There’s a pall over the start of the upcoming high school football season that is a little more than four months away.
It’s not as dark as the spring four years ago when COVID-19 created havoc, but as the result of a few events last week there is still a lot of uncertainty ahead for when the season kicks off in late August.
On Tuesday, there were a pair of unrelated bombshell developments. Oklahoma County District Court Judge Richard Ogden ruled in a lawsuit brought by five Oklahoma City-area schools that Rule 14 remains, but the amendments adopted before the 2023-24 school year must be voided effective July 1. Rule 14 moves up private schools to higher classifications, than they would normally be placed in based on their enrollment, if they have extended postseason success, in an attempt to establish competitive balance.
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As a result, classification and district alignments in several sports, including football, will likely need to be adjusted. So right now, many schools, especially those below 5A, don’t know for sure who they’ll be playing in their season openers, or on any week during the season. Perhaps there will be some clarity soon as the OSSAA will likely address the situation at its regularly scheduled meeting Wednesday.
District alignments and schedules that often take months of preparation in order to maintain geographical and competitive balance will likely have to be thrown together in a big hurry. The timing of the ruling has the potential to cause a chaotic mess.
Also on Tuesday, there was the shocking announcement from the University of Oklahoma that the Sooners, after a request by ESPN, will play at home on a Friday night for the first time as their football opener against Temple was moved up a day to Aug. 30. That timing couldn’t be worse — the opening Friday night of the high school season.
The largest crowds of the season, besides Homecoming, are often on that opening Friday night when every team has high hopes for success and many are playing in rivalry games. OU’s move to play on Friday night was sickening to those who care about high school football. High school attendance will suffer and a night where the focus should be on the high schools will instead be dominated by OU.
While OU is a relative newcomer to Friday night football, the University of Tulsa has played 19 Friday games, including 11 at home, during its first decade in the American Athletic Conference. Those nights seemed to diminish Tulsa-area high school crowds and didn’t help the Hurricane as none of TU’s last eight Friday home games have drawn more than 19,000. Of course, TV dictated those Friday games. This year, TU has no Friday games scheduled and two on Thursdays, including the opener on Aug. 29.
And in another concerning development for high schools, the NFL announced that it will play a Friday night game, Philadelphia against Green Bay in Brazil, on its opening week for the first time since 1970. There haven’t been any NFL regular-season games on Fridays in September since then due to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 that that essentially prevents national pro football telecasts on Fridays and Saturdays in order to protect high school and college football. But the Philadelphia-Green Bay game on Sept. 6 will only be streamed (by Peacock) and that isn’t covered in the SBA as that technology couldn’t have been imagined 60-plus years ago.
The Philadelphia-Green Bay game won’t be as devastating to our state’s high school football’s Friday Night Lights as OU-Temple, but it will have a negative effect. And it’s another reason why, along with college football becoming another form of pro football, that it’s time for Congress to step in again in order to protect high schools’ Friday Night Lights.