Friday night lights: UIL greed and stupidity mean participation trophies for all

The Era Hornets, thanks to various University Interscholastic League stupidities, are going to the playoffs with a winless ...

Not just district record, but winless entire season.

Great catch and great open-field tackle both. But one of four straight penalties meant it "never happened."
That, the sloppiness and more are kind of symbolic of the UIL and Texas high school football.

The Hornets and Cumby Trojans, who squared off tonight, play in a four-team District 9 Class 2A Division 2, after Campbell dropped down to six-man this year out of a five-team district.

Remember before UIL split each of the five 11-man classes into big and small schools, and sorted out the bigger and smaller ones for the split for the playoffs at the end of the regular season?

Remember also that districts with six or fewer teams just sent three to the playoffs?

Yes and yes.

But, due to greed over more and more playoff games — a greed that starts at UIL but, like Reaganomics, trickles down, now, no matter how small the district, four teams make the postseason. And, to keep small-school halves of each class from getting butt-hurt or whatever, the classes are each split in half.

I thought UIL was in Texas, where the men are men and the sheep are nervous. Instead, it acts like a bunch of those San Francisco "sissies."

Cumby and Era were both 1-1 on the season entering the game. An Era win would have made a three-way tie for second with the two of them and Tioga, and all three teams 1-1 against each other. Fortunately, Cumby pulled out a 20-8 win to prevent that nonsense on top of the UIL nonsense already at hand.

But the possibility of ties like that are another problem with a four-team district.

Update: Era lost its first-round game to Mount Enterprise by a 44-0 count.