:shock: California played its first state football championships in 79 years today. They had three, invitation-only games at the new Home Depot Sports Complex at Cal State Dominguez Hills (Compton). Despite all of the fighting and arguing about which six teams were selected, the games were pretty good and some of the results were surprising... Division III (small schools) Oaks Christian defeated Cardnial Newman in OT 27-20. Jimmy Clausen, in his final HS game, played the worst game of his career. After throwing only three interceptions all season, he tossed three in the FIRST HALF! The game was a classic, with little Cardinal Newman playing some old-fashioned CSF...Catholic School Football. If you've ever played a little CSF, then you know what that means. Oaks Christian's All-American heroes were hit harder than they'd ever been hit in their careers. Going into the 4th quarter, Clausen had only 65 yards passing. It rained a little and Cardinal Newman came very close to raining on their parade, but Oaks Christian pulled it out in OT and the nation's longest winning streak continues at around 48... Division II (medium size schools) Orange Lutheran slaughtered Palo Alto. The game was never close. Division I (large schools) Concord De La Salle, ranked #1 in the nation, was beaten easily by Canyon HS of Canyon Country, a team that had lost two games early in the season. It snapped De La Salle's current 22 game winning streak and was only the 20th loss of coach Bob Ladoceur's 27-year career... Canyon Country had three fourth down stops and a goal line stand. Their defense shut down everything that De La Salle tried to do. They also won despite the terrible play of their QB, a kid named Longshore, who is the younger brother of Cal's QB Nate Longshore... The only consistent theme in all three games was that all three winners were from SoCal and all three losers were from NoCal. That was why they stopped playing state championships 79 years ago: the NoCals couldn't compete. Guess what? They still can't... .................JO'Co
Good report. I played catholic school football back in the day and those games were wars. Much tougher than playing a lot of the pubic schools who were often ranked higher in the polls.
I read someplace that Joe Montana's kid is going to De La Salle and plays QB. He was not the starter on the team yesterday, but is a freshman or a soph. Wouldn't it be something if the kid had game like his old man.
Wait, California had a state championship game but the teams didn't play themselves into the games, they were "selected". That's BCS type of BS, why in the world would they do that?
re: state championsips The state is just too big to have a true playoff format. As it is, each team was playing in its 14th game of the season, while Cardinal Newman was playing in its 15th. If the entire state played a statewide playoff system there would be teams that would have to play 20 friggen games and travel thousands of miles! There has to be a limit. This is only high school football and we already have some schools with multi-million dollar football budgets and regular appearances on TV and radio... The current system divides the state into sections under the CIF, the California Interscholastic Federation. Each section administers its own athletic affairs as if it were its own state and many of these sections are actually larger and richer than most states. Here in SoCal the athletic areas are divided into three CIF Sections: Los Angeles City Section, San Diego County Section and the Southern Section, which includes all of Southern California outside of the two large cities. Football teams throughout the state play a 9 or 10 game regular schedule, depending on whether or not each team prefers to have an off week or to play a tenth game. The CIF playoffs go four rounds to determine a CIF champion based on area and the size of the school. There are around 12 divisions to classify schools according to size, with Catholic schools having their enrollment counted double to "even out their inherent advantages." (Like having eligible players with supportive parents.) At the end of this process, there are more than a hundred champions all over the state and it would be impossible for them all to playoff until there was one champion. The current system, which is an experiment, utilizes a selection committee to pick 6 teams from around the state that are highly ranked to playoff against each other. Prior to yesterday, De La Salle was ranked #1 in the state and #1 in the nation. Oaks Christian was #2 in the state and #6 in the nation, but they were arguing that THEY should be playing against De La Salle instead of Canyon Country. Now it appears that the selection committee got it right. Oaks Christian barely survived against another small school, while De La Salle was defeated by one of SoCal's large public school football factories... re: CSF I used to live for playing against public schools. We never lost to one...ever. Sometimes we knew that we were going to win just by watching them warm up. If they weren't serious with enough self-discipline to matchup with us, they were dead ducks... ................JO'Co
I don't know, in Texas we have state wide playoffs and Texas is bigger than California, not in population of course but in total area so travel costs would be at least as much if not more than California. Also it would make a difference if you guys had more divisions, in Texas we have 5 different classes based on enrollment. Within the top 2 classes the playoffs are divided further by enrollment so that in 5A you have a big school champion and a small school champion. All state championships will be finished by next weekend and no team will play more than 15 games. Not to mention we have several private school leagues who playoff for a state championship.
