should be at least two scrimmages across the board. But I also think that coaching can compensate for lost opportunities in these "non-game games."
The same cannot be said for the proposed changes to the regular season. Sports with 24-game maximums would be reduced to 20; those with 20 would drop to 18; ones with a max of 18 would drop to 16. Wrestling would undergo a corresponding drop, varsity football would lose one game and all sub-varsity programs would lose two games.
The current maximum length of the football season is 13 games, which feels right for a snowbelt state with only one domed facility even marginally larger than a tennis bubble.
I suspect that some people came to their senses after the original proposal took shape and realized that condemning a large number of schools to a seven-game local football season is not right athletically or financially. I would go so far as to label such a cut as unconscionable.
But I also suspect that these same delegates will be reluctant to spare football at the same time that cuts to the other schedules seem to have enough support to be approved.
Albany-area coordinator Gary VanDerzee posted a note of the Section2football.com Web site to the effect that a typical Class B school will save perhaps only $10,000 from a blanket reduction in the number of games. That brings us back to "deck chairs on the Queen Mary" territory, because $10,000 for a school district facing a seven-figure deficit isn't going to get the job done.
Hacking up schedules might fool taxpayers into thinking that meaningful progress is being made, but it's far from the truth. It's a 1 percent solution to a $1 million problem inside a $15 billion crisis. We can only hope that ex-Gov. Brown's words are heeded this week, because there aren't any Ernie Shores out there to save the day.
