The NSAA released the 2018 and 2019 statewide football schedule Tuesday, with only two crossover games needed between Class A and Class B schools.
In season openers this year, Class A North Platte hosts Scottsbluff and Class B South Sioux City hosts Omaha Bryan.
The crossover games in the state’s two largest classes lessened the need for Class B schools crossing the state to get to games.
Seward and Gering are paired for the next two seasons, as are Alliance and York.
“We worked at it,’’ said NSAA Assistant Director Nate Neuhaus, in charge of football scheduling. “I think we did a good job of accommodate the school’s priority lists.”
On all schedules Class A through Six Man, district games begin in the season’s fifth week. Neuhaus said 68 percent of the non-district games were requested by the schools.
This scheduling cycle is the first under the state’s new classification system for football that uses enrollment cutoffs. Schools with 425 boys or more are in Class A, those with 160 to 424 are in B, 70 to 159 in C-1 and the remainder of 11-man teams in C-2. Nebraska City is a new member of Class C1 and Syracuse moves to C2.
Eight Man is split into two classes, first excluding teams that are ineligible for the playoffs because their schools’ enrollments excel the 47-boy cutoff.
Most districts have six teams. But there are four in A, one in B, six in C-1 and three in C-2 that have five, which requires crossover games during the district portion of schedules.
Sidney, Chadron, Chase County, Holdrege and Cozad are Class C-1 teams filling the necessary gaps in the schedules for Class B’s Panhandle teams.
