherprof

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I'm not a native Minnesotan, so this has vexed me since I moved here. I'm originally from Ohio, and there we play a 10-game schedule, and the playoffs involved 5 games, meaning that a championship team will have to play 15 games in a season. Nobody ever complained about the length of the season when I played.

In Minnesota, the regular season is 8 games, and the playoffs are 3 games.

That's an additional 2-4 football games that every high school plays each year. That would seem to put Minnesota HS football at a competitive disadvantage in terms of extra practice/game experience. What's the reason for this?

I would guess lack of teams, but if that's the case, why expand to six friggin divisions? Is it just that football isn't as big in Minnesota so everyone wants to get to hockey/wrestling/basketball season? I don't get it.
 

The MN season used to be 9 games. It was switched to 8 back when they went from a "conference champs only" advancement into playoffs, to a system where the vast majority of teams make it into the playoffs.

So, for the most part, this does make it at least 9 games for most HS teams in MN.

Playoffs are another story. Don't get me started. With more and more classes added all the time, there are fewere and fewer games needed to get to the championship game. They are now getting close to the point where they can stop having playoffs, send a championship trophy to every team, and ask that the teams that feel they don't deserve it can send it back. :(
 

Gopherprof said:
I'm not a native Minnesotan, so this has vexed me since I moved here. I'm originally from Ohio, and there we play a 10-game schedule, and the playoffs involved 5 games, meaning that a championship team will have to play 15 games in a season. Nobody ever complained about the length of the season when I played.

In Minnesota, the regular season is 8 games, and the playoffs are 3 games.

That's an additional 2-4 football games that every high school plays each year. That would seem to put Minnesota HS football at a competitive disadvantage in terms of extra practice/game experience. What's the reason for this?

I would guess lack of teams, but if that's the case, why expand to six friggin divisions? Is it just that football isn't as big in Minnesota so everyone wants to get to hockey/wrestling/basketball season? I don't get it.
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Simply enough, weather factors for many small schools. If you don't have access to a place to practice (we had to practice in a gym when we went to state in HS 4 years back) then its hard to justify extending the season. That season we had 8 regular season games, plus 3 section games, plus 2 in the state tournament for a total of 13 games. So for us it was a long season that went to Thanksgiving time and we had started the week before school started (late August) playing games. When it takes that long to crown a potential champion, its hard for smaller size schools to play the extra games due to lack of facilities and im sure the mshsl doesn't want certain divisions playing extra games, etc. just my guesses at it.
 

Lack of practice facilities because it's snowing? I don't understand.
 

So start earlier if the snow is a problem late in the season. If Wisconsin can find time to play more, so should Minnesota.
 


wels0081 said:
So start earlier if the snow is a problem late in the season. If Wisconsin can find time to play more, so should Minnesota.
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Correct me if I'm wrong (like I needed to add that here), but doesn't every team in Minnesota play at least one section playoff game? This would mean they get 9 guaranteed games. I looked at their playoff brackets in Wisconsin and it doesn't look like every team makes the playoffs. But I think they get 9 regular season games. So in essence, it is the same here as in WI. The only difference is that in WI they are guaranteed 9 regular season games and in MN the are guaranteed 8 regular season games and 1 playoff game.
 

I personally wouldn't mind if they add a 9th regular season game and have just four teams in each section make the playoffs. The only problem with that though is they would have to essentially go away with current conferences and make each section your conference. I know for the small schools, some sections currently have teams from two or three different conferences. It would be hard to determine who the top four teams were if not all the teams were playing each other during the regular season.
 

HopHead said:
Correct me if I'm wrong (like I needed to add that here), but doesn't every team in Minnesota play at least one section playoff game? This would mean they get 9 guaranteed games. I looked at their playoff brackets in Wisconsin and it doesn't look like every team makes the playoffs. But I think they get 9 regular season games. So in essence, it is the same here as in WI. The only difference is that in WI they are guaranteed 9 regular season games and in MN the are guaranteed 8 regular season games and 1 playoff game.
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I thought only 8 teams from each division made the playoffs? (Clearly I don't follow the high school ranks that much)
 

Nope. 8 teams from each section make the playoffs. Basically EVERBODY makes the playoffs and is guaranteed 9 games. It is totally different with the new largest class where there are only 32 teams total. Back in the day when it was 5 or 6 classses, there were very few sections that had more than 8 teams. So, basically everybody gets 9 games minimum.
 



So if everyone makes the playoffs, how are there only additional 3 playoff games to narrow down to a champion? I guess I'm confused on what a sectional playoff game means in this context. We had sections in Ohio, but that's why our playoff tournament took 5 games to crown a champion.
 

