Is transfer culture ruining high school football? Oregon coaches weigh in

Coaches also speak out about realignment, Week 0 and yet another change to the 6A playoff system

The Oregon high school football landscape has a number of changes in 2024. We asked coaches, including Thurston's Justin Starck, which change they believe is the most impactful. / Photo by Leon Neuschwander

Several significant changes take effect this year that will have a major impact on Oregon high school football. So, we asked several of the state's coaches which change they feel is the most important as we prepare to kick off the 2024 season.

EARLIER: 10 STORYLINES ENTERING 2024 OREGON HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL SEASON

Our canvas found several overwhelming themes among the coaches who responded. We've grouped them to provide a glimpse into their minds.

The reintroduction of Week 0 to the schedule 

The OSAA Executive Board brought back Week 0 to the schedule this season, allowing coaches to choose between playing a jamboree or a nonleague game following the second week of practice.

Teams that choose to play in Week 0 don't get 10 games, however — they will need to have a week with no game later in the season.

For teams such as Sprague and Newberg, who are in leagues with an odd number of teams and ended up with a late-season open week that matched up, the addition of Week 0 meant they could move their Week 8 nonleague game, giving them a week off right before the playoff push.

“It just made sense for us to move the game,” Olympians coach AJ Robinson said.

Other coaches also liked having the opportunity to build a break in the middle of the schedule.

“I think extending the season to allow a Zero Week game in your schedule allows for teams to have a bye and break up the season a bit,” Sandy’s Josh Dill said. “I think this will provide an advantage for the teams that have this.”

Ridgeview coach Patrick Pileggi added, “We took advantage of that this year, allowing us to have a bye week later in the season before league to get our players healthy. It will be huge for teams that may not have the depth that some do.”

Other coaches cautioned that without additional practices being allowed during the first two weeks, Week 0 could be an interesting test.

First-year Central Catholic coach Charlie Landgraf’s team will play in Week 0 against Leilehua, Hawaii, which will have two games under its belt when it arrives at Hillsboro Stadium.

“Week 0 puts more on the coaches and kids to be ready to go right away,” Landgraf said. “In my mind, if you're playing a Week 0 game, maybe they start practice a week earlier.”

Nelson coach Aaron Hazel added, “Teams playing a Week 0 game will have an advantage in special teams in Week 1, but I am interested to see how many teams are at full strength with the OSAA not adding any practice opportunities for the Week 0 game.”

Another advantage that Valley Catholic coach Michael Snyder pointed out is that it helps address the numbers crunch that some officiating groups face.

“Having another week to schedule a game is very helpful, especially at the lower levels where it's harder to find nonleague games,” Snyder said. “But I think the biggest impact is for the officials. Being able to spread out games and not have as many games each week helps with scheduling officials and not having to do Thursday or Saturday games as much as it has been the last couple of seasons.”

Overall, coaches welcomed the OSAA bringing back the option to play in Week 0.

“It will be difficult to be prepared with only 11 days of practice,” Thurston’s Justin Starck said. “However, we are grateful for the Zero Week games because we have an odd number of teams in our league, and it would’ve been very difficult to find a nonleague game late in the season.”

The growing influence of the transfer portal

Wilsonville football coach Adam Guenther is one of many Oregon high school football coaches who expressed concern about the transfer culture. / Photo by Leon Neuschwander

While some issues are short-term concerns for Oregon’s high school coaches, many see the increasing prevalence of players transferring for athletic reasons threatening the long-term health of the sport.

“The biggest change in recent years is the increasing openness and high number of transfers among student-athletes as they seek perceived greener grass and replicating college practices,” Canby coach Jimmy Joyce said. “This has led to high school athletes becoming free agents and coaches recruiting their own players while fending off those who wish to pluck them away from the programs they grew up in. I think this change will have a huge effect this year and for years to come.”

First-year North Salem coach Caleb Singleton added, “The high school transfer portal has affected a ton of programs both negatively and positively. Student-athletes today want to see instant success, a model from the recent changes to the college football transfer portal and NIL deals. The high school football of old where student-athletes stay within their communities and stick to traditions is rare to come by these days.”

Scappoose’s Joe Nowlin is thankful the transfer culture hasn’t trickled down to the 4A level.

“However, the number of transfers we are seeing throughout the 5A and 6A levels has become concerning,” he noted. “We are seeing the ‘rich get richer,’ and we are losing sight of what high school football should be about — playing with the guys you grew up with, building a winning culture and tradition with your guys, and creating those lasting memories within your community.

“I don't want to see high school football turn into a travel-ball culture of only chasing championships and having only 5-6 teams each year that have a legitimate shot to compete because they are getting all the players.”

