LHSAA moves 2020 football season start to October 8th

BATON ROUGE - Coming on the heels of the Governor’s proclamation to keep Louisiana in Phase II of the pandemic recovery plan, the Louisiana High School Athletic Association has decided to tentatively push back the start of the 2020 football season to October 8.
The plan for the gridiron campaign was revealed on Wednesday afternoon and included an invitation to the select schools to join LHSAA championship events in a one year exemption.
LHSAA Executive Director Eddie Bonine re-iterated his desire to play football in 2020 and admitted that putting a plan together, no matter how tentative, was the right thing to do.
“It’s ambitious … yeah. But you know what, if you’re not ambitious you don’t get anything done,” Bonine said of the fall plans. “We want to play football. I want kids to play football. Parents want kids to play football yesterday.”
“But we’ve got to do this safely. And what is the alternative here — nothing … no sports?,” he continued. “We’ve been down that ugly road in the spring. And we’re going to do everything we can to prevent that from happening again.”
However, LHSAA Executive Director Eddie Bonine reminded the schools and the public the start date is still dependent on the state’s move from Phase II to Phase III.
“I truly believe we are going to bring the numbers down,” Bonine said of COVID-19 cases. “We’ve got to use the numbers. If people want to bad-mouth the numbers, they can. At the end of the day, that is what we are using.”
“Keep in mind that this is what we have today. We feel good about it,” Bonine continued. “But what we do can change by something that happens tomorrow with this (pandemic).”
The hope coming out of the LHSAA is that the state will move into Phase III at the end of August. After 14 days of being in Phase III, the organization would petition the state to allow contact over the next 21 days so teams can become acclimated to collisions before the season begins.
Even though the specifics of the plan were not reveled, there were some aspects that have been released.
First and foremost the first game of the year will start with week three opponents, thus an abbreviated regular season.
Secondly, the number of playoff teams would more than likely be reduced. If that happens, teams could opt to have a “bowl game” against another non-playoff team.
Thirdly, playoffs teams would be determined by the power point system. However, if teams are forced to miss games because of COVID-19 issues, the plan could be altered.
The LHSAA already has plans drawn up for six, seven and eight game seasons.
As far as fans being able to attend games, Bonine stated school districts and individual schools would ultimately make that determination.