xnds1fan wrote: I've read most of this thread and I know NE Ohio has alot going for it. One thing that hasn't be brought up yet is the weather. Most years the weather is better in Cbus than up in the snow belt.

fwiw, Stark County isn't in the snow belt

Ok then lets call it lake effect snow then.

Stark doesn't get much lake effect snow...only if the wind is out of the northwest or north

xnds1fan wrote: Ok then lets call it lake effect snow then.

Strike two.

Full_count wrote:It is not about the Central Ohio teams getting a home game, it is about being fair to the far reaches of the State. Cincinnati people driving to Canton/Akron for state championship games in those sports when Columbus is 150 miles closer. The same arguement can be used for Cleveland and Youngstown teams going to the State Volleyball Championships.

Columbus now has the facilities to host every state championship with the possible exception of Softball (Buckeye Field is not that great in spite of the renovations.). Why not make it centrally located?

120 miles tops. If you use mile 1 as the starting point for Cincinnati, 150 miles would put you just south of Mansfield.

Ohio has some pretty unique geography, so it's not like centrality is a necessity. Someone mentioned Tennessee's state titles being centrally located. Know why? From Memphis (southwest corner of the state) to Bristol (northeast corner) is 500 miles. Ohio doesn't have this problem.

xnds1fan wrote: I've read most of this thread and I know NE Ohio has alot going for it. One thing that hasn't be brought up yet is the weather. Most years the weather is better in Cbus than up in the snow belt.

This is FOOTBALL. Who cares about the weather! Those games make for the best games anyways.

xnds1fan wrote: Ok then lets call it lake effect snow then.

The snow belt exists because of lake effect snow. They are the same thing. Canton isn't in the snow belt and very rarely if ever receives lake effect snow...it's just too far away from Lake Erie. But I agree that there is less snow in Columbus. If both teams are playing under the same conditions, who cares? It's not like the northern Ohio teams play in snow all fall and are used to it.

Mooney44Cards wrote:

xnds1fan wrote: Ok then lets call it lake effect snow then.

Strike two.

You expect people to take you seriously with Traficant's pic next to your screen name?!? The Mooney Looney's have invaded this site! Please go back to JJ's!!!

I would rather see them do something about changing the schedule so that we don't have an 11AM game on Friday instead of looking at changing the site. For the finals, I would rather see a Sat/Sun schedule instead of a Fri/Sat schedule. I know on Sunday you are competing with the NFL, but it would only be one week out of the year.

Washington: Tacoma (west central)
Oregon: Corvallis & Hillsboro (far west)
California: Carson (near LA, 600mi from some schools)
Louisiana: New Orleans (southeast)
Minnesota: Minneapolis (east central)
Iowa: Cedar Falls (northeast central)
Missouri: St. Louis (far east central)
Wyoming: Laramie (far southeast)
Utah: Salt Lake City (north central)
Nebraska: Lincoln (southeast)
South Dakota: Vermillion (far southeast)
North Dakota: Fargo (far southeast)
Wisconsin: Madison (south central)
Illinois: Champaign (east central)
Ohio: Canton/Massillon (northeast)
Pennsylvania: Hershey (south/southeast)
Tennessee: Coonesville (central/east-central)
Kentucky: Bowling Green (southwest)
Michigan: Detroit (far southeast)
Alabama: Tuscaloosa (west central)

States in centralized locations:
Indiana, Georgia, Colorado, Florida (this year), Mississippi, etc. I didn't look up AR, SC, NC, VA, MD, and the New England states. Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Texas, Montana, Kansas, and Oklahoma determine locations based on participating teams, either a home field or neutral site.

What's funny out of the states I looked up, many states don't use the 'best available' big stadium.

Iowa uses the UNI Dome instead of Iowa State's stadium just north of centralized Des Moines. Washington uses the Tacoma Dome rather than Qwest Field or Huskies Stadium. California uses the Home Depot Center, a 27k seat soccer stadium rather than Fresno, San Francisco, Oakland, the Coliseum, the Rose Bowl, San Diego, etc.

Kentucky didn't use Louisville or Lexington's large college stadiums. Instead opting for WKU's stadium in Bowling Green. Missouri uses the Edward Jones Dome in downtown St. Louis rather than the more centrally located Mizzou stadium in Columbus (about halfway between KC and STL). Wyoming for the first year just started using Laramie's War Memorial Stadium (home of Univ. of Wyoming) for the state title games. Previously, the higher seed simply hosted the game at their home stadium.

