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Local high school football coaches applauded the intentions of the state association's decision to shorten the season by a week and adopt a pod seeding system for the playoffs to reduce travel costs, but several questioned whether the savings would justify the consequences.

The NCHSAA announced on Wednesday that the football season will be reduced from 12 weeks to 11 starting in 2011-12, with schools having the option to play 10 or 11 games based on whether they schedule an endowment game.

Northeast Guilford head coach Tommy Pursley said he anticipates most schools will opt for 10 games. The Rams will only play 10 this fall, including one 2 hours away in Granville County, because it was too hard for Pursley to match his team's open dates with other local teams'.

"Limiting it from 12 weeks to 11 weeks will make it even tougher," Pursley said. "You're going to see more and more teams go back to 10 games, and that hurts the association because they don't get that endowment money, and it hurts the schools because they get one game less revenue. I think they're misguided on that."

Pursley said it's hard to understand the directive after Northeast's unsuccessful effort two years ago to avoid its current conference, which includes teams from four counties.

"They say one thing, but look at their actions," Pursley said. "They say they're saving money and helping schools, and they've got us riding to the north side of Winston-Salem or Randolph County to play. Where was the money saving there?"

High Point Central head coach Wayne Jones agreed that most teams would opt to play 10 games in light of the NCHSAA's other ruling to drop endowment games from a team's record for playoff seeding purposes. Previously, a team could use that game to replace a regular-season loss.

"That was the reason most teams played — if you lost, it didn't hurt you," Jones said. "What's going to hurt now is people are not going to want play endowment games. There's really not an incentive."

Jones said he'd rather play 10 games and preserve a bye week to help his players stay healthy.

"We've gotten used to it," he said. "It's an important time."

The NCHSAA's other major ruling — to adopt East, Mideast, West and Midwest regional pods for each playoff classification starting this season — is designed to keep teams closer to home in early rounds and avoid matchups like last season's first-round game that sent Southern Guilford on a five-hour trip to Havelock.

But coaches are concerned that could force strong teams form the same area to meet too early in the postseason.

"One of the beauties of going to the playoffs is getting to face somebody you haven't seen. It makes it a little easier," said Jones, whose team has opened the last two playoffs against a team from its conference.

Three years ago, Northeast lost by five points in the second round to Dudley, which would go on to win the state title.

"There's still no doubt to me the two best teams in North Carolina that year were Northeast and Dudley," Pursley said. "The goal should be, like in any seeding process, to get the best teams in the later rounds. Some of the best football played in North Carolina top to bottom is right around the Triad, and if you go to a pod, the best teams might be playing in the first or second round. They can't help that they're all around here."

Said Southeast Guilford head coach Fritz Hessenthaler: "You may really have the state championship game three weeks before the state championship game."

Pursley said he'd like to see a return to the predetermined seeding system used before the playoffs were expanded to eight classifications in the early 2000s. Back then, it was known before the season that the top seed from one conference would play the fourth seed from another conference and so on, a system still used in most other sports, including basketball and baseball.

"I'm one of these guys, whatever you tell me to do, I do it," Hessenthaler said. "I don't waste a lot of time or put a lot of thought into what the state decides. The sport of football is going to be played this year and next year and the year after, no matter the guidelines. It is what it is, and now we have to deal with it."

Contact Tom Keller at 373-7034 or tom.keller@news-record.com