The Arizona Interscholastic Association last week decreed that all future playoff games, in all sports, will be played on neutral fields to help lower costs.
Translation: About 90 percent of those games will be played in Phoenix in an attempt to reduce rental costs and security fees.
The result will impact Tucsonans more than anyone else. Fewer students, family members and friends will attend games. The home-field advantage will lie with those from the greater Phoenix area.
One day this century, sooner or later, forward-thinking Tucson administrators will break away in some form and develop their own group, the Tucson Interscholastic Association.
It can then play city championships before large crowds in Tucson, at a complex (or complexes) yet to be built, and perhaps agree to play Phoenixβs champions on a rotating home-and-home basis.
The unending growth of Phoenix-area schools has made the job of effectively administering to an entire state almost impossible for the financially-strained AIA.
