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NCHSAA looks for ways to cut costs
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Published: January 30, 2010
Due to declining economic circumstances, the North Carolina High School Athletic Association is prepared to make cuts, and the result might mean fewer games for high school teams in Iredell County and across the state.
Reducing the number of games, allowing fewer teams in playoff games or eliminating endowment games are some of the cost-cutting measures under consideration.
Less money coming from the state, a loss of major sponsorships, and fewer fans in the stands created an environment for such discussions by the NCHSAA.
"We have lived in a time of plenty and we've had the best years in front of us," outgoing and longtime NCHSAA executive director Charlie Adams told reporters earlier this week during the NCHSAA's spring board meeting in Chapel Hill. "And now, all of a sudden, we've got a really tough economic pattern in our state."
The number of postseason spots that could be trimmed isn't known, but it would probably impact all sports, even football.
"The times have been good, and we have been doing better and better financially," Adams said. "But now I think it's pretty obvious, we've got too many teams playing."
The NCHSAA expanded the football playoffs to 64 teams and subdivided the four classifications (1A, 1AA, 2A, 2AA, 3A, 3AA, 4A, 4AA) in 2002.
Other sports followed suit in the years since, the only exception is baseball, basketball, soccer, softball and volleyball weren't subdivided to form eight, 32-team brackets like football.
"They got so much griping from the other coaches, 'Well why aren't we playing 64?' that they increased the rest of them, too," Lake Norman athletic director Steve Rankin said.
Removing the endowments seems the least likely route the NCHSAA would take to cut costs because the organization gets 25 percent of the ticket sales from those early season, nonconference games.
Rankin, the longest active high school AD in the county, said he wasn't opposed to changing football's regular season to 11 games in 11 weeks instead of 11 games in 12 weeks and dropping the football and other playoffs to "at least 48 teams."
He would even be OK with 10 regular season football games, but that could create scheduling conflicts for Lake Norman, which competes with Mooresville in an I-Meck 4A Conference that doesn't include Statesville, North, South or West Iredell.
"First thing that concerns me is we've got four county schools to play, and we've got seven schools in our conference, so that's 11," he said. "So we've got 11 schools that we're obligated to play and we've got to work out an 11-week schedule with nobody being left out.
"If we go back to 10, then obviously we're not going to leave out a conference opponent, so we're going to be missing a county opponent. I'm sure not everybody is in that same boat, but that'd be rough deciding who you weren't going to play unless you have some type of rotating thing."
Reducing the number of regular season games for major sports is something Rankin would also like to see the NCHSAA avoid doing.
"Basketball, baseball, anything that brings in revenue, I'd hate to see us cut from 23 allotted games now to 21," Rankin said.
The NCHSAA could make a decision on cutbacks at its board meeting in May.
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