Why Not Play Twice?

Thanks to the peculiarities of Monday's UIL realignment, a four-team district was created in District 1-3A, which consists of Borger, Dalhart, Pampa and Perryton. This creates a major scheduling headache for football coaches at all four schools, since with only three district games on the schedule, they have to fill 6-7 available slots with nondistrict opponents.

Scheduling games throughout September isn't much of a problem, but once you get into October (and on paper, 1-3A might not start district play until the fourth Friday of October) there's a problem, as most teams are already into district play. Pampa coach Heath Parker said he was potentially looking at back-to-back open weeks before starting district.

While you can blame the UIL for creating such a conundrum, the superintendents in 1-3A can solve it easily _ by scheduling a double round-robin like all the other sports do. It may seem unusual for football, but it might be the best solution.

It would create six district games (more than the reconstituted District 2-5A will play) and would be completely fair in terms of scheduling, with each team getting three home and three away games. The way it stands now, some 1-3A teams will have only one home and two away games.

A four-team East Texas 5A district with teams in Longview and Tyler was forced into the same situation in 2002-03, and they went with the double round-robin format as a solution. Maybe teams won't like playing each other twice in a season, this is a clear situation where 1-3A should try to make lemonade out of lemons.