Gopherprof said:
So if everyone makes the playoffs, how are there only additional 3 playoff games to narrow down to a champion? I guess I'm confused on what a sectional playoff game means in this context. We had sections in Ohio, but that's why our playoff tournament took 5 games to crown a champion.
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It takes five playoff games to crown a state champion in Minnesota, too. At the largest level, there are four sections of eight teams each:

Section 3 (South): Burnsville, Eagan, Eastview, Lakeville North, Lakeville South, Park, Prior Lake, Rosemount
Section 4 (East): Cretin-Derham Hall, Forest Lake, Mounds View, North, Roseville, Stillwater, White Bear Lake, Woodbury
Section 5 (North): Anoka, Blaine, Brainerd, Centennial, Champlin Park, Coon Rapids, Maple Grove, Osseo
Section 6 (West): Eden Prairie, Edina, Hopkins, Minnetonka, Minneapolis South, Robbinsdale Armstrong, Shakopee, Wayzata

If you win your first and second playoff games, thus being one of eight teams remaining, you are in the state tournament and three wins away from the state title.
 


Jike Spingleton said:
It takes five playoff games to crown a state champion in Minnesota, too. At the largest level, there are four sections of eight teams each:

Section 3 (South): Burnsville, Eagan, Eastview, Lakeville North, Lakeville South, Park, Prior Lake, Rosemount
Section 4 (East): Cretin-Derham Hall, Forest Lake, Mounds View, North, Roseville, Stillwater, White Bear Lake, Woodbury
Section 5 (North): Anoka, Blaine, Brainerd, Centennial, Champlin Park, Coon Rapids, Maple Grove, Osseo
Section 6 (West): Eden Prairie, Edina, Hopkins, Minnetonka, Minneapolis South, Robbinsdale Armstrong, Shakopee, Wayzata

If you win your first and second playoff games, thus being one of eight teams remaining, you are in the state tournament and three wins away from the state title.
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The largest class also crosses over so the best schools all make the state tournament. This year section 5 crosses over with 6 and 3 crosses over with 4.
 



Johnnyboy18 said:
The largest class also crosses over so the best schools all make the state tournament. This year section 5 crosses over with 6 and 3 crosses over with 4.
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Correct. So, for example, tonight Maple Grove travels to Champlin Park to determine a division champion. If MG wins, they will be the #1 seed in Section 5, and assuming they win their first sectional playoff game, would then face the winner of the game between the #4/5 seeds in Section 6 for a berth in the state quarterfinals.
 

Maybe this link will help clear things up:

http://www.mshsl.org/mshsl/googlemap_new.asp

If look go to the football map, you can see that there are 8 sections to every class except the new 6A class which only has four sections. And each section has any where from 6 to 10 teams in it (most often it is 8). This means a team in a typical section of 8 teams must win three games to make it to state and the three more to win state. The exception is the new 6A class which needs to win 3 games to make it to state but only 2 more games to win state.

edited to add: I just noticed that the new 6A class is not included in this map but others have already detailed how 6A works.
 

The "make everyone feel good" playoff system in Minnesota is a joke. The bottom seeds (who are often winless) practice an extra week to get absolutely throttled in playoff games by teams that are powerhouses.
The old system (where you had to be a winning team to qualify) allowed for rivalry games in the final week, which was a great way (win or lose) for a lot of schools to end the football season.
 

the whole "let's make sure everyone feels good about themselves, participation trophy nature" of the Minnesota State High School League is the primary problem with high school sports in our state. it doesn't matter whether you are talking about football, basketball, hockey, etc. it has devolved into this silly "we need to make sure no one has to play anyone that is too tough for them mentality" and thus why we so many sections. the only reason their are so many sections is so more teams can artificially make it into the prep bowl. it is ridiculous, imo. a lot of it is driven by small to mid-sized schools, which have far too much say in the whole process as far as i am concerned.
 

What do you mean too many classes?
Only 56 teams can say they "made it to state" this year.
That's only what? 2500 players?
I'm being sarcastic, of course. The number of qualifying teams has sucked the interest from the state football and basketball tournaments.
 

Here is my philosophy of any playoff system:

ONLY TEAMS WITH 0 WINS ARE ELIGIBLE!!!

Round 1: Winning team goes home, they are happy they finally won a game. Losers advance to Round 2.
Round 2: Winning team goes home, they are happy they finally won a game. Losers advance to Round 3.

Continue until only 2 teams remain, neither of which has won a game all year.

Final round: Winning team goes home with runner up trophy, happy as all billy hell having finally won a game, plus a trophy.
Losing team goes home with Championship Trophy, they are happy as all billy hell for having won the Championship.


Everyone ends their season on a high note, with participation ribbons for everyone.
 

The first game is the first week of school (or before). The last games (championships) are played Thanksgiving weekend. That's about as late as you can go in Minnesota with weather. I suppose you could start games a few weeks before school starts, and that would be fine with me. Not much chance of that happening, though.
 

supadupafly said:
the whole "let's make sure everyone feels good about themselves, participation trophy nature" of the Minnesota State High School League is the primary problem with high school sports in our state. it doesn't matter whether you are talking about football, basketball, hockey, etc. it has devolved into this silly "we need to make sure no one has to play anyone that is too tough for them mentality" and thus why we so many sections. the only reason their are so many sections is so more teams can artificially make it into the prep bowl. it is ridiculous, imo. a lot of it is driven by small to mid-sized schools, which have far too much say in the whole process as far as i am concerned.
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Why do you say that? In football and basketball, the large classes have way less teams and don't have to win nearly as many games to make it to state. Most of the changes made lately have separated the large schools more than the small schools. The amount of schools in 1A football has not changed that much over the past 10 years or so.

