To B, or not to B, that is question solely for football

This year’s Rep Assembly will be held Friday at Emerald Downs, and the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association decision makers are faced with an important question:

Do they give everyone a “C”?

As in a C classification.

Now, if I remember correctly, a C was for average work, no matter how often I told the old man it stood for commendable.

As John Blanchette so eloquently put it during the B Tournament, adding another classification to balance state playoff opportunities is just another step toward having NHL-like playoffs.

And that league has done so well lately.

Right now it looks as if the C amendment will pass, though barely. With it, the more-than-50-year tradition of the State B will disappear in 2007.

But I would like to propose – and this is right off the top of my head, so you know it’s a slick idea – an alternative.

Use the proportions included in the C amendment (B and C consisting of 16 percent each of the state high schools, with 1A, 2A, 3A and 4A each 17 percent) for football, and football only. The C class can play 8-man, the B 11-man. If you want to opt up, fine.

But the smallest 32 percent would still be B for every other sport, including basketball. Forget the idea the smallest schools have no chance. This year’s two hoops champions, Cusick and Sunnyside Christian, each have a posted enrollment on the WIAA Web site of about 62, easily C size.

This way you have a separate class for 8-man football and you keep the tradition so important to the B tourney. Yes, it will expand the number of schools in the B class for hoops and may limit the opportunity for a school with 50 kids to make the Spokane trip.

But, really, all this talk of balancing opportunity for kids to participate in state is really bogus anyway. A kid who attends CV (enrollment 1,313) always will have less opportunity to compete at state than a kid at Freeman (250), even though they live a block apart. The per-child state playoff opportunity quotient for a B school student is astronomically higher than it is for a 4A participant.

The other important amendment the Rep Assembly will vote on is the one proposed by GSL schools. It has to do with forfeits from the use of an ineligible player.

This is one the league has been trying to push through for a few years now without success. But a change instituted at last year’s assembly should help. Instead of needing a two-thirds affirmative vote to pass, amendments need only 60 percent now.

Last year the forfeit change received more than 60 percent approval but failed.

This year, let’s hope it passes.

What would it do? Right now, if an ineligible player appears in a team sport contest, even if it is for three seconds at the end of a 120-0 blowout, his or her team would have to forfeit.

No discussion. No exception. No sense.

The proposed rule would allow each school to appeal a forfeit to the WIAA district it competes in (in the GSL’s case, District 8). The school would have to prove “by a preponderance of evidence that the contest or contests would have been won without the participation of the ineligible” player.

The amendment includes a procedure and some criteria to consider. For example, if a player competes for more than half the game, a school is automatically barred from appealing the forfeit.

This amendment allows for common sense, something that can be in short supply when it comes to some in high school administration.

Let’s see if some is applied on Friday.