First off, congratulations to all champions of their respective leagues. It was a great season. Of course with all football being done for the year, I find myself thinking about how the State of New York could do better for their students participating in football.
This post is mostly inspired by Kevin Devaney Jr.’s tweet.
Interestingly enough, the New York State Sports Writers Association (NYSSWA) did respond to this.
For those of you who do not know Kevin, he has been covering Section 1’s athletics for at least since I was in high school, and he started LocalLive, which is now SportsEnginePlay, the predominant streaming service for schools. I have met him, he is a solid guy.
In my last post, I handled what the Catholic Schools could do. I sincerely believe that these schools should leave the NYSPHSAA and crown a true New York Catholic Champion. See it here.
Now the public leagues are much more difficult since we are essentially dealing with three separate leagues. Most of New York, north of New York City, competes in the NYSPHSAA. Currently there are five classifications, going from ‘AA’ to ‘D’. In the confines of New York City, the PSAL is the public league that plays football, and they have four classifications, going from ‘AAAA’ to ‘A’. On Long Island, the public schools are organized into sections, like every other region of New York, but they compete in their own league. They have four classifications as well, going from Conference I to IV.
I think due to these leagues, and the laws surrounding competitive football in New York, the first and only path to this working out is if the New York State Legislature passes a bill to extend the football season. Other states already start football much earlier in August. While “week 0” games in the NYSCHSFL are at the end of August, I would propose having the season start at least two weeks earlier.
Onto my proposal:
I think the most logical thing to do is to organize the New York State Public Schools and crown a downstate champion, and crown an upstate champion.
The “Downstate Championships” would be simple. There are four classifications for Long Island, and four classifications for the PSAL. The PSAL Champions play the Long Island Champions, and the winner of the Long Island Conference I Champion vs the PSAL ‘AAAA’ Champion would be the New York Downstate Champions. The rest of the state, Section 1 and north, not much has to change, as they still could play their playoffs. Instead of being State Champions, they would be New York Upstate Champions. The “Upstate Champions” (Class ‘AA’ through Class ‘C’) would play the “Downstate Champions” (PSAL ‘AAA’ through ‘A’ or Long Island Conference I through IV), and the winner would be the NYSPHSAA Champions.
In my last post, the adding of the other Catholic schools to the two leagues and having them compete under the umbrella of the NYSCHSAA would allow the winner of the NYSCHSAA to play the winner of the NYSPHSAA. Better yet, since there are at least two levels to the Monsignor Martin League, and 3 levels of the NYCHSFL, we could still have multiple classifications of “State Champion.”
See how this would work, of course being my personal vision:
Publics Schools
New York State’s population is about 20.2 million people according to the 2020 Census.
New York Downstate Champions– PSAL vs Long Island (Section 8 and 11)
Population: ~11 million
New York Upstate Champions– Sections 1-7, 9-10
Population: ~9 million
NYSPHSAA Champions– Winner of Upstate vs Downstate
Catholic Schools
NYCHSFL
MMHSAA
Now what are some of the challenges?
The timing. The football season already bleeds into December. Could we extend it even longer? I think not. Basketball is too big in New York in general to take more time away from it. But what if the State made football season start Week 0 the second week of August? Now there are also labor unions that needs to be dealt with regarding this, because a lot of people, staff and families, won’t want to give up even more of their August, but the very late start of football season in New York is one of the many reasons why we aren’t a very strong state football wise at all. When the NYCHSFL does the Battle of the Bridge vs New Jersey in week 3, those programs have already been playing football for more than a month, while the New York programs are just getting started.
Timing, using 2026 as the model:
- August 3: Camp Opens
- August 15-16: Week 0
- August 22-23: Week 1
- August 29-30: Week 2
- September 5-6: Week 3
- September 12-13: Week 4
- September 19-20: Week 5
- September 26-27: Week 6
- October 3-4: Week 7
- October 10-11: Week 8
- October 17-18: Week 9
- October 24-25: Week 10- Long Island Playoffs Round 1, NYSPHSAA Playoffs
- October 31-November 1: Week 11- NYSPHSAA Sectional Championship Games, PSAL Quarterfinals, Long Island Playoffs Round 2
- November 7-8: NYCHSFL Quarterfinals, NYSPHSAA Regional Champions, PSAL Semifinals, MMHSAA Quarterfinals, Long Island Sectional/County Championship Games
- November 14-15: NYCHSFL Semifinals, PSAL Championship Games, Long Island Championship Games, NYSPHSAA Semifinals, MMHSAA Semifinals
- November 21-22: NYCHSFL Championship Games, MMHSAA Championship Games, Public School Downstate Championship Games, Public School Upstate Championship Games
- November 28-29: NYCHSAA Championship Games, NYSPHSAA Championship Games
- December 5-6: New York State Public vs Private State Championship Game
Changing the timing is a delicate issue as labor unions, and political pushback could make it infeasible.
This could be done and wrapped up by the first week of December if football started at the beginning of August with “Week 0” being the second week of August. All of the regional championships (upstate, downstate, NYCHSFL, and MMHSAA) would need to be wrapped up the weekend before Thanksgiving. The NYSPHSAA and NYSCHSAA championships would be played the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the State Championship would be crowned the first week of December.
So, uh, call your legislators I suppose.
What do you think? What challenges do you see, besides of course the political issue?
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