The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association’s Board of Control got high school football alignment for 2025 through the 2027-28 school year figured out Wednesday.
The approved three-year cycle will take effect this fall.
The Board of Control openly admitted Tuesday it didn’t have time to continue the debate on football alignment, which had carried on for months.
If that felt familiar, it should.
Two years ago, under then-executive director Donnie Nelson, the realignment committee and Board of Control put together an approved plan as the clock was nearing midnight.
The latest round of discussion ticked even closer to turning into a pumpkin as an approved alignment at the tail-end of Tuesday’s meeting was immediately scrapped Wednesday.
It clearly did not take long after Tuesday’s meeting ended for the NIAA and everyone involved to realize they needed to pivot from a plan that wasn’t going to work and they needed to do it fast.
TOUGH ASSIGNMENT
Before I go further, I feel the need to express my appreciation for the process and those who spend countless hours involved.
I genuinely appreciate that everyone involved with the NIAA is willing to spend all this time and money to try and bring competitive balance to a state that has grappled with blowouts for decades.
Nevada, as a state, presents challenges geographically that almost no other state in the U.S. has to deal with.
On top of that, Bishop Gorman’s dominance in football over the last decade-plus leads to debates that few states in the country have been able to answer. I am not going to try and solve that discussion here, but I would like to ask some genuine questions about the final results of this particular realignment process.
Was it worth it?
Were the last two years so bad that the NIAA felt forced to spend months working on a new solution?
Did that time, labor, travel and discussion result in a significant change for the better?
WHAT EXACTLY CHANGED?
After the dust settled, following 16 hours of meetings combined between Tuesday and Wednesday, I was left wondering how different the new alignment is compared to what the NIAA has used the last two seasons.
The NIAA said it was a directive from the board to have fewer than seven state titles, which has been the alignment the last two seasons.
After months of realignment meetings and Board of Control debates, the NIAA agreed that this new format was the way to go, which will have one less state champion (six) than the last two years.
Given this entire realignment debate was centered on Class 5A and 4A, I think the following breakdown is a fair comparison between the previous system and the new one:
• Last year, Class 5A contained three subsections.
You had 5A Division I, which was a southern-only classification; 5A-II and 5A-III contained both Northern and Southern Region teams; 4A was a southern-only classification.
• In the new alignment, the “Open Division” playoffs will be south-only, which is a marginal change at most from 5A-Division I. The Open Division will take the best four teams from the south instead of the six that made the playoffs in 5A-I.
5A-II teams are now just 5A and will compete against southern Nevada schools for a state title, just like they did in the last system. The only difference in the North is that four teams will make the postseason instead of six; the new alignment for 5A in the south will include eight postseason teams.
The altered Class 4A follows almost the exact same formula.
5A-III teams moved to 4A, which eliminated 5A-III as a division. Four Northern football teams will qualify for the postseason instead of six. Eight teams in the south will make the postseason versus six from a year ago.
I think it makes for an easy breakdown and comparison of the two formats.
The latest round of realignment eliminated a 5A-III state title. That’s the one state title removal that brings the total number to six, which was the directive from the NIAA’s Board.
The old format also introduced promotion and relegation, which will remain in place for the North in the new structure.
When you add up all the changes, the new format eliminated one state title, cut four Northern teams from the playoffs, and also added three southern teams to the postseason.
Was the elimination of one state title and, in total, one playoff team worth all the trouble?
TIME AND ENERGY
Spanish Springs football coach Rob Hummel said in his public comment that he has spent roughly 1,000 hours over the last 3-to-4 months trying to piece together a plan that would work for both the North and the South.
In the heat of debate, it’s easy to get lost in hyperbole — 1,000 hours over 120 days (four months) calculates to more than eight hours a day — to help make your point. I understand that. If it wasn’t hyperbole and you take Hummel at his word, I want to remind you of my point above.
If one football coach spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours on this topic the only logical conclusion is that various members of the NIAA combined to spend thousands of hours, and dollars, to try and bring this plan to fruition.
We’ve got seven months to wait before we can even begin to discuss if the state is any more balanced than it was before in football.
However, with thousands of hours and dollars put into designing this new system, I can’t help but continue to wonder if the slight tweaks were actually worth it?
Ultimately, a ton of time was spent on an alignment that’s marginally different than what the state had before.
Did all that time, effort and money get used in an effective manner?
Was the need to eliminate one state title and a couple of below-.500 playoff teams truly worth the burden and the cost?