After almost two years filled with hundreds of thousands of games and matches and meets across the state, from Murphy to Manteo, from Rocky Mount to Charlotte and back, one truth is now plain and obvious about high school sports in North Carolina.
The regular season does not mean a darn thing.
Not any more.
And that is a shame.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, finishing first or second in the conference mattered. Back then, you know, three or four years ago, more teams than not packed their bags and ambled toward the bus after their last game during the regular season, the cold facts swirling around the coaches and the players.
No playoffs. Not this season. Try again later.
But all that changed when, during a meeting in 2005, North Carolina High School Athletics Association officials voted to expand state playoffs brackets for almost all sports. The number of boys' and girls' basketball teams that qualified in each enrollment size classification doubled. Same thing for baseball. And softball. And soccer. The number of football teams in each size classification remained the same, but the number of classifications doubled. For the first time, teams with conference records below .500, teams with overall records below .500, qualified for previously coveted playoffs spots in every sport.
"It just allows more teams to say they've made it into the playoffs," NCHSAA associate executive director Que Tucker said in a telephone conversation in May 2007. "We're all about participation and opportunity, and there has been an increase in those areas."
I cannot fault the NCHSAA for its aims to include as many teams, athletes, coaches, parents and fans as possible.
Though the NCHSAA is a voluntary and not-for-profit corporation, and defers almost all attention to the kids and the coaches on the field, it remains, at a certain level, a business.
So many of the NCHSAA member high schools are businesses, too. And all businesses, even if they are not in the business of turning a profit, want to make money in order to at least break even. What better way to make more money is there than to play more games? Especially games that, on paper, mean so much more.
More, after all, is good.
But the idea of expansion, especially now, in the midst of a sixth diluted postseason, is wrong. For a long time, in North Carolina and dozens of other states, the regular season mattered more because only so many teams moved on to play in November and March and May. But the NCHSAA followed the playoffs expansion pattern of the NCAA, the NBA, the NFL, the NHL, Major League Baseball, even NASCAR.
More, apparently, is better.
"If you're going to err on the side of teams being in," NCHSAA associate executive director Rick Strunk said in a telephone conversation in May 2007, "it's better to have more in than not enough."
More, it appears, is best.
But how much more is too much?
Sports writer Matt LaWell can be reached at 407-9952 or mlawell@coxnc.com
