Eight-man football’s world of big plays and bigger plays

Never seen it played before, but the thought of eight-man high school football has always intrigued me, in a quaint win-one-for-the-Gipper, “Friday Night Lights” kind of way. I wondered if, as a matter of proportion, eight-man leagues had five-girl cheerleading pyramids and pint-sized goal posts.

When the fans storm the field, are there 15? Or are there 20?

Smug punk that I am, guess I expected a Lilliputian world, downsized in every aspect. Wrong again (which extends my streak of bad assumptions to several decades).

Eight-man high school football, turns out, is a screaming, amped-up world of big plays and bigger plays. Think of it more as Showtime basketball, the offenses pingponging up and down the 80-yard field (yep, it’s a base-8 world, after all).

In fact, in one of the semifinals last weekend, a team scored 93 points, and that’s not unusual.

What does an eight-man team look like? Throw out a couple of tackles, fire the free safety and essentially you have an eight-man defense. On offense, it’s more like mice in a train wreck.

Across the nation, 18 states play some form of eight-man football, including 100 prep teams in California. Rules are essentially the same, though an 80-yard field is common. A couple of states, Idaho and Oklahoma, use 100-yard fields but reduce the width to 40, down from the customary 53.

Whatever the yardage, an eight-man defense favors a wide-open game. No lead is ever safe. Coaches must have the same sweaty, they’re-coming-after-me dreams as hockey goalies and teen babysitters.

At the game I attended, Windward vs. Bloomington Christian, the final score was 57-36, and that’s considered a pitchers’ duel.

The winning Windward Wildcats employed five or six completely different offensive looks. It was football’s equivalent of watching Germany invade Poland.

One play, they use two tight ends and bull the ball straight up the middle.

Next play, they’re spreading things out — sideline to sideline — with five backs and receivers. You don’t coach eight-man football, so much as light a fuse and — wait for it, wait for it ... boom, touchdown.

“No chest-bumping!” the Wildcats coach orders after an important late score. “I don’t want any of that.”

This rare voice of reason is Scott Napier, a coach with a thundering Robert Mitchum voice and a sometimes avuncular, sometimes nuclear sideline demeanor.

Octo-Man has built this fine Windward program, which now sports 30 kids, up from a total of 10 or so when he took over a decade ago. Keep in mind that a graduating class at a small school like this has about 50 boys.

Eight-man football “is really fun to coach,” Napier says, and his every action confirms it.

He is assisted these days by Alvin Cowan, who set a bunch of quarterback records at Yale and now designs the Wildcats’ Pythagorean offense.

After its semifinal win last weekend against Bloomington Christian, Windward now plays Excelsior in an eight-man final Saturday.

It will have its hands full. Excelsior (11-1) is the team that racked up 93 points in its semifinal victory. Essentially, you could put the over-and-under on the Windward-Excelsior game at about 170.

Me, I’d never bet on anything involving an oblong leather ball — that over-under thing is more of an academic exercise. But if you love football in all its flavors, I’d recommend catching an eight-man game sometime. In Victorville on Saturday night, where Excelsior will host Windward (also 11-1), they’re likely to score more points than your bowling team.

And a Windward-Excelsior matchup has developed a fine bit of baggage. Saturday’s game is a sequel to last year’s blockbuster title game, when Windward won by one point in overtime.

Meanwhile, Windward, an elite, small private school on the Westside that competes with the likes of Brentwood, is making a pitch to move up to a traditional 11-man league next year.

Headmaster Tom Gilder says it’s to lure the caliber of players who want a chance to play college ball. That’s easy to understand. The school’s basketball program has long been big-time, producing Darius Morris (Michigan, Lakers) and UCLA’s Anthony Stover. As bait, the school offers $2 million a year in need-based financial aid, not to mention a clubby little campus and 8-to-1 student-faculty ratios.

Its headmaster makes a good case for moving up, and its coach says he’s on board as well.

But after several hours of serious study, I’m not convinced that counts as progress.

So, as the desert winds crisp the Victorville field Saturday night at that eight-man Southern Section final, Wildcats fans should take a good, long look at the sweet syrup they now enjoy. They rule an eight-man league that makes them distinctive and very successful.

And, really, do most 17-year-olds need anything more than that?

chris.erskine@latimes.com

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