(07-31-2024, 10:17 AM)Replying to JC-DAWG83
Supposed to be 98 degrees here on Friday. It will probably be no lower than 94 in Rockmart. It is crazy to start football this early.
HS football should have its first game the Friday after Labor Day AGI.
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Yep. We're about 2 weeks ahead of traditional schedule. One thing they do is have 2 off weeks during the season, whereas in days past there was always 1 off week. They're doing something different this year in inserting a 3rd off week on (I think?) Thanksgiving weekend. That will impact only teams that make it to the semi-finals (I believe that is correct). That additional off week has nothing to do with the Thanksgiving holiday, but allegedly it has to do with the Georgia-Georgia Tech game being played on Friday (Nov. 29th) of that same weekend. But someone else has mentioned that the week of the state championships would conflict with something at the dome, thus they moved the high school playoffs out a week, pushing the state championships out a week, thus avoiding the conflict at the dome.
If that 3rd off week situation wasn't happening, I think we'd probably be 1 week ahead of the traditional timetable, with the opening game being at the very end of August or very beginning of September.
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IIRC; bitd the first game was usually the Friday after Labor Day so call it September 5th or so. Seasons were 10 games with one week off and the last games were generally played around mid November. Playoffs were started the Friday before Thanksgiving week and were usually wrapped up the first or second weekend in December. I remember going to some HS playoff games the day after Thanksgiving and then going to Athens to watch the Georgia/tech game the next morning. Maybe there was one fewer playoff round back then? It sure seems like a lot more teams are in the playoffs now. There are five rounds in the playoffs now in GHSA. I don't think there have always been that many. The teams in the final game of the playoffs will play 15 games in a season. I guess there are more schools now so they have to have more regions.
It looks to me like they are starting about 3 weeks early compared to the old days. The season ends about the same time in December so I guess your thought about the weeks off is right. I guess having two bye weeks during the season is nice but mid August is way too early to be playing football in full pads. Kickoffs will be in sunshine, it won't be dark until halftime or later.
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You are right in that there are probably more playoff games than there used to be. In fact, I had to go have a look. In the early-1970s Carrollton won the state championship a couple of times. Looks like they played 13 games during those championship runs. Today, teams that go to the state championship will typically play 15 games. That is one significant factor, adding 2 games. Then, there is the additional off week. That's 3 additional weeks tacked onto the season.
The season starting on Friday, August 16th, puts them 2 weeks ahead of August 30th. That could be an additional week starting. I looked at Carrollton's 1971 schedule. Their opening game was on September 3rd. Their 1979 season, on the other hand, started on August 24th. Redan won the Class AAA state championship that year, and they played 15 games. So, sometime between 1971 and 1979 they added playoff games. Part of that, I can remember what happened. In the 1971 season they only played a region championship game, and then you were straight into the semi-finals (per what I see in their schedule). In the 1979 season there were 2 region playoffs, and then when you won your region you went to the quarter-finals.
I guess the biggest difference, today, from the 1979 season is the 2nd off week added to the season. This year is an anomaly because of the added 3rd week off during the week of the semi-finals/Thanksgiving weekend.