Longtime coaches such as Bob Boyer at Beaverton were loudest in their cries regarding the transfer culture.

“After 35 years of coaching in Oregon, I've never seen it this bad,” Boyer said. “The fact that this is becoming like the college portal is ruining high school football, and the OSAA needs to tighten this up. Some teams are losing their best players due to 7-on-7 teams, personal strength coaches, outside training facilities (many that have high school coaches on staff), and other unethical factors creating a serious imbalance in the playing field. Only to the top 6-8 teams in the state, the only ones with a true shot at a championship, is where they go.”

Wilsonville coach Adam Guenther said until something is done, the trend will continue.

“Until someone wants to step up and stop the transfer portal at the high school level, the rich will get richer,” Guenther said. “The 7-on-7 stuff, I'm all for it if you want to be with friends, learn routes, get better, but it also opens things up to friends recruiting friends.”

Reconfiguring leagues boosts 5A, drops 6A numbers

Silverton is in a new Class 5A football league this season with Wilsonville, Canby, Central, McKay and Woodburn. / Photo by Leon Neuschwander

This was certainly a topic at the forefront of coaches' minds.

The biennial system of allowing poor-performing teams to drop a classification and moving teams that improved after dropping back to their original classification led to significant churn this season.

Three teams dropped from 6A to 5A this year — Aloha, Glencoe and Roseburg — while only Southridge moved back to 6A. That dropped the number of schools playing 6A football to 42.

Meanwhile, with La Salle Prep moving back to 5A after winning the 4A Tri-Valley Conference title last year, 5A now has 35 schools, prompting the OSAA to add a fifth special district that put two of the past three state champions — Silverton (2021) and Wilsonville (2023) — with Canby, Central, McKay and Woodburn.

“These teams dropping to 5A, they're adding talent. It just makes 5A even better,” said Redmond coach Kyle Lavender.

“The new leagues change the dynamics a little bit,” added Putnam's Tim Jacobs. “Things have been shuffled around so much, you almost expect something different every couple years. In our case, our new league features a number of 6A schools who are playing down. It will be interesting to see how these new leagues shake out as the season goes on.”

Not every 5A coach welcomed the change, though. Crater coach Seth Womack said, “Our conference's addition of Roseburg puts three 6A schools in our conference and creates a bye week for us. It causes a lot of teams to play a Week 0 game, which puts us behind the 8-ball a little bit with the practice limitations.”

Dallas coach Andy Jackson rued the loss of traditional rivals Central and Silverton to the new league, while Woodburn's Rob Kassebaum said, “They definitely did not take competitive balance into the decision. Our new league is loaded, while the north league has become super weak.”

Perhaps the most frustrated coach is La Salle Prep's Dustin Janz, who initially had been told his program would be staying put in 4A, only to end up moving up late in the reclassification process.

“I'm not against the idea of moving teams where they should be playing based on their current success or lack thereof,” Janz said. “However, I do believe that the process needs to be cleared up. It's currently so muddy that the OSAA itself had difficulty giving us a straight answer.

“If teams are to be moved up, I believe it should be based on success over several years, not a single good season like in our case. One good season does not mean that a program has turned the corner and is now good again. Very easily, I could see a program having a good season in a lower classification and then being moved up like we were and then struggling immediately, losing momentum in the program and returning to their difficult losing ways and then being pushed back down.”

One example might be Madras, which made the 3A playoffs with back-to-back 6-4 seasons in 2018-19, then moved back to 4A. The White Buffaloes went 10-21 the past four years and find themselves back in 3A this season.

“For us, dropping to 3A is a good thing for the program,” said first-year coach Neil Elshire. “When your program is in disarray, it's hard to get it back. This allows us to improve, get our numbers up, and get kids interested in the program again.”

Klamath Union and Cottage Grove joined Madras in making the drop, and no schools were added to 4A, leaving it with 28 teams. Meanwhile, 3A is up to 40 teams, and like with 5A, the OSAA added another district, giving 3A six leagues this season.

“3A has become this sort of dumping ground, if you will, and it's kind of frustrating,” said Yamhill-Carlton coach Brad McKechnie. “There are currently six teams playing down from 4A, and (Kennedy) playing up from 2A, which makes it, next to 6A, the most teams in a classification. 

“They also restructured that league in the south so it created some havoc in scheduling nonleague games. We just recently picked up a ninth game a few weeks ago, knowing it will be important if we hope to make the playoffs, but we have to travel to Nyssa. A game is a game, but that will be a long 24 hours.”

Factor in the change two years ago to make 2A a nine-man league, and you get frustration from Eastern Oregon coaches such as Vale's Jeff Aldred. 

