SDHSAA Football Advisory Committee Pushes Classification Talk Out

The South Dakota High School Activities Association's Football Advisory Committee met on Wednesday to try and get down to five classes of football. It ended with no new proposal.

The committee was tasked by the SDHSAA Board of Directors at the annual April meeting to bring back a five-class football proposal to its June meeting. The highly toxic topic has made for discussion across the state because there is no plan that is perfect for every district and school.

Wednesday's (May 6) meeting reflected how difficult of a task this would be. Discussion ranged from how to get down to five classes, to how competitive playoff rounds have been.

As part of the discussion, everyone agreed that seven classes of football in South Dakota are too many. Getting down to five classes is proving to be tough with a vast majority of the nine-man football teams wanting to keep three classes. In order to get to that magic five number, both 11-man and nine-man would have to lose one class. The reason nine-man is involved is, as part of the SDSHAA handbook, if the number of nine-man teams drops below 64 it would automatically go down to two classes. Right now, there are 67 teams playing nine-man.

Without a solution on hand, the committee elected to go a different direction. All six members agreed to expand the discussion out to more administrators and activities directors. Each member will bring two more people into the discussion. The SDHSAA Board of Directors will approve that during the June meeting. With the added members, the committee will hope to have something concrete by January to push forward.

The 2020 football season will continue as planned with the current seven class system. Schedules have been posted for this upcoming season.