MORRISON — The state basketball tournaments will each be held at new sites this spring, including a move to the Denver Coliseum.

CHSAA’s Board of Directors approved a motion to adopt the new sites at its meeting on Wednesday. The result is a change of venue for each classification in boys and girls basketball for their Great 8 rounds and beyond.

The new sites which have been approved are:

• 4A/5A: Denver Coliseum
• 3A: University of Denver
• 2A: Budweiser Events Center, Loveland
• 1A: University of Northern Colorado, Greeley

In addition, the 1A and 2A state championship games will be played together at the Budweiser Events Center in Loveland on the Saturday.

The changes will significantly reduce costs across the board, according to CHSAA assistant commissioner Bert Borgmann, who administers basketball. There is also a hope that attendance at each tournament also increase.

“Our goal with all of the changes is to provide greater opportunities for people to attend and enjoy one of Colorado’s top sporting events,” Borgmann said.

The Class 4A and 5A boys and girls tournaments will continue to have their Great 8 rounds at the Denver Coliseum, as they have for a number of years now. Now, those classes will remain at the historic venue for the Final 4 and championship rounds for the foreseeable future.

The 4A and 5A tournaments have had their Final 4 and championship rounds at the University of Colorado in Boulder since the early 2000s, but rising costs were a concern.

“This is not a reflection of anybody at CU, or the athletic administration,” Borgmann said. “In fact, they have bent over backwards to try and make this an affordable facility for us. Unfortunately, cost increase for both CU and CHSAA keep rising, making it difficult to remain there.”

Additionally, there was a desire to bring the tournaments back to the Denver area, Borgmann said.

“We’re going to be at capacity in the Coliseum, and I think that’s a good thing,” Borgmann said. “That arena is going to be packed, and it’s going to be a great atmosphere.”

“When I talked to the 4A and 5A coaches in the summer, they love to play there,” he added.

There is a plan to work on timing of games at the 4A/5A tournaments, to help space out the arrival and departure of fans. The Coliseum has a capacity of 9,950 fans, compared to 11,064 at Coors Events Center.

Last season, roughly 8,600 fans attended the Saturday which featured four 4A and 5A championship games. There is an anticipation that the attendance will exceed that with a return to the Metro area.

The Coliseum has a long history of hosting CHSAA events, including state basketball, but also state events in volleyball, hockey and spirit.

The 3A tournaments will move to the University of Denver’s Hamilton Gym for at least the next two seasons. They were held at the Coliseum last season, and at the Colorado School of Mines the year before. Those 3A tournaments have also been held at the Air Force Academy and Colorado State University in the recent past.

Having three classifications in the Denver metro area also allows for more overlap for fans who would want to attend multiple tournaments, Borgmann said.

That also applies to the 2A and 1A tournaments, which will now both be in close proximity and have their championship games at the same site.

“There are a lot of general high school basketball fans in Colorado, and the want to see as many classifications as they can,” Borgmann said. “We think this will at least allow for some of those fans to do that.”

The 2A event will move from CSU-Pueblo to Loveland’s Budweiser Events Center. The Events Center has previously served as the host of the 1A tournament, as well as the state hockey finals.

One reason for the move from CSU-Pueblo, Borgmann said, was because “the 2A tournament has outgrown that facility.”

“We’ve enjoyed our association with CSU-Pueblo, they have been very gracious and great hosts,” Borgmann said.

The 1A tournaments is set to move north to the University of Northern Colorado for their Great 8 and Final 4 rounds. The championship games will be in Loveland with 2A.

“By bringing 1A and 2A together, we now have two facilities that draw similar crowds and create a better competitive environment for both classes,” Borgmann said.

A number of other venues around the state were considered for each tournament, including sites in Pueblo, Colorado Springs and the Denver metro area.

All five sites will be reevaluated prior to the 2018-20 two-year cycle, Borgmann said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Opinions in this Mailbag do not reflect an official viewpoint of CHSAA.

In this installment of the CHSAANow.com Mailbag, we tackle the question of the next CHSAA commissioner, football’s RPI standings, and more.

To ask a question for the next Mailbag, use this form, or ask on Twitter: Tweet to @jryancasey

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I’ve heard that CHSAA is hiring a new commissioner. Who is it going to be?

— Erin, Highlands Ranch

Man. Not even going to ease into this mailbag, are we?

I don’t know who the next commissioner is going to be after Paul Angelico retires next summer. Actually, no one knows — because applications aren’t even being accepted until January.

