In playoff football, the timetable changes

Playoff grind. It's a phrase of redundancy.You get to this point, and the routine changes. Preparation time is diminished. There is less time to heal from last round's wounds.Welcome to the playoff football in Iowa."This time of year, you have to be extremely organized," said Butch Pedersen, veteran coach at West Branch, which hosts Wapsie Valley in a Class 1A second-round game Monday. "You don't want to wear the kids out, and you don't want to wear yourself out."After a regular season in which teams generally play every seventh day, the schedule gets condensed significantly for the playoffs.Here's the simple math -- teams in Class 4A, Class A and Eight Man that continue to advance will play four games in a 14-day span (Week 9, first round, second round and quarterfinals run from Oct. 22 to Nov. 5). To advance to the championship, teams in all classes endure six games in 28 days.It's a grind. But, as they say, it beats the alternative."I've been doing this a long time, and I really don't have problems with the format," said Iowa City High Coach Dan Sabers, whose team faces Linn-Mar in a 4A second-rounder Monday. "The kids should be in good physical condition. You don't do a lot of physical work, but at this point of the season, you shouldn't need to."Todd Tharp, assistant director at the Iowa High School Athletic Association, said studies done by his organization have proven that injuries do not increase during the playoffs.If a five-round playoff format was contested over five consecutive weekends, the state finals would be held the weekend after Thanksgiving."I think that would be awesome," Pedersen said.And highly unlikely."Our goal is to get the championship done before Thanksgiving," Tharp said. "There are issues with the UNI-Dome, particularly in years in which UNI is in the (Football Championship Subdivision) playoffs."That would also cut into the winter season."It would be a bad thing to cut into basketball and wrestling," Sabers said. "We encourage our athletes to participate in more than one sport."Tharp said, "I'd love to play Friday-Friday-Friday, but if we go (that deep into November), it's going to kill basketball and wrestling programs."Other options would include contraction of the regular season to eight games -- "That's one less gate revenue for half the schools," Tharp said -- and beginning the season one week earlier. Several schools already play a week early, the Friday informally known as Week Zero.Moving the season up a week would mean moving the start of practice up a week."Then you'd be starting practice the Wednesday after state baseball," Tharp said. "We want kids and their families to have somewhat of a (summer) break."So what we've got is four weeks of cramming for potentially five exams. The second test is Monday.When reached for comment Thursday, Pedersen was bunkered up with two other coaches, watching film."Later on, there will be 10 of us in here," he said. "I'm lucky; I have an administration that will allow me to get away and do this."There's a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it.