SMCC's 8-man football decision part of changing football landscape

Monroeville coach Scott Stecher was scrambling. He didn't want his seniors to leave Monroeville High School shortchanged, so he spent his free time combing through rosters and schedules, looking for a team that might lose an opponent like his did.For weeks, Stecher tried to fill a Week 2 slot left vacant by St. Mary Central Catholic, which in late July declared it would play 8-man football this season. The Eagles finally made a date with Portsmouth Notre Dame — less than a week before they played."We called everybody," Stecher said. "We chased rumors. We looked at rosters and said, 'OK, they've got 20. Maybe they'll fold by Week 2.' We'd travel — we'd do anything."SMCC's move to 8-man football — a move forced by a lack of players — caused a ripple effect in the Sandusky Bay Conference and beyond as many schools take a hard look at their football futures. The decision changed schedules, altered playoff calculations and actualized a consequence of a decline in football participation that most coaches don't want to think about.SBC coaches have bemoaned the decline in football participation for years, but now many of the programs have been forced to confront the issue head-on.Margaretta, which was on SMCC's original schedule, is still looking for a Week 9 opponent. It likely will have to switch to a nine-divisor playoff calculation (points divided by nine games instead of 10), which means less room for error in the Polar Bears' playoff chase. Seniors who will never play organized football again might miss out on a game in their last season.Further south in Columbus, the normally slow-moving Ohio High School Athletic Association may be forced to look to the future in a sport that is losing players. Eight-man teams could certainly use its guidance to smooth their transition into a new sport.There are 21 states that have 20 or more 8-man football teams. Five states have 20 or more 6-man teams, including Texas, which has 234 6-man teams.But OHSAA football administrator Beau Rugg says there aren't enough 8-man teams to recognize the game as a sanctioned tournament sport in Ohio. For the same reason, the OHSAA doesn't have rules that govern the switch from 11-man to 8-man football, or how to function once teams make that decision.Without those rules, small schools are scrambling as football's landscape changes before their eyes. And without a governing body to preside over these changes, Stecher worries about the future of football in communities lean with players."We have small-school football anarchy in the state," Stecher said. "The precedent's been set. There's been schools that have broken contracts like St. Mary's, Holgate, Toledo Christian — there's a lot of schools doing it."So now, OK, If you decide this week for whatever reason that you wanna play 8-man, there's other schools out there that'll play you. It's bad precedent."8-man proponentThe OHSAA allows 11-man teams to play 8-man games, but Danbury's Keith Mora was the only coach who agreed to retain SMCC on his 2019 schedule. Come Week 10, his Danbury Lakers will play their first 8-man football game against the Panthers.Mora wouldn't say if he was testing the waters for next year by agreeing to play the Panthers, but Danbury's middle schoolers already play 8-man football. His high school team has 25 players on the roster. If his numbers continue dwindling, his school could end up playing 8-man at all levels.Many coaches believe this trend is a sad sign of the sport's decline, Mora sees the inverse viewpoint."I think it's a great thing for small schools in the state of Ohio," Mora said. "States with just as much football tradition as Ohio are already doing this. It just makes so much sense to me. It opens the door for schools smaller than us who maybe don't have football to consider it."SMCC football coach and athletic director Toby Notestine agrees with Mora's sentiment. He thinks of schools such as Old Fort and New Riegel, which don't currently participate in football. He's seen their students play baseball and basketball in the SBC River Division, and he's been impressed."They're nice athletes, they just don't have a ton of them," Notestine said of Old Fort and New Riegel. "But now you say 8-man and it's like, well, maybe we can play 8-man football."Notestine got his first taste of 8-man football in Week 1 when his players traveled to Zanesville Bishop Rosecrans, a three-plus hour drive. SMCC won't play a home game until Week 5 and has only eight games scheduled, but that's a small sacrifice to keep football alive in its small community.It was either 8-man or nothing, and had SMCC chose nothing, the school's band would get less exposure. The cheerleaders would have little to cheer for in the fall. The end-of-week excitement for so many would be dampened, and the rest of his athletic program would feel the squeeze."It impacts a lot of people," Notestine said. "And you don't have that gate coming in (if you cancel the season), which affects the other sports you're trying to fund."Notestine plans on making it back to 11-man football, but he's happy his kids have a chance to play in some capacity. Week 1 was a 64-19 learning experience. He learned why every team he watched on film squibs kickoffs — one missed tackle can mean a touchdown — and that 8-man requires more speed on defense (again, one missed tackle can mean a touchdown).But in the end, Notestine's Panthers still blocked and tackled. They still played football.That depiction aligns with what Mora's underclassmen said about their 8-man experience in middle school. When Mora asked them before the season about playing SMCC, they told him 8-man was no different from regular football, and they had lots of fun.Many players and coaches won't have the advantage of previous experience with 8-man football. It'll require adjustments and, like SMCC did in Week 1, new 8-man teams might have to learn from failure.But to Mora, saving and growing football is a much deeper project than won-loss records can reflect."We have to look at a whole bunch of different things, and wins isn't really a factor for it, I don't think," Mora said. "I think there's so many other good reasons to look at (8-man football)."Concerns, consequencesFor now, Monroeville's scheduling concerns have been eased. Next year, though, remains murky.When SMCC declared itself an 8-man football team, it did so with a caveat: We'll be back in 2020.That could put coaches such as Stecher and Mora in the same bind all over again. Do they bet on SMCC to pull through and risk putting their programs through the same rigamarole, or do they schedule other opponents, leaving SMCC in a scheduling bind while it tries to rebuild an 11-man football program?"You're kinda left hanging to wonder what their move is gonna be," Mora said. "And I guess there are no rules about it right now. You just kind of hope to know as soon as they know. And