Its oval shape makes Home Depot Center in Carson better for watching a football game than Angel Stadium, given the Anaheim venue's baseball-specific configuration.

But the CIF-Southern Section had football championship games at Angel Stadium last month for very good reasons.

CIF-SS spokesman Thom Simmons reported that after costs and revenues were recently balanced, the section office sent checks of around $1,200 to schools that had teams play in the 2007 CIF-SS finals at Home Depot Center. For the two 2008 CIF-SS finals games at Angel Stadium, the section office sent checks of around $10,000 each to Pac-5 Division finalists Tesoro and Long Beach Poly, and around $8,000 each to Southwest Division finalists La Habra and Tustin.

The 2007 Pac-5 semifinals were played as a doubleheader at Home Depot Center. The four participating schools received payments of around $1,200 each. After Orange Lutheran played Tesoro at Santa Ana Stadium in a Pac-5 semifinal last month, each school got a check for around $7,000.

The Angel Stadium group not only provided a fine financial arrangement for the CIF-Southern Section and its finalist teams, it also installed grass sod over the dirt infield and pitcher's mound to provide a complete-grass football field. Angel Stadium made a great effort to make the CIF-SS football games an outstanding and lucrative experience. Toyota also keeps the quality high as the major sponsor of CIF-SS championship events.

Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:

• Aliso Football Parents is a group that has formed to address its concerns with the Aliso Niguel football program and, according to group member Dean Ossola, hopes to meet with Capistrano Unified School District leadership soon to discuss issues. "We want to work through the right channels," said Ossola, who added that getting the district's attention is difficult given CUSD's ongoing internal conflicts and budgetary challenges. Aliso's varsity football record since joining the South Coast League in 2006: 6-4 overall, 2-3 in league, in '06; 1-9, 0-5 in '07; and 0-10, 0-5 in '08.

• A series of meetings will begin Feb. 4 that will lead to the creation of league alignments for a four-year period that starts with the 2010-11 school year. Tesoro principal Dan Burch, chair of the releaguing process in the county, said league representatives will convene next week to discuss potential changes in procedures, such as dividing the county into three regions that would work exclusively on proposals specifically within their regions, or keeping leagues not affected by proposals from voting upon the proposals. Initial proposals will be presented to county principals at a meeting March 11, with the site of the meeting to be determined.

• The Brea Olinda-Foothill girls basketball game Saturday at Foothill is a 5 p.m. game because of a winter formal later that evening. Brea is ranked No. 2 and Foothill is No. 3 in the county rankings.

• Cox3, which does a very professional job on high school football telecasts, will televise taped coverage of Friday night's Trabuco Hills-El Toro boys basketball game, at 11 p.m. and Satuday at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.

• Friday's Mater Dei-at-Servite basketball game likely is sold out by the time you read this. The Servite business office (714-774-7575) will have the latest information on ticket availability. Servite did not consider moving the game to a larger venue like Cypress College, a site for some Mater Dei-Servite games many years ago. If I was a coach of a team about to play Mater Dei, I would move the game to a larger gym - and not tell Mater Dei which gym.

Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com