There's no one standard that Ohio is deviating from. Washington, Iowa, Kentucky, California, North Dakota, South Dakota all use non-centralized small stadiums as their venues.

There's centralized; largest stadium; home-field; and organized neutral-site as the four ways to set the location for the playoffs. Each has positives and negatives. Neither is better or worse than the other.

Sykotyk

keep it right where it IS

Right where it is

I would like to see one of 2 things happen and I would be happy with either.



1.Move the finals to Columbus so they are in the middle of the state. ( I know it doesn't make any since!)
2. Rotate the championship game every year. Have it in the N.E. 1 year then the S.E. the next then the Central.. and so on.

I would be happy with one of those!

mlisi39 wrote:

Full_count wrote:

newarkcatholicfan wrote: There are a lot of states playing their finals at large college stadiums and from what I am hearing they all are doing just fine.

Very few states have a big college stadium that seats 100,000+ Indiana does not play at Notre Dame for example and Michigan does not play at the Big House. But many do hold their championships either in their state capital or centrally located in their state.

Here are a few that I looked up:

Michigan: Ford Field, Detroit
Indiana: Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis
Illinois: Memorial Stadium; Illionis University; Champaign
Wisconsin: Camp Randall Stadium; Madison
Pennsylvania: Hersheypark Stadium, Hershey, PA. (Dec. 18/19)
New York: Carrier Dome, Syracuse
West Virginia: Wheeling Island Stadium, Wheeling,
Kentucky: LT Smith Stadium, Bowling Green
Tennessee: Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, TN. (halfway point between Nashville & Knoxville)
Georgia: Georgia Dome, Atlanta
Florida: Citrus Bowl, Orlando
Alabama: Bryant Stadium, Tuscaloosa Alabama
Texas: Alamodome, San Antonio
Missouri: Edward Jones Dome, St. Louis
North Carolina: Wake Forest and University of North Carolina Stadiums
South Carolina: Williams-Brice Stadium, Columbia.
Virginia: D1 & 2 at Salem City Stadium
D3 & 4 at Virginia Tech
D5 & 6 at University of Virginia




Did you know that Illinois sponsors Chess as a sport? Chess State Championships are in February... it is a winter sport.

Do you know how many of those stadiums are actually centrally located geography expert?

Hershey NO
Detroit NO
Syracuse NO
Atlanta NO
Orlando NO
Tuscaloosa NO
St. Louis NO

That's about half...

So your argument is week... get a map.

Trust me... I'm sure I could run circles around you when it comes to Geography.

Let's practice reading for content instead...
I said: "But many do hold their championships either in their state capital or centrally located in their state."

The word "many" means not all but a lot
state capital "OR" centrally located means one or the other.
I never said they all did.

States like Michigan and Missouri do not hold them centrally or in their state capital.
Centrally located also means fairly close to the center WHERE you have the facilities to host the event.

Centerburg, Ohio is the Geographical center of the state of Ohio, lovely town, but they do not have the facilities to host the State Championship. Columbus is the closest city to the center that has the facilities. (also the State Capital....learned that in Geography too....)

Now looking at all the states:
State Capitals (or a suburb thereof): (16)
Indiana*
Wisconsin
Pennsylvannia* (Hershey is located next to Harrisburg)
North Carolina* (Chapel Hill, suburb of Raleigh)
Georgia
South Carolina*
Minnesota*
Utah
Nebraska
Arkansas*
Mississippi*
Colorado*
Delaware
Massachusettes (Foxboro, outside of Boston)
Idaho (one of 3 sites used)
Hawaii

*also centrally located

Centrally located: (6)
Florida
Tennessee
New York
Alaska (Anchorage....bout middle of the populated part of the state...lol)
Maryland (Baltimore)
Rhode Island

Games played at higher seeded team throughout playoff: (4)
Montana
Vermont
New Mexico
New Hampshire

States not centrally located or in capital: (20)
Ohio
Michigan
Illinois
Missouri
Iowa
Kentucky
West Virginia
Virginia
Maine
Alabama
Texas
California
Louisiana
South Dakota
North Dakota
Arizona
Nevada (Las Vegas)
Oklahoma (Stillwater & Tulsa)
Wyoming


Not clear cut:
*Connecticut selects location based on schools participating.
*Washington... Tacoma may be the closest city to the capital, Olympia, with a stadium to handle it. Most of the population in Washington is closer to the coast anyhow.
*Oregon.... Corvalis and Hillsboro are on either side of the state capital of Salem. Again, may be the closest to the capital.
*Idaho uses three sites: Idaho State University, Pocatello; University of Idaho, Moscow; Boise State University, Boise. Located on different sides of the state
*Kansas uses six sites: Topeka, Hays, Salina, Hutchinson, Emporia, Newton
*New Jersey is divided up into 3 regions by geography and you play within your region.

