why is 8 man a thing

I agree 8 man has its place, however, there needs to be an ADM threshold that is applied. Woodland is smaller than every Class B division 1 team, Ringling is smaller than more than half of them. Teams should be forced to move up at a point. Drumright has 150 kids in its ADM, if they can't feild an 11 man team they should not play football.

Is it true that Morrison was forced into 11 man several years ago? It seems like the OSSAA has a number for everything, why not that? 

Dewar, Laverne, Velma, Pioneer, Shattuck and Garber all should be playing 11man. There isn’t any evidence to support why they couldn’t be competitive in class A.

Those are just 6 examples. I’m sure there are more. 8 man was created to protect small schools. Give small schools an option to play. It wasn’t created so schools with good enrollment could dominate schools with small.

All class A teams have any option to play 8-man or 11-man they don't have to play 8-man if they don't want to. Even though they may have 115 kids 9-12 doesn't mean that every boy plays football, less and less boys are playing football anymore that is why most of the schools are playing 8-man. There are some 8-man schools that barely have enough to play games. One of the teams you mentioned I saw play this year and even though their Adm is over 110 they only had maybe 20 boys on the team.

There are a ton of factors that go into why or why not a school would have enough to field an 11-man team; and those factors are different for every school. Some schools that are small enough to play 8-man choose to remain in 11-man. Cool, good for them. Why should that mean that schools that are smaller than them should have to play 11-man as well. At one time when Okeene was dominating Class A, they were either small enough or nearly small enough to be in Class B. According to some of the logic I've seen here, that means that Class B should have been nonexistent. That's just silly.

Cashion was totally dominant in class C. It looks like they were just a good class B team.

So what you’re saying Blue is it’s possible for even an average at best Class B team to move up and be competitive?

I’m not so sure was a solid playoff team in 11 man. I actually think they would be similar to Hooker/Mooreland/Texhoma (keeping within the NW region) if they played 11 man. Decent team but not a great team.

Okeene I believe held on playing 11 man until they absolutely had to go down. Now it seems like a lot of kids from Okeene are going to Fairview. Heard there are several parents taking their kids to Fairview after this school year after they won the Class A title. Again that is just rumor no real insight on that…besides Okeene is hanging on by a thread.

My issue with 8 man is there are teams that should be playing 11 man that don’t. BFDC dropped to 8 man but as soon as their numbers increased they jumped back up to 11 man. I like that Texhoma/Goodwell coop for football to play 11 man. I do believe Turpin and Tyrone should do the same. Forgan already coops with Balko but why not make it Beaver-Balko-Forgan??? You could probably even pull kids from Hardesty.

I don’t know why Okeene and Lomega don’t coop for football or at least give the Lomega boys the option to cool with Okeene. Pond Creek and Medford. Or Okeene-Dover-Lomega.

Snyder and Tipton could coop. I know saying coop isn’t reality. I know there are reason schools don’t. I just like the 11 man game far more than the 8 man game.