June 4, 2008

New CIF football state bowl format announced

 California Interscholastic Federation Executive Director Marie M. Ishida announced final plans for the state’s new five-division football Bowl Game plan recently.

The five games will take place Dec. 19-20 at the Home Depot Center in Carson and feature a new “Open Division,” that will pit Northern California’s top team against Southern California’s best team regardless of enrollment size.

The four other games will be enrollment based and include:

• Division I: North (1,701 or more) against South (2,400 or more).
• Division II: North (1,001-1,700) against South (1,101-2,399)
• Division III: North (1,000 and below) against South (1,100 and below).
• Small School: North (400 and below) against South (500 and below).

 If there are fewer than three qualified schools within small school parameters, the selection committee may consider another team within the Division III enrollment.

Only Section champions are considered for all games and a selection committee will determine the match-ups Dec. 14.

In a prepared statement, Ishida said: “One of the reasons we increased the championships to five divisions was to ensure that small schools would have an opportunity to be selected to participate, and we believe that will occur with the enrollment parameters that have been set.”

A tentative schedule has been made for the five games:  

• Friday, Dec. 19: Small School (4:30), Division I (8 p.m.).
• Saturday, Dec. 20: Division III (noon), Division II (4 p.m.), Open Division (8 p.m.).

Along with the football games, Home Depot will host the UCA/Macy's California State Cheerleading Championships and a coach’s clinic sponsored by NIKE.

California was the last state in the union to implement a form of state title game. After a successful two-year run through its pilot phase, the state football championship bowl games were approved as an on-going championship event by the Federated Council at its January meeting.

The Home Depot Center, which seats 27,000, recently was selected as this event's host site for at least the next two years (2008 and 2009).

Last season, De La Salle-Concord (Division I), Oceanside (D-II) and St. Bonaventure-Ventura (D-III) were crowned champions. In 2006, Canyon-Canyon Country (D-I), Orange Lutheran (D-II) and Oaks Christian-Westlake Village (D-III) were California winners.