“It has made scheduling nonleague games so much more challenging for a 3A team on the east side of the state,” he said. “Our options are to play teams from Idaho (which drastically affects our ranking), larger 4A Oregon teams who all play each other, or travel significantly more to play 3A Oregon teams. This season, we will play a neutral-site game against Cascade Christian in Bend, travel to Lakeview, and play three teams from the 4A Greater Oregon League.”

Playoff structures change with reconfigured leagues

The Columbia Cup is no more. That doesn't mean 6A is back to having just one playoff bracket.

Instead, the OSAA trimmed the championship bracket from 16 to 12 teams and called it the Open Division (although, unlike in other states with Open championships, it's open only to 6A teams), while 16 teams will play for the 6A “championship.” 

The Open bracket will feature the six league champions plus the six highest teams in the final OSAA 6A rankings, with first-round byes going to the top four teams.

“If you’re banged up, the bye could be a blessing,” Landgraf said. “But with high school kids, you also don't want to get out of your routine.”

The remaining 16 teams will feed into the secondary bracket, just like the Columbia Cup. Teams ranked Nos. 29-32 will now miss the playoffs, unless they post a top-three finish in their league.

“It will make for a more competitive state championship field, which is a great thing,” Lincoln coach Cody Schnaufer said. “But it will shut out teams from having a postseason experience who would have had the opportunity in the past.

“Making the playoffs has been a springboard for our program in continuing to grow both on the field and in raw numbers. When many schools outside of the top 15 struggle with turnout for football, it's a missed opportunity to provide a positive experience for the student-athletes that can help grow our sport.”

Anyone who opposed the creation of the Columbia Cup two years ago won't be persuaded by the change in nomenclature — and they have a champion in longtime Jesuit coach Ken Potter.

“The state determining state champions, only in 6A, by reducing the teams that may compete for it is beyond my understanding,” he said. “The Columbia Cup has no business in high school athletics. How can the best team in the state only get to play 12 games?”

First-year Barlow coach Steven Andreen sees the split in the bracket turning 6A football into a two-tiered system, “and cutting the top tier from 16 to 12 teams tightens up that top tier even more and will make it even more difficult for someone to make the jump from the Columbia Cup into the state championship.

“As a program that wants to push for a spot in the championship bracket every year, it makes it crucial for us to keep our players in our program year to year and develop those kids as well as we can. We take the homegrown approach to developing our roster, and that's something that we really hope can help us make the jump into the top tier over the next few years.”

One of his Mt. Hood Conference compatriots, Bo Jones at Reynolds, agrees. 

“I think it just puts a little more pressure on each game,” Jones said. “You can't drop a couple games you should've won and expect to backdoor your way into the playoffs now.”

No matter what you call it, though, the goal remains the same, said Grant coach Alex Melson: to make the postseason.

“Over the last year, the criteria for that has changed,” he said. “This has only raised the bar for our team to be great on and off the field. It will be interesting to see how teams approach their seasons when it is ever more important to do well in your league. It encourages teams to continue to achieve and compete at the highest abilities day in and out.”

Meanwhile, the OSAA released on Aug. 20 how playoff qualification will work in 5A after the addition of a fifth league. The nine-team Midwestern League gets three spots in the 16-team bracket, and the other four leagues get two qualifiers apiece, leaving five at-large spots in the field.

Programs dealing with fluctuating turnout

Lakeridge coach Spencer Phillips has seen an uptick in numbers at the youth level that he thinks will work its way up to the varsity team.

“I feel like the game is becoming more popular in the state again,” Phillips said. “I think there was a short period where families were afraid or hesitant to have their kids play tackle football. I have seen a significant increase in our youth program since I have arrived here.

“The football in the state of Oregon is also getting better. There are a lot of great companies and programs in the Portland-metro area that allow kids to train all year long.”

Phillips’ optimism isn’t shared by everyone around the state.

“We continue to see a decline in numbers for the football program, and we are hoping to work closely with other programs and the kids in the youth programs to continue to earn the trust and get those kids to continue playing into high school,” said Steven Williams of Umatilla in Northeast Oregon. “Football is a great game to help understand life lessons and build character, and we will continue to work towards driving numbers in the program up.”

Marshfield coach John Lemmons lamented the increased specialization of athletes. 

“I’m sad to see so many young athletes being encouraged to not play high school football and concentrate on one sport,” he said. “High school football is special. The finality of it for most everyone who has ever played is like no other sport. Once you are done in high school, you are most likely done for life. You will never strap up and play this awesome game I like to call the ultimate chess match with physicality again.”

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