Will schools in the NCL III get football playoffs?

As dwindling participation has forced some local high schools to convert to 8-man football, the teams have worked hard to convince their loyal fans of one important concept: It’s still football.

Indeed, though the 8-man version spreads the field more than the 11-man standard and results in more scoring, the fundamentals of the sport - the passing, the blocking, the tackling - remain the same.

And yet the 10 schools currently playing 8-man football in the NCL III are denied one important football tradition. They don’t have a playoff system.

“It’s really hard,” Anderson Valley coach Danny Kuny said. “These kids work so hard all season, and then if you have a great season and win your league, there’s nowhere else to go. It just doesn’t seem fair.”

As it stands, the athletic directors and coaches of the NCL III have created something they call the Redwood Bowl, which pits the first- and second-place finishers in the league. Last year, Anderson Valley beat Mendocino 50-30 to back up its regular-season title. The bowl provides a bit of late-season excitement to the top teams of the NCL III. But playing a rival for the second or third time that season isn’t the same as proving yourself against teams from outside the area.

“It’s something I’d love to see, even if it was just us and the Mission Trail League down in San Francisco,” Mendocino coach Theron Miller said. “It would be so good for the kids. It’s what we play for in every sport, to go on and beat the best.”

The good news is that 8-man football seems to be heading toward a playoff system. The bad news: No one is really sure how long it will take to get there.

The holdup, North Coast Section commissioner Gil Lemmon said, is that the current rules don’t really provide for an 8-man championship. Clearly, 8-man teams couldn’t play 11-man teams. They would have to go against other 8-man schools, and NCS bylaws require at least four leagues to compete for a championship tournament. Stuart Hall High in San Francisco plays 8-man ball, but the NCL III is currently the only full league in the section.

It was Anderson Valley athletic director Robert Pinoli who first broached the idea of an 8-man championship to Lemmon several years ago, and the commissioner remains interested in a solution.

Lemmon’s idea is to create a championship that would match the winner of the NCL III against 8-man champions from other sections. With more than 100 schools playing 8-man football in California now, the opportunities are there, as long as teams are willing to travel to find them.

“It’s totally feasible,” Miller said. “They do it in Redding and in the (Sacramento) valley, down in Southern California. It’s just a matter of how hard people like Gil want to work for it.”

Lemmon sounds willing to do some of the heavy lifting. He has spoken to several other section commissioners about creating an inter-section championship, but it’s complicated. Such a move would require approval at the CIF level.

Still, Lemmon supports the idea. He sees a parallel in high school baseball, where the winners of the Oakland and San Francisco sections play one another each year.

“They call it the Bay Series or the Bay Bridge Series,” Lemmon said. “There’s no state championship in baseball. So these teams, once they finish league play they’re done. So the state had made an exception many years ago to allow Oakland and San Francisco to play each other. That’s what I was looking for in NCS.”

Even within the North Coast Section, though, Lemmon sees complications. Because of the distances to be traveled between sections and the size of the schools - that is, the size of the crowds likely to pay their way into the playoff games - the NCS would probably not offer to fund transportation or staging of the events.

Lemmon is currently working on a proposal stating that the NCS supports 8-man playoff football but making it clear that the participating schools would bear some of the cost. He hopes to have the proposal on an upcoming agenda, maybe this year.

“I have to say, it’s really dragged out,” Lemmon said. “In fact, the joke was in June that I’d like to see something passed before I retire.”

The coaches are hoping for sooner rather than later. “It’s a lot easier to motivate kids to play hard all season when they know they’re playing for something,” Miller said.

You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter @Skinny_Post.