CIF-Southern Section commissioner Rob Wigod invited us into the office to discuss the state of high school athletics in the section that includes Orange County and much of Southern California.
Wigod, 55, is an alumnus of Long Beach Wilson High and Long Beach State. He was an Orange County baseball coach of the year at Los Alamitos and previously coached at Wilson and Lakewood. Wigod became a CIF-SS assistant commissioner in 2000 and in 2011 was promoted to section commissioner.
The CIF-Southern Section is one of 10 sections in the California Interscholastic Federation that is the governing body for high school sports in the state.
What’s a typical day like for the CIF-Southern Section commissioner?
There is no typical day. Today we are doing a lot with eligibility. This is the eligibility time of year, so there’s a lot going on. There are days when I think, ‘This is what I’m going to do,’ but I’ll be taken away from that for a hot issue.
This week I was at a sportsmanship conference for the Golden West League in Orange County. Then I was in Carpinteria for a Channel League meeting. There’s a lot going on right now.
We have new leagues in place this school year. What are some ways to make the releaguing process more satisfying for member schools?
Right now we’re working on the playoffs groupings process. We’re working out a competitive-based model for creating playoff divisions that would place schools in division by performance. It’s similar to an RPI, where we take regular-season performance, playoff performance and strength of schedule and apply that to every school.
We’re thinking about what that could mean for the releaguing process.
Has the basketball playoffs format, with its playoff points profile moving teams from division to divison, fulfilled what it was intended to do?
The Open Division was a success in its first year last year.
I still don’t believe that enrollment should play a part in division placement and I’ve expressed that to the basketball advisory committee. You still could have a superstar team with only 40 kids at a school in a lower division and that needs to be addressed.
What about that ceiling that has kept schools from going no higher than Division 4AA in basketball playoffs?
That has been adjusted and addressed. I was never a fan of that.
Yearly we hear baseball coaches discuss ending the single-elimination playoffs format and going to a best 2-out-of-3 or similar format. How far away is that from becoming a reality?
I thought we had a good proposal on that a couple of years ago. It went through the process but it was not voted in by the Council. Coaches need to take stock in that and be better prepared next time so the proposal is understood better. Maybe this will happen this year, maybe the year after.
How have member schools adjusted to the new participation limits of 18 hours a week?
With football, once the games began the 18-hour limit seemed reasonable. All of the other fall sports started Sept. 1. We’re only in the second week of this for them so we still need feedback.
There are some benefits that will be there. There is less wear and tear on the student-athlete and we hope this helps the students better balance out their lives with academic time and family time. We need to see how this plays out, what works and what doesn’t work.
What is your personal reaction when you learn that a student-athlete is going to be in his or her third school to begin the junior year?
Personally, I don’t like it. Our background is that you go to the public school in your community or you go to the private school of your choosing. It’s a stability thing.
I just had one daughter graduate from high school and another who is a junior in high school, and if I had said to them, ‘We’re going to move so you can play soccer there’ they would have killed me.
We’re trying to build well-rounded young people so that they can become great adults. If the emphasis is all on athletics then we’re missing the boat.
What can the CIF-Southern Section office do about this?
We have to walk a fine line. We may have personal feelings and ideas about this topic. But we’re not the legislative-making body. The schools are the legislative-making body.
What is the most effective tool the CIF-Southern Section office has to mold Southern California high school sports?
We set the vision. With our Executive Committee, we say where we’re going next. How can we serve our schools better? That’s the constant challenge.
If it wanted to, could the CIF-Southern Section office create separate playoff divisions for public and private schools?
That would have to come from member schools in the section.
The most important thing for us here is to get the legal opinion on that because that’s what’s going to have to be considered in something like that.
There has to be valid reason to have separate divisions for public and private schools. That would be the challenge.
Do you believe it would be good for Southern California high school athletics to create separate playoff divisions for public and private schools?
I don’t believe so. We don’t have different rules for private and public schools. People need to understand the range of private schools that are in our section. They are not the same.
Our organization has been around for more than 100 years. The program has always been about creating the best competition that we can create. Maybe some people in public schools think things are not fair, but I always go back to this: The same rules are for everybody.
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
