N.J. Football Playoff System Continues To Be Debated

Thanksgiving Day games may come at a price for some teams as a proposal to play down to public state group champions in football as early as 2013 works its way through the NJSIAA approval process.

Bill Bruno, the athletic director at Brick Memorial who made one of two playoff proposals to the NJSIAA last spring, and Bud Haines, the athletic director for the Middletown schools, said Thursday they have the outline of a plan that would preserve Thanksgiving games and the current conference structure without expanding the season on either end.

But an analysis by The Record shows that adding two rounds of public playoffs in the same 13-week period would force teams that reach the state semifinals to play three games in 10 days if they hope to maintain a Thanksgiving game and four games in 17 if they reach the final.

While Thanksgiving games remain a hot topic in South Jersey, only 10 games remain in North Jersey , eight of which involve public school teams. But those include long-held rivalries like Hackensack against Teaneck and Dumont against Tenafly.

If, for example, there were a state championship this year, Hackensack could open the Group 4 playoffs a week early on Nov. 5 following an eight-game regular-season schedule with no byes. The eight-game schedule was part of Bruno’s original proposal which has since been merged with a proposal made at the same time by East Brunswick football coach Marcus Borden, who worked with Bruno and Haines over the summer on the plan.

The North 1, Group 4 sectional final then could be played on Friday night, Nov. 18 followed by the Thanksgiving game against Teaneck on Wednesday night, Nov. 23. That would be two games in six days with four days rest in between.

The state semifinal, possibly a matchup against the North 2 champ, could be pushed back to Sunday Nov. 27, a span of five days with three days rest in between resulting in three games in 10 days. The NJSIAA does not allow football teams to play more than two games in a nine-day period.

The state final, against the winner between the Central and South champions, could be played the weekend of Dec. 2, which is the same weekend all football finals are scheduled to be played this year. If the championship is pushed to Sunday, the Comets would have played four games in 17 days.

Bruno and Steve Timko, the executive director of the NJSIAA, said it was way too early to be talking about details of a public football playoff.

The full membership of the NJSIAA still has to vote in December to allow public schools to play to a group champion in football in the first place. Public schools currently play down to 16 sectional champions.

If that proposal to amend the association’s constitution is approved by a two-thirds vote in December, a playoff plan would have to be approved by the association’s advisory and executive committees in the spring and by the full membership in December 2012. The playoffs, which would not affect non-public schools, would not go into effect before 2013.

“We have to do this step by step,” Bruno said Thursday, appearing at the first of five NJSIAA sectional meetings to drum up support for the constitutional change. “We don’t want to get people’s hopes up.”

“It would be counterproductive until we have a vote [in December] to allow a plan to come forward,” said Timko, at the association’s scheduled meeting with North 2 athletic directors Thursday. “It would be putting the cart before the horse.”

And Bruno stressed that nothing is set in stone.

“We still have some melding to do,” Bruno said.