Pass out the pads, high school football is back.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order dealing with the coronavirus pandemic Thursday that will allow the high school football season to begin in two weeks and volleyball, boys soccer and girls swimming and diving to begin Wednesday, the Free Press has learned.
The MHSAA Representative Council voted Thursday to reinstate all sports.
The executive order opens gyms and fitness centers across the state and allows organized sports to resume Wednesday. Whitmer, citing guidance from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said she still advises against playing contact sports, but is not prohibiting them.
The main beneficiary is high school football, which the Michigan High School Athletic Association had banished to the spring on Aug. 14 when it appeared that was the only alternative to allow the Class of 2021 to have a senior season.
“With 25 states practicing and playing games and another eight states ready to go in a couple of days, it’s different than three weeks ago,” MHSAA executive director Mark Uyl told the Free Press. “You’re seeing states, whose COVID-19 numbers are far worse than Michigan’s. It has been, nationwide, a very successful start to the year.”
[ After 50 years, Mick McCabe is telling all in his new high school sports book. Here's how to order it. ]
Padded practices will begin early next week and the first games for 11-player and 8-player football begin with the Week 4 schedule on Sept. 17 and 18 with an extremely limited number of fans in the stands.
Teams will pick up their existing schedule with Week 4 and play a six-game regular season before beginning the state playoffs, which may be a different playoff format than we’ve seen before.
“However it goes,” Uyl said, “I don’t think anybody sees us all finishing with all the games at Fords Field on Thanksgiving weekend with spectators.”
How it will work
For the first time, every team will be included in the state playoffs, which will begin as scheduled in Week 10.
“We wanted to take any gamesmanship completely off the table so with everybody in it guarantees everyone a seventh game,” Uyl said. “To be honest, I’m not sure we could do much better next spring. Especially for our northern schools, this is still a far better approach. It’s a little more of a gamble in the spring.”
The governor’s office will limit the size of the crowd and fans must wear masks and social distance or games will be halted by the host school.
The MHSAA expects each player to receive two tickets and they will be the only spectators. But it also plans to livestream several hundred games across the state and for the first time permit local third party entities to broadcast games live.
“It would at least allow mom and dad to be there,” Uyl said. “I know for all family units that doesn’t do the trick, but at least this is a starting point. Letting two in per participant is going to keep a lot of football moms happy.”
With the all-in playoff format, schools will not be penalized if they need to miss a game due to COVID-19 quarantines.
“If a school does have a positive test and they have to quarantine and have to miss a week a game,” Uyl said, “none of that is going to be dependent on you getting into the tournament or not.”
As of now, the MHSAA has no idea whether the 11-player format will be a five- or six-week playoff. In the past, the playoffs lasted five rounds, but the MHSAA is doubling the size of the playoffs, hence the possible need for an extra week.
The 11-player playoffs have typically ended Thanksgiving weekend with the eight state final games played over two days in Ford Field and boys basketball beginning two weeks after that.
“We want to do this without impacting winter sports,” Uyl said. “So there could even be a scenario where maybe instead of eight divisions we go to 10 if that would allow you to continue to keep the playoffs to five weeks.”
The MHSAA is aware the coronavirus is still out there and school districts will have to deal with athletes who test positive.
“The virus isn’t going away tomorrow,” Uyl said. “What all of us have to realize is that this is part of the new normal. We have to be able to take positive cases and handle them appropriately and still figure out a way that we can continue to educate kids and continue to allow kids to play and do all those things.”
When athletes do test positive, those cases will be dealt with at the local level.
“Whenever a school has a positive case, the school works with their local health department,” he said. “From what we understand there are some consistent guidelines and contact trace with that and then they determine who has to quarantine and the length of that.”
One glitch is some districts such as Lansing, Okemos and Warren have canceled all fall sports, so some teams may need to find opponents as the season progresses.
In past years, those open dates might not have gotten filled based on the ramifications those games might have had on state playoff scenarios.
But with the all-in format, it should not be an issue.
“With everybody in there is no downside,” Uyl said. “You know what your district group is going to be. You’re going to know who you have to play in those early rounds. Really, for the first time, there will be no downside of going out and scheduling somebody really, really tough.”
So, what changed?
Although it technically moved football to the spring, the MHSAA never abandoned the idea of playing in the fall and remained in contact with the governor’s office.
The deeper the MHSAA looked into spring football, the more roadblocks appeared.
Playing football in the spring would have been utterly impossible in the Upper Peninsula and in the upper reaches of the Lower Peninsula.
“As we started to plan for a spring opportunity, we had hundreds of issues,” Uyl said. “Of course, the biggest one in our state is weather.
“In spring sports, the U.P. is traditionally almost a month behind us.”
Over the past three weeks, Uyl has spoken to his counterparts in other states that have played football without a spike in COVID-19 numbers. He was surprised to learn that football wasn’t the No. 1 offender when it came to positive tests.
“More of the issues have been with those states playing volleyball than it has been with football,” Uyl said. “I do think being outdoors is a big factor. It concerns me with what lies ahead in the winter.”
Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1. Save $10 on his new book, “Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigan’s Best High School Players, Teams & Memories,” by ordering right now at McCabe.PictorialBook.com.
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Michigan high school football reinstated; games to start Sept. 17 - Detroit Free Press
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