Potential playoff wrench is avoided

Either Friday night or Saturday morning, Calpreps.com had placed a statement on its home page, saying it was shutting down because a contract to provide rankings to CBS, the parent company of MaxPreps.com, was allegedly not being paid.

Normally, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. But for the CCS, it was a huge development as the Calpreps.com ranking are one criterium used to determine seedings for the CCS football playoffs and have been used since 2019.

“I got a lot of texts on Sunday and (CCS commissioner) Dave Grissom’s phone was blowing up,” said Steve Sell, CCS president and Aragon athletic director and chairperson of Peninsula Athletic League football.

“To say people were panicking would not be an understatement.”

As of Wednesday, however, there was a new message on the Calpreps.com site, saying that the contract issue with CBS has been resolved and its website will be back up by this weekend.

While the crisis has been adverted, Sell said the brief panic has led the CCS football committee and the CCS Board of Managers to look at coming up with a better Plan B if Calpreps.com, or any other ranking system that might be used, suddenly disappears.

Sell said if the Calpreps.com ranking were not available for the 2024 CCS playoffs, CCS bylaws already say the commissioner has the ultimate call in deciding the final seven at-large bids to the CCS playoffs. Forty teams make it to the postseason, with 33 of those teams earning automatic bids.

Sell, however, doesn’t believe Grissom would not have unilaterally decided on those final handful of playoffs teams.

“[Grissom] is, by nature, a very collaborative person. He would have talked to other coaches, other commissioners,” Sell said. “If Calpreps didn’t come back on board, the teams would have been selected (for the playoffs) and teams would have been seeded. … I’m confident the football committee would get it done (fairly). (But) it would be nice to have something in place. If we don’t have Calpreps, what do we do?

“I think anybody would prefer to have something vetted by the entire Board of Managers of CCS.”

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While one crisis was averted, a new CIF rule that passed in April, was enacted yesterday for the first time this season — namely, excessive heat.

A number of tennis matches around the PAL were postponed yesterday because of the high heat and forced other teams to modify practices.

State law AB 1653 was passed last October and it included a number of requirements, including “wet bulb thermometer” technology that is used to determine when it is too hot for California schools to practice or compete.

To comply with the law, the CCS bought all member schools the thermometer necessary to determine the heat index — which takes into account the ambient temperature, wind and humidity to come up with an actually temperature.

Those temperature ranges are then assigned different colors and different degrees, depending on the area in which a section plays. Sell said the CCS is in the most conservative area, meaning, “Our kids are not acclimated to this kind of weather,” Sell said.

So, if the temperature is 76 or less, activities can carry on normally. From 76 to 81, three water breaks/rests are mandated.

It’s when the temperature gets above 81 that things start to get dicey. From 81 to 84 degrees, the condition is orange and more stringent rules are put into place — like football players are limited to helmets and shoulder pads and a two-hour limit on practices. In the red zone, which is 84 to 86 degrees, more breaks are required, no equipment to wear for football and even less practice time.

Black — anything above 86 degrees — is a no go.

“I was on the field [Tuesday], at about 4:30, 4:45, and it (the reading) was bouncing back and forth between orange and red. It was right between and I said, ‘This is bloody hot,’” Sell said.

I arrived at our San Mateo office around 4 p.m. Tuesday and my car temperature gauge read 91. I even said, “This is hot.”

Sell said Aragon’s tennis match and cross country practice were canceled, flag football practice was moved into the gym and the football team started practice at 6 p.m. to accommodate the temperatures.

“The fortunate thing is so many schools now have lights. … Eventually you’ll see a lot of people pushing practices back to later,” Sell said. “There was some chatter that it was too conservative. I can understand how it can disrupt things … but you have to ask yourself, ‘What is the quality of practice going to be when it’s that hot?’”

First, schools went to synthetic turf fields because grass fields would get torn up by overuse and winter rains. Then, CIF schools implemented the Air Quality Index in response to the wildfires that have crippled the state over the last several years. Now, there is the “wet bulb temperature” test to determine when the heat is too excessive.

Good thing it doesn’t snow in the Bay Area.

Nathan Mollat is in his 24th year covering high school sports in San Mateo County for the San Mateo Daily Journal. He can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com.