Nevada high school football postseason brackets face a chaotic new reality – Las Vegas Sun News

Editor’s note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

Hundreds of thousands of high school football players across America are grinding through spring practices with the same dream: a chance to compete for a state championship.

For most, it’s the longest of long shots. For three schools in Nevada, it’s essentially guaranteed.

No matter what record Bishop Gorman, Faith Lutheran or Somerset Losee posts in the fall, each program will play in a state championship game. All they have to do is show up.

The unlikely reality stems from a seismic shift in Nevada high school football.

When Clark County School District programs in Class 5A and 4A broke away from the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association earlier this month, only private and charter schools remained — leaving just three teams in the state’s top classification.

With only three competitors, the NIAA playoff bracket required some creative engineering.

The third-place team — almost certainly Losee — will receive an automatic bid to the Open Division state championship at Allegiant Stadium, where it will await the winner of a first-round game between the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds.

Read that again: The worst team in the group gets a free pass to the biggest stage of the season.

Meanwhile, the loser of that top-seeds matchup won’t go home empty-handed either — it will face a Reno-area school in the Class 5A title game.

When news of the shift started to spread Wednesday, Losee coach Kenneth Rossi wasn’t sure why he was receiving text messages from coaching friends — then it hit him.

“I got a few text messages last night congratulating us, almost laughing,” Rossi said. “But I want everyone to know we have a benchmark here. We are going to raise a banner — and not a consolation banner.”

For many, the bracket raises eyebrows — and some worry it undercuts the reputation of a football community that has long punched above its weight. Gorman, Liberty and Arbor View have each been nationally ranked over the past decade, other schools regularly beat regional opponents and Las Vegas is a hotspot for college recruiters.

Let’s be honest: This bracket is nothing more than lipstick on a pig, a cosmetic fix that can’t disguise the fractured state of prep football in Las Vegas.

The exodus of public schools didn’t just shake up the bracket — it gutted the association.

The CCSD programs, now operating under their own umbrella, will be split into three divisions and play nine games. The final two matchups will be determined based on results and carry the intensity of playoff football — although they can’t be labeled as postseason.

In many ways, everyone got what they wanted — just not together.

CCSD schools, long frustrated by competing against Gorman and charter programs unburdened by zoning restrictions, will play a season in which the final game won’t end in a lopsided loss to the Gaels. It’s a fresh start, even if the circumstances are messy.

Gorman, meanwhile, isn’t complaining either.

The Gaels will continue their tradition of opening the season against six national opponents, chasing a national title in addition to a state crown that has rarely eluded them. Gorman has claimed every state championship since 2009 — save two, a 2019 loss to Liberty and the canceled 2020 season.

CCSD schools have collected hardware of their own in recent years. Centennial, Legacy, Liberty, Mojave and Silverado have all won state titles — but in lower classifications, divisions engineered to keep those programs out of Gorman’s path come playoff time.

The one attempt to rein in Gorman went nowhere fast.

A proposal passed by the NIAA’s Board of Control last fall would have placed the Gaels in a 10-team super league and capped them to just one out-of-state game per season. It was dead within weeks after Gorman’s legal team sent a letter challenging whether the association had violated its own bylaws by attempting to alter realignment mid-cycle. The proposal was scrapped.

The NIAA has been scrambling to piece together a workable postseason ever since public schools began exploring independence. What emerged — developed in coordination with private, charter and Northern Nevada schools — was the best path forward.

Though to be fair, with only three teams, the options weren’t exactly plentiful.

The fracture didn’t happen overnight. Over the past decade-plus, tensions between CCSD and the NIAA quietly built until the breaking point — and depending on whom you ask, there’s plenty of blame to spread around: schools, individuals, boards. Everyone has a villain in their version of the story.

But finger-pointing won’t fix the situation.

What matters now is getting all parties back to the table to find a solution that works for everyone — players, programs and the future of prep football in this state. Each of the parties needs to stop assigning blame and be part of the solution.

Time will tell whether CCSD’s independence is a temporary pause — a chance for the NIAA to recalibrate and rebuild — or a preview of what Nevada prep football will look like for years to come. But those sitting at the table need to remember one fundamental truth: A true state playoff system must offer every school in the state a fair path to qualify. It’s that simple.

Many kids in this valley grew up dreaming of beating a Reno school at Sam Boyd Stadium in the state championship football game. We saved up for turf shoes at Turf Sporting Goods or 4 Seasons Sports, convinced that one day we’d be the ones representing Southern Nevada under those lights.

Those memories don’t fade. They’re the thread that runs through this community — regardless of school size or classification.

If you need a reminder of what this is all supposed to be about, talk to the coach at Losee.

Rossi’s program is entering just its fifth season of existence, and there are those who believe it was wrongly placed in the top division. Conventional wisdom has them penciled in as the three-seed — the team that lands in the championship game by default, the consolation prize in a bracket built by circumstance.

Rossi doesn’t see it that way.

“The end goal is not to participate,” he says. “A lot of people are writing us off as the three-seed. We have no intention of finishing there. The kids believe in what we’re building. We aren’t a charity case, so don’t feel bad for us. We are building a good team.”

His players have been in the weight room since January. They don’t care how the politics shake out.

They’re just ready to play.

[email protected] / 702-990-2662 / @raybrewer21