The Kansas State High School Activities Association determined its nine football state champions at eight different locations today. Silly. Just silly.
If KSHSAA used half a brain, it could easily get it down to three, which is still not ideal (ONE site is ideal), but three is a hell of a lot better than eight.
Hold 6-man and both 8-man divisions at one location, then three 11-man title games at two others. Who goes where could be determined by the teams in the finals. I would prefer to see 5A and 6A, the two largest classifications, split up, so the rural folks from the smaller towns can see big-city teams and vice versa.

My alma mater, Brother Martin of New Orleans, has advanced to the Louisiana High School Athletic Association Division I SELECT semifinals.
This is the tenth season the LHSAA has operated with “select” and “non-select” divisions to determine football champions.
What’s weird is the schools play in districts like usual during the regular season, but then they are split for the playoffs, with brackerts filled based upon power ratings.
From 2013-21, the “non-select” side was much larger. “Select” schools were basically private schools, whether they were religiously affiliated or not, and a few other laboratory and charter schools.
In the largest division for “select” schools, there were only two public schools, Shreveport Byrd and Baton Rouge Scotlandville, both of which have been magnet schools for a long time.
Prior to the 2022 season, the LHSAA drastically expanded what constitutes a select school. This moved over 100 schools from non-select to select.
The Crusaders go to Lafayette Friday to play Carencro, which produced LSU All-American and longtime Patriot Kevin Faulk, who won three Super Bowl rings under Darth Belichick.
Carencro was moved to the select division this season because Lafayette Parish (county) has open enrollment for its high schools. This also applies to public schools in Caddo (Shreveport) and Rapides (Alexandria) parishes, among others.
The LHSAA also chose to reduce the number of non-select divisions from five to four. This forced many schools which play in 4A during the regular season into the highest classification for the playoffs.
Monroe Neville was the most notable school affected. The Tigers were a powerhouse for 30 seasons (1963-92) under coach Charlie Brown (Neville won a fourth in 1995 under Brown’s successor, Joe Coates), winning three titles at the top level despite having an enrollment which would have allowed them to play at a lower level.
Neville dropped from 5A to 4A in 2001 after the rise of West Monroe, which won five titles between 1993 and 2000, as well as the continued strength shown by perennial powers Ouachita and Ruston.
Neville reached the quarterfinals of Division I non-select before losing 21-10 last night at New Iberia Westgate.
Brother Martin has not reached a championship game since 1989. Its only title was in 1971, when the Crusaders defeated Catholic League archirval St. Augustine 23-0.
The Crusaders and Neville played three dramatic playoff games in the space of 368 days in 1971 and ‘72. More on that later.

A terrible side effect of the split was select schools being forced to play championship games in a stadium other than the Superdome.
The LHSAA first staged all their championship games in the Superdome in 1981. Many large schools raised hell and demanded the title games return to campus because they were losing money, but the LHSAA stuck with it, and soon nobody was clamoring for the title games to leave the home of the Saints.
If it were up to me, I would prefer all games at LSU’s Tiger Stadium. But it is ONE site. Better than Kansas!
The championships were forced out of New Orleans in 2005 due to the catastrophic damage Hurricane Katrina wreaked upon the Superdome. They were moved to the opposite end of the state at Shreveport, but returned, along with the Saints, in 2006.
In the first year of the split, all nine championship games were held over three days at the Superdome. The next year, the select schools held their title games a week earlier than the non-select, and that continued through 2016 before all nine were returned to one weekend in 2017 and 2018.
In 2019, the LHSAA ruled the select schools had to find their own championship sites for football and basketball.
The smallest select division petitioned the LHSAA to play at the Superdome and was successful.
Sadly, the other three divisions were split between Tulane, UL Lafayaette, and worst, St. Thomas More High in Lafayette, marking the first title game in a high school stadium since 1980.
STM treated the game vs. New Orleans De La Salle as another home game, not as a true championship game. Terrible.
In 2020, COVID brought all schools back to one site, but it was shifted from the Superdome to Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, 65 miles south of Shreveport.
Last year, one select class played at the Superdome, two at UL Lafayette and one at Tulane.
This year, all eight title games are at the Superdome Dec. 8-10. Will it stay that way? Who knows.

The KSHSAA doesn’t get it. It never will. It’s sad to stage the state’s most important games at facilities which host junior colleges, Division II colleges and only high schools.

The KSHSAA also gave us the scourge of high school football overtime. Therefore, we will never, ever see what Brother Martin went through in the space of 18 days during the 1972 playoffs.
In my next post, I’ll go back 50 years to three games on three fields against two opponents.

LSU is getting hammered by Texas A&M. So much for the College Football Playoff.