Time to Cut Back Bloated Playoffs

I’m a champion, he’s a champion, she’s a champion, wouldn’t you like to be a champion, too?

If you have 11 healthy bodies and a few football uniforms, you can be.

The Southern Section football playoffs have become so watered down it’s a wonder a swim meet doesn’t break out.

The section will crown 15 football champions in the coming weeks, which is good for trophy shops and postseason banquets, but bad for the sport.

It used to be special when a team won a section title. It meant it had earned the right to be considered the best of the best.

Until 1959, there were three section champions. There was a huge uproar after the 1976 season, when the section increased the number of 11-man divisions from four to eight.

There are currently nine divisions comprised of five leagues and the others have four, which means the best that can be said of a champion is that it is the best of a small field.

Most intramural tournaments have more challenging fields.

Playoff seedings will be announced this weekend for the 13 divisions fielding 11-man teams. More than 200 schools will be invited to a postseason party badly in need of a bouncer.

Two more divisions, at the eight-man level, begin playoffs this week.

Division III includes the Foothill, Golden, Mission and Pacific leagues from this region. That’s a pool of 22 schools. All but six will qualify for the playoffs.

An at-large team will be selected from among Burbank (1-9), Burroughs (3-7), Glendale (2-7), Hoover (1-8), Palmdale (1-8), Quartz Hill (3-6) and Crespi (1-8).

Pick one and send ‘em to Hart.

Quartz Hill might appear the most qualified, but the Rebels already have been dropped by top-ranked Hart, 56-18, in the first week of the season.

Making the playoffs used to be an honor. Members of postseason teams each receive a Southern Section certificate commemorating their achievement.

With an average of about 40 players to each playoff team, that means more than 8,000 certificates.

How special.

Can you say, “Let’s wallpaper Staples Center?”

It also used to be an honor to be ranked in the top 10 in your division, a sign your team was among the true powerhouses.

This year, there are 150 teams ranked in 15 divisions, and 14 more given “honorable” mention. Of those, 60 have three or more losses. In Division IV, Lompoc and Moorpark are ranked despite 4-5 records.

Of course, there’s money to be considered when discussing the playoffs. There always is.

The Southern Section takes a financial bite out of the gate receipts at each playoff venue.

For that reason, there seems little motivation for the section to change a system that pumps money into its coffers.

So who cares if a few overmatched teams get their lunches handed to them one more Friday night? Call it the new free-lunch program.

Some will argue it’s good for a teenager’s psyche to feel a sense of accomplishment, no matter how ill deserved. Give the boys a chance to feel some positive level of self esteem, some say.

But it’s difficult to feel anything other than pain when an undersized, 180-pound offensive lineman has Travis Johnson of Notre Dame sitting on his chest.

Neck injuries could result from watching Kyle Matter of Hart fling 700 yards-worth of touchdown passes over one’s head.

I have nothing against 3-7 teams. In most cases, their players work just as hard as those on top teams, and give their all through passing leagues, weight training and Hell Week practices in 100-degree heat.

They just aren’t playoff material. Ten weeks of football have proven that.

There are many ways to address this free-for-all.

Here are two proposals:

Keep the ever-increasing number of divisions, but limit the participants to 12 teams. Give the top four seeded teams byes in the first round--they’d probably break a better sweat playing an intrasquad game during the first week of the playoffs--and have the other eight play each other and earn the right to play the big boys.

The other option would be to cut the number of divisions back to eight, put about eight leagues in each and invite the top two teams from each league into the postseason.

This suggestion may be all wet, but no wetter than this watered-down mess.