High school football and other things to be thankful for on Thanksgiving.
Big squads: Area high schools often have more than 100 players go out for football teams. Coaches at the bigger schools usually work with 80 or more players every day throughout the season.
Former Northern Durham coach Kenny Browning, who is now a University of North Carolina assistant coach, summed up the benefits of large squads perfectly years ago when he said something like, "High school boys are going to be part of something. We can either give them athletic teams and other structured activities or turn them loose on their own to find a group that will accept them."
Thanksgiving practice: Having to figure out how to work in a practice on Thursday and how to handle pregame activities on the Friday after Thanksgiving is a reason to rejoice. If the coaching staff and the players have to worry about scheduling around Thanksgiving, it has been a great season.
Be thankful you're still playing. Most teams aren't.
The playoffs: The N.C. High School Athletic Association bracketing process is the most complicated, convoluted system in the country. But the results are outstanding.
The best teams make the playoffs. Some undeserving teams advance, too, but few coaches would advocate going back to a system in which only conference champions made the playoffs. The flip side of getting all the good teams in the playoffs is that you take some who are not so good.
There was a lot of negative talk a few years ago about subdividing the classifications and crowning eight state champions instead of just four, but subdividing is so widely accepted that returning to one champion in each class is almost never mentioned.
Having two champions in each class is a lot better than not having any state champion, which was the case for a few years in 3-A and 2-A. There was a Western champ and an Eastern champ.
And if you go back just a little bit further, there are about a dozen different champions before the N.C. High School Athletic Association merged with the Western North Carolina Activities Association, which was in the western part of the state; the N.C. High School Athletic Conference, which was for high schools with black students; and Robeson County Indian High School Athletic Association, which was for Native Americans.
But when you think about it, we still have 11 state high football champions in North Carolina - eight in the NCHSAA and three in the N.C. Independent Schools Athletic Association.
Overtime: High school football has a great overtime process. Ties in conference games can cause all sorts of problems in the standings, and in a sense ties are broken by the best means possible - the two teams playing until there is a winner.
At one time, tie games in the playoffs were broken by total yardage. If the game finished in a tie, teams advanced or were eliminated on the basis of which team had the most yards. In a high-scoring game, that system penalized teams that played good defense and created field position.
Concussion awareness: There seem to be more and more concussions, but I doubt that there really are. Coaches and certified athletic trainers are more aware of the seriousness of traumatic brain injuries and are diligent about reporting them.
And while on the topic, be very thankful if your school has a certified athletic trainer. They save lives.
The 2010 season: High school athletics are under pressure nationally.
Many systems, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg, have adopted a pay-for-play system, charging players to participate. Sports are being eliminated in some states. Cutting coaches' salaries has been considered.
Some states have even reduced the number of days that students attend classes in order to meet budgets.
High school athletics survived 2010 in North Carolina without systems cutting sports.
That's something for which to give thanks.