Why would tiny R.I. need 5 football divisions?
I’m hearing rumblings that football is leaning toward going to five divisions next season. There are still proposals going around, but it sounds like a popular one is a “four-division” setup with a subdivision in Division IV, which, by my basic understanding of math, would be five divisions.
To show you how patently ridiculous this is, Pennsylvania has six divisions. Rhode Island would have two less champions than Pa. with about 600 fewer schools, so what are we really trying to accomplish here?
I wish everyone responsible for realignment would be more upfront about why they’re going in this direction. It looks obvious — there’s more value being placed on winning titles than building programs, and being a part of something special, when the opposite should be true.
More divisions plus a bunch of Thanksgiving Day games that don’t mean as much is going to continue to water down a product that’s starting to get noticed.
Let’s stop now. Football needs competition and rivalries and it’s time we forget the past and embrace what the state should have done a while ago.
It’s time for a regionalized regular season and a true classified playoff.
The postseason setup is simple: Three Super Bowls — Private School, Large School and Small School. You want to make it four and add a Medium School? Go for it — as long as the playing fields are level.
Regionalize the state. Seven divisions of six teams — East Bay, Providence, South County, West, Blackstone, Cranston/Warwick and a mishmash of Pawtucket/East Providence — gives you five regular-season games and three out-of-conference that would follow the NFL format. The first-place team in the East Bay in 2020 would play the three first-place teams in three of the divisions in 2021; in 2022, they’d be matched up against the other three divisions as part of the rotating schedule.
To make the postseason, it’s about who you beat. Every team gets a I-IV designation. You want to break that down by talent or school size? Fine. Beat a I team, get four points; lose to a I team, lose nothing. Beat a IV team, get one point; lose to a IV, lose three.
Eight teams in each class make the playoffs. Private schools, y’all are in. A team like Narragansett — the smallest school in South County — could lose every league game, win its three out-of-conference and still win the Small School title. You know, because they’re a small school and it’s patently unfair they have to play against schools with two, three and four times their enrollment.
Some divisions will be harder than others. That’s life. What we don’t have is nearly as many schools punching outside their weight class. If you’ve got 600 boys in your school, I don’t want to hear how you can’t build a program like another school with 600 boys. It took Joe Gilmartin six years to turn NK from punching bag to one of the state’s best. He didn’t do it by luck. That’s your blueprint.
Barring changes to enrollment, there’s no more realignment. It’s just football. Playing more games locally will create better rivalries, make things more interesting and give more teams an actual shot to win titles.
Or we can just keep up with the nonsense and fighting about who should be where and what gives someone a better chance to win now. Whatever’s easier.
Game notes
Some thoughts after covering three high school basketball games in two days:
◘ I don’t know if there is any other player in any other sport in Rhode Island who brings fans to games like Shea’s Erickson Bans. I’ve never seen a kid miss a game and opposing players and fans were disappointed about it. Hopefully, he’ll be healthy soon because, without him, Shea isn’t scaring anyone. With Bans, nobody in the state wants to play them.
◘ Hendricken’s Sebastian Thomas is legit. His first-step quickness is rivaled only by Bans and he knows how to get to the basket for layups or foul shots. Wouldn’t mind seeing Thomas and Bans go at it in March.
◘ North Kingstown has a chance to defend its title, but the Skippers are going to need to find one more scorer to really give them a chance. Aaron Thomas has a way of getting his role players ready, so don’t be surprised to see someone step up soon.
◘ Good defense is fun to watch and NK-Hendricken had plenty of it. Geoff Coyne did a solid job vs. Thomas and you can see the football player in Hendricken’s Angel Sanchez and Andres Andujar. Feel bad for anyone who tries to score on either of these guys.
◘ On the girls side, I think Scituate can win the state championship. Not a Division II title — I’m talking the big one. The last time a small school won a state title was at the end of the Ponaganset dynasty in 2000-01, but the Spartans have the pieces. Madison Medbury is the best point guard in the state and gets it done on both ends. Scituate’s size might be an issue, but it kept up with South Kingstown in its non-league season opener in a game that was closer than the 11-point difference at the end. If Scituate plays anywhere near as fast as it did Tuesday night, it could run past everyone and right to the Ryan Center.
◘ If I’m Ponaganset, I ignore Tuesday’s result. The Chieftains are a good D-II team and that loss was more on inexperience than talent. Gary Martinelli bringing former La Salle coach Sean Reddy on was brilliant and you can see Reddy’s fingerprints all over what Ponaganset is doing. The Chieftains might not win the D-II title this year, but with Reddy around and lots of talent coming up, trophies are coming. Can Ponaganset return to the 1990s when it was the best girls program in the state? It’ll be interesting to see.