How many state champions do we need?

As the Arizona High School 4A and 5A regular seasons conclude this week, it kind of got me thinking about how much Friday Night Fever has changed over the last two years.

The 2004 Hamilton Huskies may have been the last state champions

in Arizona history.

On December 18, 2004, the Chandler Hamilton Huskies defeated the Glendale Mountain Ridge Mountain Lions 31-7 in the 5A State Championship football game. It was the second straight title for the Huskies and in the minds of many, it was the last true state championship game ever played in Arizona.

“With the realignment and new playoff system, most coaches and players feel that the days of crowning a true state champion are gone,” said Brian Cole, head coach at North Canyon High School. “Things were already broken up enough before the AIA turned it into alphabet soup.”

In 2005, the Arizona Interscholastic Association began the first year of realignment for high school football. The new system divided 4A and 5A schools into 4A-I, 4A-II and 5A-I, 5A-II brackets for the postseason. The regular season remained unchanged.

Teams from Division I and Division II could still be in the same region together and play against each other during the regular season, but once the state playoffs began, they were placed into separate brackets to determine four different state champions. This is all in addition to the small school titles awarded at the 1A, 2A and 3A levels.

The AIA instituted the new system as a long term solution to the increasing growth in Arizona that has new high schools starting new athletic programs every year, but does a system that awards state titles to four different schools of comparable size really work?

As it stands right now, any school with an enrollment of 950-1600 students is classified as a 4A-I school. Schools with a student body of 1601-1899 students are placed in 4A-II.In 5A, Division I schools have student enrollments between 1900 and 2500, while any schools with more than 2500 are Division II programs.

The AIA estimates the number of schools with a student enrollment of over 1899 will grow from 59 to over 75 by 2010. In 2006, two new high schools, in their inaugural year of varsity competition, will jump right into the 5A ranks. Boulder Creek High School in Surprise and Valley Vista High School in El Mirage will join the 5A Northwest Region.

In addition, three schools in 4A are expected to exceed the 4A enrollment limit and join the 5A conference in 2007. Copper Canyon High School and Raymond Kellis High School in Glendale and Liberty High School in Tucson are all schools with growing enrollment levels and are already over 1750 students. All three schools are scheduled to make the move to 5A in 2007.

In the meantime, this does little to pacify football coaches already fed up with the new system after only one season. The chief complaint that coaches have is with the Division I and Division II distinction only mattering during the playoffs. In all other instances, the divisions are combined.

Last season, two Northwest Region schools, the North Canyon Rattlers and the Mountain Ridge Mountain Lions played each other on the final day of the regular season. Both teams were 8-1 entering the game and the winner would claim the 2005 Northwest Region championship.

North Canyon defeated Mountain Ridge 21-13, but despite the fact that both are 5A schools and both play in the same region, when the state playoffs began, the Rattlers played in the 5A-II bracket while the Mountain Lions were seeded in the 5A-I bracket.

This is the most glaring example of the fundamental problem with the entire system. The AIA needs to decide if all of these schools are in the same division or not. Right now it's really all over the map. North Canyon was clearly good enough to compete in the 5A-I playoffs, but they never got the chance because their enrollment was 85 students less than Mountain Ridge's.

The lack of distinction between Division I and Division II schools carries over to issues off the field. When the 2005 AIA All-State offensive and defensive teams were named following last season, only two teams were named, one for 4A and one for 5A.

So, while the AIA doubled the amount of opportunities for teams to compete in the playoffs, they refused to increase the amount of opportunities for players to earn All-State honors.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.

So as another Arizona high school football post-season approaches, the AIA will prepare itself to crown seven state champions for the second year in a row.