You asked if Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island allow high school football teams to play regular season games against larger schools.

SUMMARY

All five states allow high school football teams from small schools to play teams from larger schools, according to spokespeople from their interscholastic athletic associations. New York reports that games between schools of different size classes are rare. In New Jersey, schools commonly play teams in the next higher size class but it is rare for a school in the smallest school class to play a team from the largest. Rhode Island limits regular season games to schools in the same division, but it is the only state of the five that does not assign schools to divisions strictly by size.

As in Connecticut, three of the states award additional points towards state tournament participation for defeating a team in a larger class.

MASSACHUSETTS

Massachusetts teams are divided into Eastern, Central, and Western regions. Each region has divisions and the Eastern region divisions are subdivided into leagues. (A table showing the Massachusetts football alignment for 2001 is attached. )

According to Carol Tosches of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, competition is allowed against teams in any size class.

NEW JERSEY

New Jersey does not regulate the level of play for schools in its conferences, according to Jim Loper of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. New Jersey high school football teams compete in five divisions, four for public schools and one for parochial schools. The public school divisions are geographical: North I and II, Central, and South. Parochial schools have their own separate statewide division. Within each division, schools are divided into four groups based on enrollment. Group I schools are the smallest and Group IV schools are the largest. There are championships for each group in each division for a total of 20 New Jersey state champions.

Loper says it is fairly common for schools to play against schools in the next larger or smaller size group. For example, there are lots of Group I schools that play Group II schools and IIs that play IIIs. But out of 337 teams in the state, Loper told us, there is only one game between a Group I and a Group IV school.

Schools have an incentive to play larger schools because, like Connecticut, New Jersey uses power point rankings to determine which teams make the tournaments and teams get more points for beating a school in a larger classification.

NEW YORK

Nothing prohibits New York high schools from playing schools in higher or lower size classifications. But, according to Nina Van Erk of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, regular season schedules are so tight, there is little room to pick up non-league games. And since leagues in the state are, for the most part, organized by size classification, teams do not generally have a chance play larger or smaller opponents. Van Erk reports, "In football you want to assure than the competition is balanced. We arrange for that through our classification system. "

PENNSYLVANIA

Pennsylvania groups schools by region and divides schools in each region into four size classifications. The smallest schools are in Class A; the largest are in Class AAAA. According to Melissa Mertz, assistant executive director of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, football teams are permitted to play against teams in any classification. They are not restricted to their own size class. The state's football tournament ranking system awards extra points for wins and ties against schools from larger classes.

RHODE ISLAND

Rhode Island limits schools to opponents within their own divisions, but is the only state of the five we surveyed that uses a team's success rate, as well as the school's size, to assign schools to divisions. Rhode Island has four divisions for football: I, II, II, and IV. According to Richard B. Lynch, executive director of the Rhode Island Interscholastic League, division assignments are determined using a school's enrollment and its football team's success rate over the preceding four years. In addition, small schools may choose to play in a larger division for the league season.

The top four teams in each division qualify for the playoffs. The state has four superbowls, one for each division, and four state champion football teams.

JL: ro