With the addition of two classifications in Pennsylvania high school football next season, the WPIAL knew it could no longer play all its championships in one day at Heinz Field.
But the WPIAL likely will not be able to play all its championships in the same weekend, either.
That became evident Wednesday night after the PIAA board of directors passed new brackets for the postseason, starting in 2016. The brackets must pass two more votes at future meetings, but that seems like a formality.
Next season, football will expand from four to six classifications across Pennsylvania. In October, the PIAA voted for the expanded classes in football and some other sports. Under the new PIAA football playoff brackets that passed Wednesday, the WPIAL champion in 6A, 5A and 4A will automatically qualify for the PIAA quarterfinals in Week 13 of the season (Nov. 25-26). However, the WPIAL champion in 3A, 2A and 1A will automatically qualify for the PIAA semifinals in Week 14 of the season (Dec. 2-3).
This means a major change for the WPIAL. Since the PIAA playoffs started in 1988, the WPIAL representatives always have entered the PIAA playoffs the same weekend — either the semifinals or quarterfinals. From 1988 through 2003, the WPIAL representative automatically qualified for the semifinals. From 2004 through last season, the WPIAL champion went to the PIAA quarterfinals.
“This is not necessarily a surprise, but we don’t know yet what we are going to do,” said WPIAL executive director Tim O’Malley. “Candidly, we felt all of our teams should go to the [PIAA] semifinals. Now, we have to split our tournaments.”
O’Malley said it already had been decided that the WPIAL couldn’t use Heinz Field to play the six title games on consecutive days. It would simply be too costly, and it’s questionable whether the Steelers would want six games over two days on their home field.
With the new PIAA brackets, three WPIAL championships will be played one weekend and three the other. It’s possible the WPIAL could still play three finals at Heinz.
“We don’t know yet what we are going to do,” said O’Malley. “What we needed was this information of where we are going to plug into the PIAA playoffs. We’ll have to go from here.”
The WPIAL’s plan is for the league’s strategic planning committee to meet Monday to decide how many teams will make the WPIAL playoffs in football and other sports, and how long the playoffs will last. It’s possible some classes could play a 10-week regular-season schedule and some nine weeks. It is also possible there will be a different number of teams qualifying for the playoffs, depending on the classification. The strategic planning committee also will decide how many sections or conferences there will be in each sport.
That strategic planning committee meeting is closed to the public and media. Steering committees will meet Feb. 10 for all WPIAL sports and decide the conference and section alignments.
Feb. 15, the WPIAL board of directors will meet and release alignments for all sports.
“We’ll adjust, but there are going to be some hardships going forward, like what are we going to do with 12 basketball [championship] games next season for boys and girls?” said O’Malley. “We discussed, albeit prematurely, that you can’t use one site for 12 games unless you do it over three days. But if you do it over three days on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday, you would have to get kids out of school, and we don’t want to do that. Could we maybe do it instead on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday?
“There are still a lot of questions that we have to address.”
First Published: January 28, 2016, 3:12 a.m.
Updated: January 28, 2016, 3:20 a.m.