In Texas, the number of crews of 7 increases significantly when playoffs start, but crews of 5 are still utilized considerably in the lower 6 (of 12) classes (two of those classes being six-player football). In the first week, I had a crew of 5 for a lowest class 11-player game, then a crew of 7 the next day for a mid-class 11-player game. As playoffs progress (6 total rounds for 11-player), crews became virtually exclusively crews of 7 for 11-player football. All 10 11-player championship games are crews of 7, and both 6-player championship games are crews of 5.
This is a function of the institutions having the ability to ‘agree’ on the officials, which includes the crew size. There is no written policy that would prevent them from using a crew of 4, like, maybe, the parents of both head coaches, for any game. Yes, that’s an extreme exaggeration, but it IS a technical possibility.
In reality, also as playoffs progress, the geographical locations of the games migrates toward the central population corridor in Texas (known as the I-35 corridor). Hard to blame the school financial officers, but, the teams may decide to use officials that neither team has used during the season, but they’ll find a geographically convenient crew, to keep down the travel cost. Those in the more distant parts of Texas tend to get left out of the mix. The 6 largest officiating centers in the corridor got between 24 and 61 games, each, in week 1, with proportionally similar numbers in week 2. The 6th largest city in Texas that is in one of the most extreme locations geographically, received ZERO games in both weeks 1 and 2. Some folks try to argue that they “obviously” aren’t very good to not get any playoff games. Baloney (or the other “B” word you may choose to use). I know many of the officials in that city, and they are every bit as good as officials in the ‘corridor.’ (FYI, I am in a semi-remote area, neither in the ‘corridor,’ nor in one of the two or three really remote locations.) There are highest level officials in virtually all of those locations. They are simply penalized by geography. The state governing agency is, technically, a political subdivision of the State of Texas, meaning that we, as officials, have virtually no ability to change the policy. To get the agency to voluntarily change the policy to ‘spread the wealth’ would be next to impossible. It would take an act of the Legislature to force such a change. With immigration, school finance, agriculture, business economics, etc., I doubt we could find even one legislator willing to get involved with this issue. So, nothing changes.
