The article I decided to read was written by Courtney
Cronin, and it is entitled MHSAA announces changes to football championships
venue. To summarize, this article explains the recent change made by the
Mississippi High School Activities Association to play their championship games
on four different college campuses by means of a four-year rotation. The former
site of the game, Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson, Mississippi, had been
the site of the Mississippi High School State Championship Game for the last 21
years, but the Association decided to make the change. The first game will be
hosted on the campus of Mississippi State with Ole Miss also being in the
four-year rotation. Don Hinton, the MHSAA’s executive director, said a main
reason for the move is to utilize the state’s best facilities. JSU, who as said
before hosted the game for 21 years straight, hopes to have a future game
played again on their field. Although they were expected to enter the bidding
for a future championship game as part of the four-year rotation, they were
still busy finalizing payment for the 2013 championship game, so they did look
to further their involvement at this point. Eric Stringfellow, a spokesman for
Jackson State, would say of this, “we are hopeful this will be resolved in a
manner that will keep the high school football championships in our capital.”
I think this is a reasonable and acceptable path to take for
the future of the Mississippi high school state championship game for a few
reasons. Firstly, having a four-year rotation achieves the perfect balance of
fitting in different venues while also developing comfortability with each
venue. Although I appreciate the tradition of playing a game at the same place
for so long, I think it will be good to implement a change to play at other
venues across the state, especially since Mississippi has some marquee schools
to and venues to play at when it comes to football. Secondly, this will help
high school players, specifically, Mississippi high school players to check out
their potential choices of colleges to attend and get a feel for the stadiums
they may play in. There always seems to be a lot of players in high school that
like to stay in state and take pride in it. This was the case with my high
school as most of our senior football team when on to play in places like
Rutgers and other New Jersey Universities. Thirdly, I think this plan changes
the venue without drastically altering the event. To explain and if I remember
correctly from studying seating, the former stadium at JSU and the new stadiums
of MSU and Ole Miss all have similar capacities, which I believe is a little
above 60,000. Also, a four-year rotation allows everyone to at least get used
to each stadium/venue. Lastly, even though they may be losing their year in and
year out hosting of the game, JSU still has the opportunity to enter the
rotation and host the game in the future, as long as their current
contract/financial agreement for the 2013 game is finalized.
Thank you for reading!
- Joe
Cronin, Courtney (2014, July). MHSAA announces changes to
football championships venue. Clarionledger.com.
Retrieved August 16, 2014, from http://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/high-school/2014/07/21/mhsaa-football-championships-venue-change/12941535/
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