We’ve heard some names batted around, but I don’t really want to feed into a speculation machine.

Here’s what we do know: the Board of Directors, who will be making the hire, has published its timeline. The job will be officially posted on Jan. 2, 2016, and applications will be taken until Feb. 14. The new hire will be announced at the April Legislative Council meeting, which falls on April 20.

The Board has opened up the job to anyone who wants to apply.

This is the first time since 1986 that the hiring process has actually been opened up. (That does not mean that there won’t be internal candidates.) That was four commissioners ago, when the Association hired Ray Plutko from California. He was only in charge for four years before returning to California.

In 1990, after Plutko left the Association, The Los Angeles Times wrote that he “turned CHSAA from a lethargic watchdog into a highly visible office.”

Here is Ray Plutko’s legacy: he hired much of the current staff, built the building where the office currently resides in Aurora, set up the current committee structure, as well as the modern classification system.

Since Plutko, the Board has internally hired Bob Ottewill (1990-2002), Bill Reader (2002-10) and Paul Angelico (2010-present) as the commissioners. Each of them served as Associate Commissioner prior to being hired as Commissioner.

All this is to say that we’re headed into relatively uncharted territory.

Thing is, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Though I advocate for it more often than not, change can absolutely be scary. I love our current staff. We are a close-knit family, as cliche as that sounds. And having worked in other professional environments before CHSAA, I know that’s not always the case.

We’re going to lose a lot when Paul retires. (We’ll touch on that later this season.) Add in the fact that Associate Commissioner Tom Robinson is also retiring, and I’m at a loss. They are the Association’s rudder, and it’s scary to not know where we’ll be headed.

Both Paul and Tom have consistently said that things will be fine without them, that the Association has gone through transition before, and will again. I know they’re right, and that we will hire great people as their replacements.

But, no, I do not know who that’s going to be. We will absolutely keep you updated throughout the process, though.

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Why isn’t football’s RPI posted like the other sports?

— Sharon, Commerce City

This is a question we’ve been getting a lot recently, so thank you for asking. There are two reasons it isn’t published yet.

Each of the fall sports (save for football, for now) have daily feeds that update on CHSAARPI.com. This is something we set up with baseball last spring, and was easy to transition to field hockey, boys soccer, softball and volleyball this fall. The reason for that is because the formula is exactly the same: just the basic RPI formula.

That’s not the case with football, which has opted to use a classification modifier because of the relatively short season (compared to those other sports).

We have worked with our official stats partner, MaxPreps, since the summer to nail down a feed that would show accurate data while taking this classification modifier into account, but the programming has proven to be more challenging than we anticipated. We are getting closer, however.

Internally, we are keeping all the RPI standings for all sports manually on an Excel spreadsheet, so we do have the accurate football data, and we are monitoring it.

We haven’t manually published those football RPI standings because there is not enough data to make it meaningful yet.

Traditionally, we haven’t published football’s computer data (think Wild Card points) until after Week 6 for that same reason. If you were monitoring RPI data for softball, volleyball (or whatever sport), when most teams had played three or four games early in the season, you know that was also the case for those sports.

So, here’s the short answer: We’re still working on the feed, and if the automatic feed still isn’t accurately displaying data after Week 6, we will publish the football RPI standings manually at that point.

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What happens to the RPI if a team forfeits a game?

— Nate, Colorado Springs

It just counts as a loss for the team that forfeit, and a win for the team that receives the forfeit.

One thing we may look at in the future is adjusting how to handle if a team were to drop a program after the season begins, because that could possibly really negatively affect all of their opponents in the OWP column.

We have a few possibilities in mind about how to adjust dealing with this, and will look at that over the summer in advance of the 2017-18 season.

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I was just wondering if there is an all-time team records for all the Colorado high school football teams. 

— Mike

We have a football record book that we try to update pretty regularly, but we do not keep track of individual teams’ win/loss records, if that is what you are asking.

I like that idea, though. Maybe it’s a project we can work on.

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In last April’s meeting of the Legislative Council it said the 3A consolation bracket has been modified. Modified as in being done away with?

— Chris, Pagosa Springs

Kind of. They opted to change it so that it cuts down on the amount of consolation games, but it is still around.

So here’s what is happening now:

• If a team loses on the first day of play (Thursday), that team will not play any further games, and will go home.
• If a team loses in the semifinals (Friday), they will play in the third-place game on Saturday.

