Bonine: LHSAA football finals remain in Superdome, playoff requirements set

Despite concerns about attendance restrictions imposed by the City of New Orleans, the LHSAA still plans on holding all nine of its prep football state championship games in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome Dec. 26-28.

LHSAA Executive Director Eddie Bonine made that statement on a Zoom meeting with media this afternoon.

“We are working collaboratively with the management company of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and our plan is to play the prep classic in the Superdome as scheduled,” Bonine said.

Unlike in previous years, regardless of the attendance restrictions, each of the nine games will be individually ticketed games, meaning fans can purchase a ticket for each game but can only attend that game to curb the crowd numbers. The exact number of fans allowed has not been determined yet. There are three games scheduled each day.

“Whatever the number is, we will work within the confines of the numbers and do it,” Bonine said. “We will follow all the protocols, just as they do for Saints games. We want to be a good neighbor, a good guest and to do whatever we need to do to have the games.”

Bonine stated that the minimum number of games schools must play to participate in the football state playoffs is four.

The regular season consists of eight weeks, with some schools losing games due to Hurricanes Laura and Zeta, along with issues related to COVID-19.

Any school with less than four games played will not be eligible for the postseason.

Additionally, Bonine stated that the brackets will remain intact, including full 32-team brackets on the non-select side and 16 to 24-team brackets on the select side. There will be no reduction of teams in the playoffs from the plan prior to the season.

“There is no reason do deviate from what is written in the constitution,” Bonine said. “If a school has a COVID related scenario and they have to remove themselves from the bracket, they will be removed from the bracket and their opponent will be advanced.”

The power rankings will continue to be recognized to determine seedings while no district champions will be crowned, due to the many cancellations across the state.

“81 percent of our schools have completed at least five games,” Bonine said. “We wanted to see what was fair in terms of completed games. That’s why we made the recommendation we made today.”

Bonine said that as of Monday, there were only 10 schools in Louisiana that had played only three games, to this point of the season. All were non-select schools.

There will be adjustments made to power points when it comes to computing and comparing teams that have played just four or five games as compared to teams that will have played seven or eight games.

“Yes, there will be, but I can’t tell you what yet,” Bonine said. “I’m not the power-point guy but I’ve got math majors all around me.”

Bonine praised Eric Held of the Louisiana High School Coaches Association for doing a great job of finding new opponents for schools when their original opponents cancel due to COVID-19 issues.

Halloween resulted an increase in virus cases, according to Bonine.

Is there any real concern that some schools have and will cancel games without truly having COVID-19 issues or is there concern that some schools will conceal or have concealed issues with the virus to continue playing?

“I’m not going somebody’s integrity,” Bonine said. “We’re not going to go down that road. We have to trust the schools and administrators. We want to try to do this safely. We are adults. It’s fun to play but at the end of the day, there is risk. That’s a concern. We have to deal with that. The schools have to be aware of that. We have to bank on schools doing it right. There have been some alleged infractions but with no proof.”

The issues with the pandemic are truly a 24/7 issue for the LHSAA.

“It is really a day at a time, 10 minutes at a time. We’re trying to do what we can to make sure that all coaches and families across the state can get through the season. We’ve managed to pull that off, to this point. Now, we are getting ready to deal with a postseason.”

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