Football: Southern Section needs home cooking
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This is one instance in which the City Section does things better than its Southern Section counterparts.
Top-seeded Narbonne, second-seeded San Pedro, third-seeded Taft and fourth-seeded Crenshaw all will enjoy the opportunity to play host to opponents in City Section Championship Division quarterfinals tonight.
Top-seeded Long Beach Poly and second-seeded Sherman Oaks Notre Dame? Not so much.
Each will play its Southern Section Pac-5 Division quarterfinal game on the road, with the Jackrabbits playing Esperanza on Saturday at Placentia Valencia High and the Knights playing Orange Lutheran on Friday at Santa Ana Stadium. Elsewhere in the division, Mission Viejo (10-1), which lost only to Tesoro this season, must play at Lakewood (5-6).
Shouldn’t the team that had the best regular season be continually rewarded with home games in the playoffs until reaching the championship? Why should Poly (11-0) and Notre Dame (11-0) be subjected to the disadvantage of playing on the road after going undefeated?
‘They try to make sure everyone who [advances] gets some home games,’ Notre Dame Coach Kevin Rooney said. ‘It would make more sense to me to have the higher-seeded team get the home game.’
Southern Section rules dictate that the top four seeded teams get home games in the first round, but as they advance they could play on the road if their opponent has played fewer home games in the playoffs. If the teams have played an equal number of home games, a coin flip determines who plays at home.
‘It’s so that schools that may not normally get a home game get the opportunity to experience that,’ Southern Section spokesman Thom Simmons said. ‘Schools make the rules. If they want to change it, they can do so through the [Southern Section] council and so far no one has made any move whatsoever to do so.’
One problem that would arise if section officials decided to award home games to seeded teams would be what to do with matchups involving unseeded teams, since only four teams are seeded in each division. The solution: seed every team 1-16.
Just like the City Section does.
--Ben Bolch