Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

Your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you, and no, there hasn’t been a letterpress problem that caused 7A and 6A to be printed at the top of each page of this classification preview.

Administrators of the Class 7A and 6A conferences decided for the 2010-2012 school cycle to combine efforts under the 7A/6A moniker.

But don’t confuse this with the 32-team alignment that was in place just a few short years ago, before the further shrinking of the top classes to 16 teams in each of the larger two levels. You know, the silliness that eventually led to 12 teams out of 16 teams qualifying for playoffs, even if some of those teams were 3-7 in the regular season.

(Click here to see ArkansasSports360.com's Class 7A/6A rankings, top players and games to watch.)

For the regular season, 7A/6A will consist of four divisions. But, so as to keep some of those natural rivalries, each league will look awfully close to how it appeared the past two years. It’s important to keep those close-by teams playing each other — which is why Van Buren is about a season-passing-yardage total by, say, Fayetteville’s Brandon Allen, from nearby Fort Smith Northside and Southside, but will continue to make a handful of trips to play 7A-Central rivals. And who doesn’t see the natural rivalry built up between Little Rock Hall and Mountain Home or Marion?

Hall play Little Rock Central? Hey, when they did away with the annual Turkey Day classic when all classes started having playoffs, back in 1983, who really cares anymore about Hall-Central?

The oldest rivalry in Arkansas, Little Rock Central vs. Pine Bluff, will resume after a couple of years hiatus, but the Tigers and Zebras still aren’t in the same league anymore, just the same “classification” of 7A/6A.

And when playoff time comes, neither will meet in the playoffs, even if Central manages to end a losing streak that reached 21 games last year and led to the resignation of Hall of Fame Coach Bernie Cox after 35 years of running things at Quigley-Cox Stadium.

For when the regular season ends, half the classification will go one way (7A) and half the other (6A) for playoffs and more rematches of regular-season games. In an attempt to somewhat copy Texas, where the biggest of the big schools and the smaller of the big schools split into their own playoffs, 7A/6A will have an interesting jumble in two leagues, where two teams in a league will NOT be playing in the same playoffs with six of their regular-season rivals.

In 7A/6A-Central, Russellville and Van Buren will vie for spots in the 6A playoffs. In 7A/6A-East, West Memphis and Little Rock Hall will be vying for spots in the 7A playoffs, even though they will play no conference games against 7A-level teams. The seedings will be handled by a committee of athletic directors and based on how results in their respective leagues are judged.

Best guess here is that it won’t matter for Van Buren or Little Rock Hall. But Russellville could find itself in the middle of the pack in 7A/6A Central but successful in the 6A playoffs. And West Memphis, always a contender in 6A, will now give the 7A schools something to think about.

Several key early-season matchups will feature the best of 7A against the best of 6A. We can’t wait for El Dorado’s visit to Springdale Har-Ber on Sept. 10.