High school football season ends, for a minute or two

At 10:22 p.m. Saturday, the final high school football game of 2011 was completed. Concord De La Salle finished off another annihilation of a Southern California opponent, beating Westlake Village Westlake, 35-0, in the CIF state championship Open Division bowl game.

It’s probably time to just let Coach Harry Welch and Santa Margarita take the next crack at De La Salle, since he’s 3-0 in bowl games, including a 2006 victory over De La Salle and Coach Bob Ladouceur.

“I would like to one time before I stop coaching to go against Bob again,” Welch said.

Let’s explore the big issues ahead in prep football for 2012.

First up is the annual hiring and firing of coaches. One of the best jobs in the City Section opened up Saturday. Elijah Asante resigned at 11-time champion Carson to pursue other opportunities. He took the Colts to the City final in back-to-back seasons.

Asante could be the main player in a historic coaching hire. There are no African American head coaches at any of the top private schools in Southern California. He has interviews at Studio City Harvard-Westlake and Santa Fe Springs St. Paul.

Next month, the transfer game picks up full steam with the start of the spring semester. Freshmen and sophomores unhappy with playing time will make a quick exit. Juniors with visions of college scholarships and of playing for a championship will convince mommy and daddy to pull the trigger and switch schools.

February brings the start of a bidding process for those who want to host the CIF state championship bowl games. A three-year contract with the Home Depot Center ends in 2012. Will Fresno, Palo Alto or Bakersfield make a bid to snatch away the championships from the Los Angeles area? Attendance was 9,645 on Saturday. There were 43,369 for the Texas state championships at Cowboys Stadium. Ouch.

In March, there’s letter-of-intent day for private schools. The admission letters go out. All those open houses and the shadowing of students will either pay off or leave some coaches in panic mode.

March 9 is the date the Southern Section is scheduled to announce its revised playoff groupings. Will the Marmonte League be moved to the Pac-5 Division? Will the Sunset League be moved out of the Pac-5 and placed in the Southwest Division?

Then comes a summer like no other. Thanks to someone’s insidious idea that high school football players will love playing 16 games in a season, the entire state will move up its practice schedule to accommodate a new regional playoff system that will involve 20 schools.

Scrimmages are set for the weekend of Aug. 17. Zero-week games begin Aug. 24. Week one is Aug. 31. City and Southern Section championships are Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. Regional playoffs are Dec. 7. And the state bowl games are Dec. 14-15.

Among the potential problems: It gets very hot in August.

“Last year we got to 126 degrees at 2:30 in the afternoon,” Palm Springs Coach Steve Fabian said.

Fortunately, Palm Springs knows how to deal with heat. Others are going to have to learn.

Then there’s the fatigue and injury factor. On Friday night, Riley Sorenson, Santa Margarita’s 6-foot-5, 316-pound junior lineman, lay on the field with a trainer holding an ice pack behind his neck. He looked beat up and exhausted after his team’s thrilling 42-37 bowl victory over San Jose Bellarmine.

I wanted to ask him if he would be ready to play a 16th game in seven days, because that’s the schedule for 2012. I decided he had earned a break from Coach Welch, sportswriters and anyone else. But soon, he and his nonsenior teammates are going to return to the field, and it’s going to be their longest football season ever.

Hey, next year’s regional playoffs will be fun. If it had happened this season, the matchups would have been Westlake vs. Santa Margarita in the Open Division and Vista Murrieta vs. Bakersfield in Division I. But who’s going to care about the state bowl games the following week? Mark me down as a skeptic about the whole 16-game format.

As for top teams in 2012, here’s my preseason forecast: 1. Santa Margarita, 2. Servite, 3. Vista Murrieta, 4. Westlake, 5. Narbonne, 6. Oaks Christian, 7. Alemany.

eric.sondheimer@latimes.com

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