Essentially, the only consolation game that will be played in 3A is the third-place game.

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Where is state basketball going to be held this season?

— Jill, Broomfield

A-ha! Stay tuned.

The venues need to be approved at the next Board meeting, which is in October, along with a vote on the mercy rule in basketball.

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Are you guys planning on updating the app? When?

— Cole

Yep, absolutely. What we launched in late August was version 1.0, but probably more like version 0.6.

We have plans to do a lot more with it, including integrating scoreboards, standings and stats, and things like our live coverage.

We also recognize that the news feed in the current version of the app is like trying to drink water through a fire hose with so much content, so we’re adjusting how it is presented and filtered.

When? Well, hopefully soon.

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Send you questions into the CHSAANow.com Mailbag using this form.

CHSAA’s Board of Directors is further exploring the adoption of a mercy rule in boys and girls basketball, and the topic is set to be voted on at its next meeting in October.

It is the continuation of something that was first raised by the Board in April, discussed again in June, and then again at its retreat in August. After the April meeting, the Board requested a survey be sent out to CHSAA member schools gauging interest in such a rule, and sought feedback on what it might entail.

At its meeting in August, the mercy rule proposal was tabled so board members had the opportunity to investigate the rule and get feedback on it from districts they represent. The rule being proposed is this: If a team leads by 40 points or more by the end of the third quarter, a running clock would be started in the fourth that stops only for injury and timeouts.

Most team sports — football, baseball, softball, soccer, hockey, lacrosse — already have a mercy rule, per National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) rules, allowing the cockeyed games to end more quickly. Basketball is one of the only team sports that does not have a mercy rule, and Colorado can create one as a state adoption.

The Board of Directors is set to meet again on Oct. 5, and the mercy rule is among the topics on the agenda. The group will vote on a state adoption, and, if passed, it would go into effect immediately with the 2016-17 season.

It would not need to be voted on at the Legislative Council.

CHSAA board of directors Eddie Hartnett said a mercy rule would affect a very small percent of coaches in the state, but it would definitely send a message in regards to the other team sports with mercy rules already in effect.

“When I see some schools trying to beat a team by, potentially, 100 points, I look at the scores and it bothers me,” Hartnett said.  “That’s not why many of us became athletic directors or coaches.”

He added: “A mercy rule would put us in line with of our goal of educationally-based athletics.”

But one of the biggest arguments against a mercy rule in Colorado is it’s less playing time for players who don’t normally get an opportunity to get on the court in typical games, and coaches would be missing key opportunities to teach their student-athletes a valuable life lesson.

“I know what it’s like being the eighth, ninth guy on the basketball team,” Borgmann said. “My extended playing time came during games when we were either way up, or, in earlier years, when we were way down. A mercy rule takes minutes away, and is that really in the best interests of the kids, the sport and the state?”

Legendary Denver Christian boys hoops coach and Colorado High School Coaches Association associate director Dick Katte said there is already a limited amount of time to begin with.

“You only have 32 minutes in a game and five players on the court at once,” he said. “A mercy rule would speed that time up and coaches wouldn’t be able to play as many kids that way.”

Hartnett, a big proponent of the mercy rule, said if a team is up by at least 40 points in the fourth without a running clock, “it’s like the Globetrotters playing keep away and it’s insulting to other teams.”

“The ability level at times is so diverse, especially at the 5A level,” Hartnett added. “It’ll be less evident with the clock running. Coaches will still have the opportunity to put in players who don’t typically play a lot, and they should be doing that anyways.”

Over the summer, Katte met with about 80 boys and girls coaches, out of CHSAA’s 352 member schools, and walked them through the mercy rule conversations the Board was having.

“I told them that as hard as they practice how to break a press, they should also practice that hard on what to do when the score has become very lopsided — whether you’re up or down by 30, 40 points,” Katte said. “I said if they didn’t manage that, I’m sure there would be a mercy rule put in place in basketball, and the coaches didn’t want to have that.”

Borgmann said CHSAA invited reps from each league, classes 3A-5A, over the summer prior to the clinic to discuss issues in basketball, and the mercy rule was one of the topics. After many meetings, it became apparent there were communication issues between coaches and administration on the rule.

The mercy rule survey from February showed 84 percent of admin believed there needs to be one. But for coaches, the views are very split: 46 percent of boys coaches are for the mercy rule, 54 percent are against; 54 percent of girls coaches are for, 46 percent are against.

