Well, here we go again.
More news from the NJSIAA regarding football, and in case you missed it, we just started the spring sports season.
The news piggybacks other stories we have written about here on Cinn City Sports regarding the split of public and non-public schools in football.
A committee created to look into the idea of creating a separate non-public conference for football only made their case in front of the NJSIAA Advisory Committee on Wednesday.
The Advisory Committee liked the idea, so now, the proposal moves on to the next round, which is the Executive Committee.
A vote by the Executive Committee will come at their meeting schedule for June. It is highly likely that the Executive Committee will vote to move the proposal further.
Should this happen, the proposal would then be presented to the members of the NJSIAA at sectional meetings this coming fall. The membership would then vote on the proposal in December. If the proposal passes, it would take effect with the 2016 football season across the state.
In South Jersey, there are two conferences that are home to public and non-public schools. Those conferences are the West Jersey Football League and the Cape-Atlantic League.
Both of those conferences are home to some of the biggest rivalries in New Jersey high school football that are decades old.
The big question with this proposal is, will those rivalries come to a screeching halt? Sadly, the popular answer is yes because most of them involve public school versus non-public school.
If a separate conference is formed for non-public schools, scheduling will change for both entities. Public schools will lose their rivalry games with non-public schools and have to add other teams to their schedules. Some might even consider out-of-state showcase games.
The NJSIAA also said that the member schools in a newly formed conference would be responsible for creating their own schedules and create divisions within the conference.
This could lead to quite a few South Jersey non-public schools traveling more than one hour to play a game against another non-public school in North Jersey during the regular season.
Stick with Cinn City Sports for updates on this developing story in football as they become available.
