The Iowa High School Athletic Association’s Board of Control voted Monday to stay with a nine game regular season football schedule and trim the playoff qualifying field from 32 to 16 teams per class. The schedules and 32-team playoff structure per class stays the same for this fall.

The move comes after review of the current playoff system, which always ends prior to Thanksgiving. In a nod toward player safety and risk minimization, more rest time will be allowed between playoff games starting in 2016.  One of the other options considered was to keep 32 playoff teams per class and reduce the number of regular season games to eight, but nine regular season games and 16 playoff teams was decided upon unanimously.

Greene County Head Football Coach and Activities Directory Dean Lansman told Raccoon Valley Radio, “Player safety was one of the big things discussed at our Iowa Football Coaches Association meetings. Football is physical and you are trying to look at what’s best for kids in terms of safety. When you play five games in a short amount of time you’re not giving the body time to recover and players have already gone through nine regular season games and three weeks of camps and practice before that.”

The IHSAA has had five rounds of football playoff revenue in recent seasons, but a return to 16 playoff qualifiers in 2016 will mean the opening round will have half as many teams as 2015.