Bob Lutz: Let’s regroup and figure out a better way for high school sports

I’ve been reading lately about how Classes 6A and 5A are going to adopt a seeding system for the high school football playoffs next year and about how 4A is adapting to two classes and about how 3A wants in on some of the action and… stop. Everybody just stop!

We’re out of control with high school sports and we have been for a while. Rather than a thought-out, strategic plan to make high school sports better in Kansas, it seems as if our style is to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

There are bright people involved in high school athletics. Educators. And educators are smart, otherwise they wouldn’t be educators. Right?

So why can’t the Kansas State High School Activities Association, which is steered by educators, come up with a plan that works for everyone? One that stops growing classes — Kansas is the Duggar family of class proliferation — and takes a sensible, considered approach to fixing our system.

We live in a state with fewer than 3 million people and many of us like it that way. And eight football classes are simply too many. We have 6A, 5A, 4A-I, 4A-II, 3A, 2-1A, 8-Man I and 8-Man II. If our goal is to eventually pin a state championship football medal on every boy in a Kansas high school, we’re making great progress.

Folks who are involved with 3A schools are pushing to change something because they are still loaded with 64 schools. And, given that we’ve sliced 4A in two recently, creating a couple of 32-team classes, the 3A folks have a point.

But if 3A is eventually split, we’ll have nine classes. In a small state.

When is enough enough?

About three classes ago. Thanks for allowing me to answer my own question.

The KSHSAA should strive for as much uniformity as possible.

The 3A people have a point when they question why there are 64 teams in that class but only 32 in the four classes above 3A, with 39 schools below in Class 2-1A. We’ll leave the 96 schools that play 8-man football out of this discussion as they do their own thing.

That leaves 231 schools participating in 11-man football in six classes, which comes to 38.5 schools per class.

I refuse to believe sensible, determined people can’t come up with a better classification system than the one we currently have.

In some ways, Kansas is hamstrung by geography and underpopulated areas. I get that. It’s not easy to put a bunch of kids on a bus in Ulysses and send them off to Baxter Springs. These are high school students, after all, and education does come first.

But why continue with a system that is broken, has always been broken and will continue to be broken until some ingenious person with a plan does something about it?

In 2016, teams in Classes 6A and 5A will be seeded after the eighth game, essentially creating a playoff that starts with Week 9. There are elements of seeding a class that should improve the system, but there will still be flaws.

The impetus to split 4A into two classes was based on enrollment sizes creating an unlevel playing field. Too much of a disparity in the sizes of the schools at the top end and the bottom end.

Some associated with 3A are making the same case, but also making the point that a 64-school class forces teams that reach the second round to play three playoff games in a span of 10 games. They say that’s dangerous for players.

There is no perfect football system, most likely, nor should it be anyone’s goal to create one. But we can do a lot better and it starts with stopping this proliferation of classes.

Eight is too many. Nine would be ludicrous. And if there are nine, would 10 be far behind?

When does it stop?

Leadership is needed. A blue-ribbon committee — heck, I’d take a red-ribbon one at this point — should be formed to look into how to make high school sports better in Kansas. All of them, at every level.

Too many people have their hands in the cookie dough. And not enough have baked a cookie in their lives.

Put everything on the table — except more classes. More classes is not a solution to the problem, it’s an enhancer to the problem. And it must be stopped.

There needs to be a better marketing effort for high school sports in Kansas. The media and the public treat high school sports, especially football and basketball, like a big deal. It’s time the KSHSAA did, too.

We can do better than we’re doing. That’s a plea heard in high school classrooms everywhere. “We can do better.”

It applies to our leaders in high school sports. And it’s time we did.

This story was originally published October 23, 2015 at 4:42 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Let’s regroup and figure out a better way for high school sports."