Canton on losing side of historic MIAA football vote

By Jay Turner

Canton’s best opportunity in years to enjoy playoff football went out the window last week at the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association’s annual meeting in Westboro, when member schools voted overwhelmingly against a plan that would have greatly expanded the playoff format and eliminated traditional leagues in favor of enrollment-based divisions.

The so-called Burkhead Plan, named in honor of former Canton head coach Bill Burkhead, was a “no brainer” to CHS Athletic Director Danny Erickson, but too many others had their doubts and it was ultimately voted down 190-114, with one abstention.

Erickson, who attended the MIAA meeting along with high school Principal Doug Dias, said Canton “100 percent endorsed the new plan and was disappointed that it failed.”

“It would have been a huge, huge step in the right direction,” he said, “and it’s something we’ve been lobbying for for a long time.”

Erickson said the new format would have given smaller schools like Canton — which has struggled in recent years against its bigger Hockomock counterparts — a chance to compete against schools its own size, thereby increasing its chances of reaching the playoffs.

Under the current system, only the top team from each league in eastern Massachusetts is awarded a playoff bid, and those teams go on to play in a divisional game, with the winners advancing to the Super Bowl at Gillette Stadium. This past fall in the Hock, for instance, league champion Franklin got the nod, while the remaining eight schools saw their seasons end on Thanksgiving Day.

By contrast, the Burkhead Plan called for a playoff system similar to those used in other MIAA sports, whereby approximately half of the teams advance to a postseason tournament each year. Since football plays fewer games than other sports, playoffs would have been moved to weeks 8-10 of the season, concluding with state-wide championship games at Gillette the week after Thanksgiving.

Under this format, leagues would have been replaced with 16-team divisions based on geography and male enrollment, although traditional Thanksgiving Day rivalries would have been kept intact.

Erickson said the elimination of leagues, and along with it, many of the state’s historic rivalries, was simply too great an obstacle for some voters to overcome. He said there was also some concern about losing gate receipts as a result of having fewer home games, although he said he is still “not convinced it would have made a huge economic difference.”

In his view, at least, it seemed that the positives of the plan — creating a more equitable system, establishing a true state champion and a more competitive playoff atmosphere — outweighed any potential negatives.

At the same time, both Erickson and CHS head football coach Jim Goff acknowledged that Canton stood to gain perhaps more than most schools had the plan been approved.

“I can understand why certain schools wouldn’t support the plan,” Goff said. “It benefited or hurt teams differently.”

Then again, with the Hock set to split next season into small and large divisions while gaining another large school in Attleboro, Goff said he would strongly support a push for a second playoff bid — an idea that the whole league seems to be behind, according to Erickson.

Another possible alternative would be for Canton to request permission from the league to withdraw in football only, although Erickson said the last such request, made by another small school, was unanimously rejected.

When asked if he would seek to go that route if all other options failed, Goff would only say that his staff intends to “weigh their options carefully.”

Besides, losing is not a foregone conclusion for the Bulldogs even if nothing changes, according to Goff, whose teams have shown visible improvement over the past few seasons.

“We’ve made strides every year,” he said, “and we’re going to make strides no matter who we play.”

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