Focus of Big Game Moving Away From the Kids

The Raiders are better than expected. The 49ers are worse than expected. The Oakland A’s might be sold, and to show their support about 6,000 people a game have been pouring into the stadium.

California is promoting freshman quarterback Kyle Boller into the starter’s job and Stanford is suddenly the hot football team in the stunningly mediocre Pacific 10. At least until the Cardinal plays UCLA Saturday.

Big news, all of it, which means a particularly momentous high school football game doesn’t seem to be on the minds of Bay Area sports fans.

Concord De La Salle has the nation’s longest high school football winning streak--a national-record 90 games--to protect as the Spartans host Mater Dei Saturday at University of the Pacific. That’s a pretty big deal, and Mater Dei likely is the biggest obstacle standing in the way of De La Salle’s eighth consecutive undefeated season.

Plenty of tickets are still available for the 7:30 p.m. game. Pacific’s stadium seats 27,187 people. About 7,000 tickets have been sold. Mater Dei probably won’t sell out its allotment of 5,000 tickets in large part because the game is being televised live on Fox Sports West 2.

The Bay Area media have pretty much ignored the game so far. Which might be a good thing, since the papers can’t seem to spell the name of Mater Dei star Matt Grootegoed correctly. G-r-o-t-t-e-g-o-e-d is the preferred spelling up here, so Matt, take note. You might want to do something spectacular Saturday and then when someone asks you a question, you can spell your name.

You do have to get to page 7 or 8 of the local sports sections, though, before you find the misspelled name.

Around the campuses of De La Salle and its sister school, Carondelet, which is right across the street, there is no sense of excitement. No posters or streamers, no anticipatory chatter at lunchtime.

No, you hear the kids asking who is taking whom to homecoming, or what about that chemistry test on Friday, or whose parents are letting them use the car Friday night.

De La Salle Athletic Director Terry Eidson did say a pep rally is planned for today, and “That’s pretty unusual for us. We don’t usually have pep rallies.”

And you know what?

This lack of pomp and circumstance is charming.

There is a plan afoot by Fox to orchestrate some sort of national high school football playoff, which would lead to a national championship game, which, frankly, sounds like a terrible idea.

If we can’t come to a consensus that college men should have a national championship playoff system in Division I-A, who in the world thinks this is a good idea for high school boys? Hopefully, only some misguided television executives who are always in search of programming.

It’s bad enough that there are national high school football polls. These are silly things. Who can really know? There are probably many years when the 10th-best team in Texas is better than the best team in Pennsylvania. But a high school team loses one game and that’s it.

Do we really need to know whether De La Salle or Mater Dei would beat some team in Texas or Florida or Ohio?

Do we need to play high school games in 27,000-seat stadiums or, worse, at places like Edison Field, where Mater Dei and De La Salle performed last season?

High school sports events should be on high school campuses, not at a university 50 miles from the host school. High school football games shouldn’t be shown live on television so fans don’t have to leave their houses.

High school sporting events should belong only to the kids, to the players, to the students, to the glee club that staffs the concession stands, and to the parents who wear T-shirts saying, “My son is . . . “

High school teams shouldn’t fly to away games. Ever.

Having two top teams from California playing each other is fine. But the kids on the De La Salle team don’t need to have the whole world know they have a 90-game winning streak, so that the whole world will know which kids are on the team that loses the streak.

Nothing stays the same, of course. Can’t stop TV from broadcasting anything it wants. Can’t stop national newspapers from publishing high school rankings.

But let’s hope the high school games never get taken away from the high school kids. Because we don’t want to hear this at lunchtime either: “Anybody got a ride to the game Saturday? My mom won’t let me drive to Stockton.”

And that was part of the lunchtime talk at De La Salle too. Kids trying to get to their own team’s big game.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com