So CHSCA wanted to address this before the rule was voted on, and handle huge score differentials as a coaching issue more than an administrative issue. Katte said he told coaches at the clinic they were the ones who had control over this issue.

“Administration is really getting some heat because of the lopsided scores and they’re ready to go ahead with the mercy rule because almost every other sport has that,” Katte said.

For other sports, a mercy rule has some rhyme and reason to it: dangerous arm overuse in baseball/softball, and in football, there’s a higher risk of injury for grossly mismatched teams. But you can’t really argue the safety factor in basketball, so then it just becomes the humiliation factor.

“The thing about a mercy rule that people forget is it’s a very negative implication to an athlete,” Katte said. “That’s almost worst than getting beat by 40 points. ‘Oh, how did you do? We were mercied.’ That’s a sad thing for a youngster to leave a game with that feeling.”

He added: “If you’re in it for the kids, you’re giving a very negative lesson to kids.”

CHSCA president and Roosevelt athletic director Joe Brown said a mercy rule wouldn’t even address the actual problem.

“There might be a team that beats another by a significant amount of points, and making the clock go faster to prevent the score from running up anymore isn’t eliminating the problem. The problem is that there’s a huge point differential and how to make that better for kids,” Brown said. “The biggest part of high school athletics is teaching life lessons and how student-athletes can be successful later in life, and the mercy rule would be missing the boat on educating our kids on how to handle these situations — adversity or success.”

Hartnett agrees with teaching game management, but sometimes, not all coaches understand and embrace the educational part, with all the different schools and nuances. Those 100-point games still happen, and those scores show up somewhere different every single year.

“We’ve been educating our coaches for years and it still continues to happen. There are very few programs out there that would allow this,” Hartnett said. “But a lot of times when it does happen, it’s too late to educate the coaches, because they’ve already been educated and have take the CHSAA test; we have clinics regarding sportsmanship and clinics with Positive Coaching Alliance. We have all of these things already available and it still continues to happen.”

There is also an NFHS rule that allows games to be ended by mutual agreement of coaches and officials on site.

“It’s not like there’s never been a way for these kinds of things to be addressed,” Borgmann said. “It’s just that isn’t one of the better known rules.”

CHSAA and CHSCA have both taken measures to educate boys and girls coaches on the mercy rule, but even education might not fix outside factors in blowouts.

“It creates a supervision issue, because all the fans on one side are getting embarrassed, and on the other side they’re egging it on,” Hartnett said. “It’s not only a game management issue at that point.”

If the mercy rule doesn’t pass in October, Brown said preparation for, and management of, extremely lopsided games must be included in coaches clinics, and more athletic directors need to visit with coaches on the possibility of blowout games.

“Admin and coaches must communicate more on, How do you handle one-sided games when you’re up? When do you take the starters out? Should there be pass limits? Changing the offensive or defensive sets? Maybe work on things you’re not as good at if you’re up by 30 or more,” he said.

But if it does pass, Brown said maybe that would give coaches a little more motivation to avoid those types of game situations.

Either way, the mercy rule discussion has been around long enough, and it’ll keep coming back until it gets voted on and either put to rest or put into effect.

AURORA — CHSAA’s Board of Directors has begun to look into the creation of a mercy rule in boys and girls basketball.

The Board met at the CHSAA office on Wednesday, and the issue of the mercy rule was raised by a few members. After some discussion, the Board felt it was necessary to further address the topic because of the growing concern surrounding the number of large discrepancies in scores this season, as well as recent seasons.

Ultimately, the Board called for a survey of member schools to judge whether or not there would even be interest in its creation. That survey will be sent out to all schools within a few weeks.

Included in the survey will be the general question: Would you support the creation of a mercy school in basketball? But, beyond that, it will also seek answers to specifics about any potential mercy rule. For example: Should the mercy rule begin at 30 points, 40 points, or some other margin? Should it apply all game, or only beginning in the second half, or even in the fourth quarter?

It is likely that any mercy rule would simply involve a running clock which only stops at certain moments in the game, such as foul shots, timeouts, and the like. A number of leagues have implemented a similar rule at subvarsity contests.

Other sports, such as football, soccer, lacrosse, hockey and softball have mercy rules, as per NFHS rules. Basketball does not have a mercy rule according NFHS rules, but Colorado could create one as a state adoption.

If feedback from the survey indicates that schools would be in favor of the creation of a mercy rule for basketball, the Board would likely take a next step at its meeting in April.