Throw Wyoming and Idaho into the non-centralized locations list.

Texas, Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico, Montana, and Oklahoma use either home field or neutral sites chosen by the proximity of the partcipants.

Sykotyk

Cooper stadium

Anywhere but Stark County.It was BS Sat.how they only let the Glenville fans on the field.I can understand not wanting fans on the field after the game,but enforce it on BOTH side of the stadium.Were they afraid of their fans,who knows.But as we were standing at the fence we could watch their fans just walk down the steps right onto the field.There was probably 40-50event staff,Canton Police,and Stark Count Sheriff Deputies on our side with what appeared to be NONE on their side.BS.

^^^homers, but their all everything team lost. Go Cats!

Homers? Cleveland Glenville..Canton Fawcett Stadium..yeah..think not.

soccer_dad wrote: Anywhere but Stark County.It was BS Sat.how they only let the Glenville fans on the field.I can understand not wanting fans on the field after the game,but enforce it on BOTH side of the stadium.Were they afraid of their fans,who knows.But as we were standing at the fence we could watch their fans just walk down the steps right onto the field.There was probably 40-50event staff,Canton Police,and Stark Count Sheriff Deputies on our side with what appeared to be NONE on their side.BS.

One year after hearing the announcement that the stadium in Canton was a smoke free place my son had a few smokers fire their nastyretts up so he brought it to a police officers attention and he was told we do not enforce that here.

I guess doing his job was not something he thought he needed to do.

Bottom line -- the games are determined by BIDDING on them, quality of facilities, turf & not grass, near large population base that WILL attend the games, hotels/motels/ restaurants nearby,adequate parking and organization of host communty. It isn't rocket science that Stark County has done an outstanding job of hosting the games. And the last thing the OHSAA wants to do is put on a state championship game attended by 10k in a 100k stadium,or other comparable numbers. The championships are right where they belong despite all the annual moaning & groaning. And I attended games at OSU before. Those were obvious mistakes.

Mary Fate Park, Plymouth , Ohio

ridgerunner88 wrote: Cooper stadium

Actually read an article late last year or early this year, that one of the proposals for Cooper Stadium after the Clippers moved out was to renovate the place into a multi-sport venue and the OHSAA would take it over. They office complex would become the Headquarters of the OHSAA and the Stadium would be renovated to host football, soccer, field hockey, track, and lacrosse games. Even possibly being a site for baseball.

Let me say that this is a dumb idea! That stadium was not designed for hosting football (and the same would be true of soccer and lacrosse). The seating alignment is not conductive to football.

I'm not sure the OHSAA would want to pay the upkeep on the stadium even though it could host 50 events or more a year.

I have not heard any more of this idea so I'm sure it's dead....but ridgerunner's idea has been floated before.

newarkcatholicfan wrote:

soccer_dad wrote: Anywhere but Stark County.It was BS Sat.how they only let the Glenville fans on the field.I can understand not wanting fans on the field after the game,but enforce it on BOTH side of the stadium.Were they afraid of their fans,who knows.But as we were standing at the fence we could watch their fans just walk down the steps right onto the field.There was probably 40-50event staff,Canton Police,and Stark Count Sheriff Deputies on our side with what appeared to be NONE on their side.BS.

One year after hearing the announcement that the stadium in Canton was a smoke free place my son had a few smokers fire their nastyretts up so he brought it to a police officers attention and he was told we do not enforce that here.

I guess doing his job was not something he thought he needed to do.

WTF!! You guess the police were just afraid of their fans? What are you insinuating?

As far as the smoking thing, they have a few places outside the actual football stadium, where they allow smoking. It isnt in where the seats are, but the concourse area. If you dont like the smoke, dont go out of your way to walk by there. I guarantee they werent smoking in their seats!!