Also for the record, according to what I find online. Texas has 1509 High Schools, public and private. California has 2079 High Schools, public and private. Seems like if you split the schools into more divisions it'd be simple...
If the Texas HSs only play 15 games, then they don't have regional champions. You could have a similar deal here if the regional championships were abolished, but I can't imagine that happening. Nobody here gives a damn about anything that happens north of Bakersfield or south of Capistrano. They're all illegal aliens to us... There's also a large number of people here who would like to force the Catholic schools back into their own leagues. I'm against all of this stuff. The schools are losing control of athletic programs that have become the tail wagging the dog. Oaks Christian is a good example. They were nothing until 3 years ago, when they suddenly hired 8 former NFL players as assistant coaches who just happened to have HS age, football playing sons. They also hired the legendary Bill Redell as head coach and dumped a ton of money into the program, which still plays a tiny schools schedule... Many of the Oaks Christian players were totally wobbly after yesterday's game and admitted that it was the first time in their careers that they had EVER been on the field in the 4th quarter! They also complained that "Those guys hit us hard!" Welcome to the real world. Unfortunately, their school administrators had placed them in an unreal world. I don't see how this kind of emphasis on sports over academics can be good for any of the kids, but its now pervasive in high schools both public and private... .................JO'Co
Here's a link to the bracket for the 5A Div1 Championship. We do have regional championships, it's sort of like the Final Four. But I do get your point, that California has developed different traditions regarding HS playoffs, and it's not really an apples to apples since we have seperate leagues for Public and Private schools. I also would agree that it's not really in the kids best interest to essentially form a football academy, they have them for basketball there are some famous ones on the East Coast, and of course in Fla they have both Tennis and Golf academies, where your academics are structured around your Tennis or Golf schedule. Anna Kournakova, Pete Samparas, etc are products of them. Texas HS Playoffs BTW you'll notice that the top 3 teams in each district make the playoffs in 5A and 4A. Something I think is stupid, but is popular because more teams make it and that keeps parents interested and I guess kids as well.
California could have playoffs if you had more divisions like we do. I believe there are 6 divisions here, 1A-4A, and then two in the biggest class which is 5A. Of course, if you've been doing without for this long, I guess there's no real reason to change. I'm partial to our system... since we KNOW who the champion is! 8)
Scott it's more than that, for the playoffs now it's split into 2 Divisions for all even 6 man football. For example Cisco was the 2A Div 2 State Champion and Littlefield was the 2A Div1 champion. In total we now have 12 state champions in football...very socialistic!! Oh and that's just the Public Schools!!
Cripes! When did they split the smaller divisions? Talk about socialistic... I did notice they are taking 4 teams from each district now. that meant my old school Lewisville High got in at 5-5. Of course, they were the lamb sent to be Southlake's first victim...
8) Here is the link to the CIF. If any of you guys understand it, please explain it to me... http://www.cifstate.org/ We already have more divisions and more sections than Texas. How they could be split into more divisions is beyond me. Also, each section of the state operates as if it were in a different world...
8) Here is MaxPreps. You can use this link to follow all HS sports in California, including IrishDave's baseball team at Claremont... http://www.maxpreps.com/FanPages/cif06_football.mxp
If you don't understand it, I KNOW I won't. I'll just accept that you left-coasters do things a little different... :lol:
This is the key to why Texas can run an organized state championship and California can't. There is only 1 governing body for public school athletics, the UIL. The Privates have their own organizations. Terry