The problem with the small schools is:
1. Schools change classes a lot
2. Some sections are made up of teams from up to three different conferences. Like I said earlier, you'd have to do away with conferences and just play teams from your section during the regular season. If not, you could end up with very good teams not getting in when they didn't even have a chance to play others in their section. My senior year, we were 5-3 and was rated #7 out of 9 teams. We played the #2 rated team who was 7-1 from a different conference and beat them by 20+.
 

GophersInIowa said:
Why do you say that? In football and basketball, the large classes have way less teams and don't have to win nearly as many games to make it to state. Most of the changes made lately have separated the large schools more than the small schools. The amount of schools in 1A football has not changed that much over the past 10 years or so.

The problem with the small schools is:
1. Schools change classes a lot
2. Some sections are made up of teams from up to three different conferences. Like I said earlier, you'd have to do away with conferences and just play teams from your section during the regular season. If not, you could end up with very good teams not getting in when they didn't even have a chance to play others in their section. My senior year, we were 5-3 and was rated #7 out of 9 teams. We played the #2 rated team who was 7-1 from a different conference and beat them by 20+.
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I can second this. this happened several times in our conference with someone who had come from another section to play in ours for playoffs and they got throttled by 25+ pts almost every time by a team that was sub .500 in our section. i would love for the season to be extended and to start earlier, but small schools will never go for that with budgets already being difficult to manage for many.
 

Gopherprof said:
Lack of practice facilities because it's snowing? I don't understand.
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What I'm saying is, playoff games at a certain point must be played indoors (at least this was the case when I was in HS for our sectional championship and subsequent games.) When you are trying to prep for games indoors and you don't have anywhere to practice (being outside doesn't simulate well when the ground is rock hard and when you try cut you just slide and fall all over and kids get hurt at a much higher rate) unless its in the gym that can't fit all the kids in there in pads, it becomes an issue for small schools in that they really don't see any benefit from added games. larger classes probably would however and keep in mind this is all from a first hand personal basis.
 

Looking through the scores from last night and section standings, I noticed that the 4A section has teams from six different conferences. Only one game all year was played between two teams from the section.

Some of the AAAA sections are like that too. If less teams make the playoffs (say four per section), then how would you determine who was better between teams like Irondale and Mahtomedi? They both sit at 5-3 and tied for the fourth best record in their section, but didn't play each other and didn't have a single common opponent.
 

If they ever went to a system where only four teams made a playoff in each section, the conferences would have to be eliminated at least for football.
 

The other thing that's a HUGE pet peeve of mine with the MSHSL is how they name the classes.
When I played, it was:

AA (largest)
A
B
C
9-man (smallest)

Now because of this "everyone feel good" garbage, EVERY level is named with the letter A, because God Forbid someone be the Class D or E champion. This is really stupid when you start talking about sectionals.

So the Section 4 4A champion is... It just sounds stupid.
 

Hates Monikers said:
The first game is the first week of school (or before). The last games (championships) are played Thanksgiving weekend. That's about as late as you can go in Minnesota with weather. I suppose you could start games a few weeks before school starts, and that would be fine with me. Not much chance of that happening, though.
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Bad idea. Practice already starts the second week of August. Any earlier and you're taking too much of the kids' summer. Especially if the kids have jobs. With that oddball week-early practice start for some schools this season, you already had some kids saying screw it and either not going out for football at all, or refusing to show up until week 2 because the early start was too much of a burden.

Weather is a legitimate concern in the late fall, especially in the far northern part of the state. In some years when they get significant snow in October, it becomes difficult to practice and play in some places. I know there's been a number of occasions when games have had to get moved to the domes in Fargo and Grand Forks.
 


discochris said:
Bad idea. Practice already starts the second week of August. Any earlier and you're taking too much of the kids' summer. Especially if the kids have jobs. With that oddball week-early practice start for some schools this season, you already had some kids saying screw it and either not going out for football at all,or refusing to show up until week 2 because the early start was too much of a burden.
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I'm a pretty young guy that usually rolls my eyes when the seniors start talking about how soft kids are today, but if I were a coach I'd tell those kids to go *&^!#*&^!#*&^!#*&^!# themselves with a rusty screwdriver.
 

Gopherprof said:
I'm a pretty young guy that usually rolls my eyes when the seniors start talking about how soft kids are today, but if I were a coach I'd tell those kids to go *&^!#*&^!#*&^!#*&^!# themselves with a rusty screwdriver.
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In some ways I'd agree, but the burden that they talked about was more financial, rather than "I don't get to hang around with my friends and do nothing.". As in an extra week or two of work was more important than football.

I know when I was in school (20 years ago or so), that there were a lot of kids that didn't stick with football through their senior year because of jobs.

And if a player is good enough, and the school is seeing declining numbers for football as it is, they'll still play.
 

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