hopefully, that's really early."This is the crux of the problem with 8-man football. Coaches can rely on the National Federation of State High School Associations to teach them how to play the new sport. But without any specific OHSAA rules on how to transition from 11 players to eight, coaches are left alone to explore this new landscape.SBC Secretary and Treasurer Greg Hedden doesn't have the answers, either. Hedden acknowledged that SBC River Division teams will reach out to other schools to discuss replacing the Panthers on the schedule. But he also said River Division schools will wait to hear from SMCC before making any official schedule changes."Be patient," Hedden said when asked what SBC schools should do about future schedules. "Wait until everybody can verify what (SMCC) is gonna do. We're not gonna put a deadline on (SMCC). We're gonna leave that up to the individual school. We don't foresee this happening again late in July."Asking for patience seems reasonable if SMCC's 8-man existence is a one-season blip like Notestine believes it is. But multiple coaches, including Notestine, said that once a program commits to 8-man, it should stay there until the program can consistently field an 11-man team.It's not fair to the teams on that program's schedule or the players on its roster to live on the bubble between 8- and 11-man. Notestine said bouncing between 8- and 11-man football could stunt the growth of a team's players.If the OHSAA were to sanction a postseason tournament, though, Notestine and Mora believe 8-man football would be vindicated. After all, the playoffs are every team's goal; those are the games teams remember best. They believe a playoff system would help mitigate any bouncing between 8- and 11-man football.That potential solution yields another potential problem, however. When Notestine watched film of Michigan's 8-man championship game from last season, he counted about 25 players on each sideline.The OHSAA mandates that only schools with a maximum of 160 boys are eligible for 8-man football. But not all student bodies are created equal. It's possible teams with plenty of players to play 11-man football could still qualify for 8-man.That possibility does not fit in Mora's version of 8-man."What I fear is at some point you have some of these larger Division VII schools — if 8-man takes off — take the plunge down to win a state championship," Mora said. "That isn't what (8-man) was intended to be for."It's hard to have intent, though, when you don't have an organizing body.Coaches suggested several concerns throughout the reporting of this story, but it's hard to solve them if the OHSAA stays on the sideline.At a minimum, these schools want clarity on who fits where. They want the security that comes with knowing they won't have to fill a last-second game because a team that thought it had enough players didn't.They want classification. And that's the hardest issue to solve without the OHSAA's help."It's gonna domino the rest of this year until the state steps up and makes a definitive answer," Stecher said. "You gotta make a decision (on whether to play 8- or 11-man). And you gotta make it early enough so teams can schedule."Rugg doesn't have all the answers, but he does have some. Before this season, he reached out to schools affected by schools converting to 8-man football. If they had to drop a game because of 8-man football, he told them to send him the week they were missing. He'd try to match them up with someone else.Rugg found few missing-week matches. Some teams had already filled schedules; some didn't respond to his email. As a result, Rugg doesn't know how many teams are playing 8-man football in Ohio this season.Without that knowledge, it's difficult for Rugg to even plant a seed for an eight-player plan. The best he can do is trust the coaches in these situations to make smart choices."Coaches that are attached to schools are under the same scrutiny that the schools have with anything that they sponsor," Rugg said. "So we trust the schools to do what they need to do."That's not to say the OHSAA has no rules concerning 8-man football. It does dedicate a small subsection in its regulations to the sport. But those rules don't say much beyond varsity teams with fewer than 160 boys in their school can play 8-man football if they follow the general OHSAA bylaws and regulations, and the teams that choose to do so are ineligible for the 11-man postseason.The NFHSA lists rules for 8-man football, but Ohio's issue isn't about how wide to make the field (40 yards instead of 53 1/2 in 11-man) or how many players need to be on the line of scrimmage once the ball is snapped (five instead of seven). These schools need help organizing into a viable entity.8-man momentumRugg says he plans to look harder into the 8-man issue as more teams make the change. He's taken notice of the trends in other states that acknowledge the sport: Many high school sports associations started to get involved after around 30 teams were formed. And once the sport was recognized, participation grew.Rugg doesn't think 8-man has reached that point in Ohio yet, but he recognizes the issues facing small schools around the state. He understands the importance of postseason play — he attended meetings for a team in Cleveland that considered transitioning to 8-man football, and several people said they would only be interested if playoffs or a tournament were involved.Rugg also understands the scheduling bind suffered by teams that have teams on their schedule drop 8-man. On that front, he actually offered advice for scheduling future seasons."Look for other games," Rugg said. "That makes it tough on the schools trying to get back to 11-man, but it's a reality of where we are right now. And those teams that need to schedule, they need to schedule."Advice is as far as Rugg will go, and that advice is easier given than applied. But Rugg believes the schools affected by 8-man will be fine surviving on their own. He points out that sports such as boys volleyball, lacrosse and dual-meet wrestling began as sports without official OHSAA structure. Football itself was started in Ohio by a group of enthusiasts without a shield or a sponsor.So for now, the programs straddling the 11-man/8-man line are on their own. But if you believe Notestine, that will change.Rugg may be content to wait until the numbers increase, but 8-man expansion may command his attention quicker than he thinks."There's gonna be a lot of discussion," Notestine said. "I think (sanctioned 8-man football) is inevitably coming."Six of St. Mary Central Catholic's eight players on defense can be seen in this photo from the Panthers' season opener Aug. 30 against Bishop Rosecrans in Zanesville.The St. Mary Central Catholic football team, band and cheerleaders get ready to board a bus to travel more than three hours to Zanesville to play their season opener against Bishop Rosecrans on Aug. 30.