By David Berry
Published 9:59 am, Monday, June 9, 2014
Matt Burnett will always remember the International House of Pancakes on Eastex Freeway across from Parkdale Mall.
All because of a coin.
Coin tosses to determine aspects of high school sporting events is commonplace. That practice gained national notoriety in the 2004 movie “Friday Night Lights”, which is based off of a true story, when coaches from Odessa Permian, Midland Lee and Abilene Cooper (Midland High in real life) gathered at a truck stop to determine which two of the three teams would make it into the 1988 playoffs. The coins for Permian and Lee landed on heads, while Cooper’s landed on tails, knocking them out of the playoffs.
While that IHOP is known as a breakfast joint to most, the former Port Neches-Groves head football coach remembers it because of what happened late on the night of November 5, 2005, an event that did not end until after midnight.
PN-G, Nederland and Ozen finished in a tie for second-place in District 20-4A with 3-1 records. Normal UIL tie-breaking rules had to be scrapped because not every district team played each other that season due to the damage done by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. There were other proposals to deal with those special circumstances but not all the coaches voted in favor of.
So after all of the games were done that Saturday, the coaches of the three teams tied for second place, along with the coach from 2005 20-4A champion Central and the coaches from District 19-4A, met at IHOP to determine all playoff outcomes by a coin toss.
The coaches decided to work backwards, with the first school getting the odd coin receiving the second playoff berth. That would go to Ozen, who flipped heads while the other two teams flipped tails. The next coin flip came down to PN-G and Nederland to see who would get into the playoffs and who wouldn’t. Burnett and Ryan Butler, a standout Nederland player a the time, each flipped their coin. Burnett’s came up heads and Butler’s came up tails.
Nederland won. And Burnett was forced to drive back to Port Neches to tell his team, most of whom were still fired up after their 21-17 victory over Vidor and waiting to hear the results, that their season was done.
“The toughest part was how sudden it was,” Burnett said. “The coin toss for a game whether you receive or kick off is not that earth-shattering of a result. But just with the flip of a coin we were out of the playoffs. The hardest thing was to go back and tell all the players. It’s tough for when they put that much work in. But I don’t know what other option we had.”
It is not currently as common to see coin flips determining playoff berths, but they do determine plenty of other things. Once the playoffs start, everything from who the home team is to what stadium the game will be played in and even what type of ball will be used can be subject to heads or tails.
Newton head coach W.T. Johnston believes that egos are what end up causing coin tosses most of the time.
“You’re not going to get two men to agree on something,” Johnston said. “Especially if they got big egos, they’re not going to agree. They’re going to try and make it as difficult as they can, especially if they think they’re getting cheated.”
Johnston says that he learned from his mentor, former Newton head coach Curtis Barbay, who did not make himself bigger than the game in regards to ironing out details of playoff games with coin flips.
“I just want to play the best for the kids on both sides,” Johnston said. “The closest (location) where it’s in between both sides. I don’t think it’s fair to do that to kids. A lot of grown-ups don’t understand and think it’s about them when it’s not.”
While Johnston believes that he has not won a coin toss in about three years, West Orange-Stark head coach Cornel Thompson has won one coin toss in that same time span. That win was before the 2013 Class 3A State Quarterfinal against Carthage. Thompson took full advantage of the win and had the game played at the Carrol A. “Butch” Thomas Educational Support Center, approximately 40 minutes away from WO-S and almost three hours from Carthage.
“It’s like going to Las Vegas,” Thompson said. “You flip for everything. If you cannot agree, take a quarter with you.”
When two schools are far away enough that the coaches don’t want to meet up in the middle, they will try something else that is similar to a game of chance. Once the coaches disagree on a particular aspect of the game, one coach will choose what they would rather have.
Then they will say odd or even and whether they win or not depends on if the last number in a random area code matches with their odd or even call.
In states like Florida and Louisiana, there are no coin flip rules for the playoffs.
The lower seed plays at the higher seed. When there are ties to determine playoff spots, Florida teams will play the Monday after the regular season is done in one quarter scenarios until the winner is determined.
While that way does settle everything on the field, it does increase the chance for injury to teams that could be going into the postseason.
Even with that risk, most coaches agree that it is not fair that a team’s season could end on a 50-50 proposition.
“You throw a little quarter on the ground, you look down there and all the hard work and huddles you snapped (could be finished),” Thompson said. “I think the final evaluation should be determined by what you did on the field. To flip a coin, I don’t like that one bit.”
DBerry@BeaumontEnterprise.om Twitter.com/dBerrySports
