Here's some solutions for football games that end too late

By the light of the silvery moon

And on the field, players are strewn

And I worry I may not get home

Until tomorrow afternoon

It's almost un-American to criticize football. Yet here I go.

High school games are starting later and later and finishing even later. And if no one else sees this as a problem, then I am more than willing to play Don Quixote and charge full-speed at helmeted windmills.

I have twice this year attended games that ended at nearly 11 p.m. -- games that had scheduled kickoff times of 7:30 p.m. Keeping in mind that a high school football game consists of 48 minutes of clock time, you have to wonder why it is that these contests end at a time with cows are long-past home.

I see a number of contributing factors, and some have easy solutions. Others, however would require some creative, and perhaps controversial, thinking.

The first problem is in starting on time. Players need time to warm up. The National Anthem needs to be sung. The school song needs to be played. I am not saying any of the pageantry that is associated with a football game needs to be removed. Take away the band, cheerleaders, drill team and fans -- and you would have none of the buzz that creates the atmosphere football fans crave.

But kickoff times have become as unreliable as an Amtrak timetable. You know the game will start sometime after the kickoff time, but you don't know if that will be 15 minutes or 30 minutes or even more.

The culprit, sad to say, is sophomore football. I know high school football afternoons and evenings have involved sophomore-varsity doubleheaders for decades. There is much to be said for the experience gained in playing on the same field on which the varsity will compete. And fans arriving early can catch a glimpse of the future varsity players.

But I have been to games where sophomore teams have arrived late. In other instances, the sophomore game ran to a similar length as a varsity game despite there only being 40 minutes of clock time in a sophomore game.

I have two solutions. The easiest is to start sophomore games earlier. If the opening act pushes back the curtain-raising of the main event, then start the opening act earlier. If that results in a large gap between games if the sophomore game ends in lightning-quick time -- then so be it. My experience says that those instances won't be that frequent.

The less pleasant option is to move the sophomore game to another day, as with freshman or junior-varsity games. I know that would change the entire pattern of high school football evenings.

But here are a few questions. How late is too late? This reporter has children aged 6 and 10. They are the audience high school football aims to attract, especially as professional and, increasingly, college football make frequent attendance a matter of financial concern. But do we expect elementary school children to remain interested until a time well past even a weekend bedtime?

How late do we want players arriving home from road games and then driving home? Curfew remains 12:01 a.m. for unsupervised children aged 17 and under. To turn this into a legal question, do high schools want to be liable for a tragedy that occurs because a ballgame ended too late and the bus didn't return to school until 12:15 a.m.?

The basics of football have changed. More teams are using West Coast offenses or variations on that theme -- where ball control is maintained with a short passing game. Dropped passes stop the clock. But so do first downs and scoring plays.

Take two passing teams, the potential for 60 or 70 points and more than 50 passes, and the basic construction of the game will lead to a lengthy contest.

Few teams run, run and run some more. And there's nothing wrong with that. Some of the best teams have the capability to score on every play, leaving fans on the edge of their seats on more plays than ever before.

And no one should try to tell a coach what offense to run, how to work his game plan, based on the clock on one's wrist as opposed to the clock on the scoreboard.

But this makes the need to start games on time all the more important. It's becoming increasingly apparent that 7:30 p.m. kickoffs are too late. Why teams kick off at 7:30 on a Saturday when there is no school day to contend with is a bit mystifying. Why not 7, or even 6 p.m.?

There are also injuries with which to contend. Not every game has an ambulance present for the entirety of the contest, and I know that limited emergency service in some communities may make that difficult to impossible. The IHSA expects teams to have an ambulance "if available."

This means that if an injury requires a player to be stretchered from the field, then everyone must wait. In this instance, I'm not concerned about the waiting fans, but the player on the field. Minutes count, and the wait can be lengthy.

Injuries happen. Penalties happen. Incomplete passes are going to happen as well. The normal things that make football exciting can also make it a long evening.

But what can be controlled needs to be handled because it is becoming increasingly likely that Friday Night Lights will someday be burning when the calendar changes dates -- and that is most surely too late.