CIF Council approves regional high school football bowl games

The CIF Federated Council gave final approval on Friday to launch regional bowl games in high school football in the North and South, starting in December 2012.

All sections will be required to end their playoffs by Dec. 1 in 2012. It means the regular season will begin a week earlier in August. Regional playoff games will be held the weekend of Dec. 7-8 in five divisions. The winners will advance to the state championship bowl games the following weekend.

The regional format was approved despite unanimous opposition from the largest section in the state, the Southern Section. The Southern Section gets only 36 votes out of 137 on the Federated Council because of a weighted voting system even though it has 582 of the CIF’s 1,494 schools (39%).

Schools that reach the finals could end up playing as many as 16 games, which was a major reason Southern Section schools were opposed to the proposal.

Ventura St. Bonaventure Coach Todd Therrien said, “It’s a lot of games for 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds. In ‘07, when we won state, after the game in the locker room, my linebacker said, “I’m excited we won state, but I don’t know if I could have played another week.’”