By Michael A. Lough

centralgasports@gmail.com

          By now, Warner Robins expected to be transitioning completely from a remarkable football season into basketball, where the Demons have been mighty good for awhile.

          But boys head coach Jamaal Garman will have to wait a little while longer to get a few players back as Warner Robins officials prepare to host a state championship football game, a turn of events that has this week among the busiest they’ll deal with all year.

          The unpredictability of weather and underestimating by meteorologists of what was coming last week turned the GHSA football state championship weekend more than on its ear, with six of the eight games being postponed because of travel concerns to and from Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, as well as possible liability issues at the stadium.

          Not long after its Friday game with Rome was postponed, Warner Robins won a coin flip to host the championship.

          And McConnell-Talbert would light up the night one more time in 2017.

          Kickoff is 7:30 p.m. Friday night.

          The ticket situation has been muddled, thanks to the unprecedented weather circumstances.

          Tickets for last week were only sold at participating schools and at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, according to Steve Figueroa with the GHSA.

          Once the games were postponed, there was an attempt to sell tickets through the website www.GoFan.co (not .com), which is connected to Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

          But early in the week, schools were instructed to stop pregame sales while the GoFan sales were shut down. Figueroa said there will be four workers and an official GHSA representative at each site for gameday ticket sales.

          Those with pre-purchased tickets will be admitted first, until 6:45 p.m. Then any remaining tickets, based on space, will be sold.

          Refunds are available for unused tickets – except for a stadium-implemented facility fee - and unused parking passes. Figueroa said that there was unfortunately no way to determine a refunding process for fans who used their ticket on Friday for a game that was postponed.

          The announcement of Friday’s postponements came at about 1:40 p.m., just less than three hours before Warner Robins and Rome were scheduled to play. The Demons were already at the stadium and the Wolves had just arrived.

          There were no doubt scores of Warner Robins fans on hand early to watch Peach County in the Class AAA game. Unused tickets from last week are valid at any of Friday’s six games.

          Gates will open at 6 p.m. on Friday at McConnell-Talbert Stadium. Those having tickets will be admitted first until 6:45 p.m. The others with tickets will be admitted.

          The Rome-Warner Robins game will be available Facebook using the National Federation of High Schools (NFHS) streaming feed, according to a GHSA tweet.

          All games are available on the NFHS streaming site, with a cost of $9.95 for a monthly pass.

          President Glenn White, who is also director of student services for the Floyd County board of education, expressed concern in a Monday interview on a Rome-area radio station about whether Warner Robins could adequately host the game, noting that Rome brought several thousand fans to last year’s championship in the Georgia Dome and pregame ticket sales for this year.

          That was ostensibly part of a discussion that took place over the weekend after Saturday’s games were postponed about playing at neutral sites. Naturally, the teams that won the coin toss liked the GHSA’s decision to stick with the plan it announced earlier in the week, a plan it hoped wouldn’t be needed.

          Capacity at McConnell-Talbert has been misreported for a few decades, thus reports of attendance for Warner Robins-Northside and assorted playoff games has been boosted.

          In 2004, the GHSA changed its equation to determine capacity for stadiums without seatbacks to 24 inches per seat, up from 18 inches. That coincided somewhat with increase is size of the average American body, which rose about 25 pounds from 1960 to 2002.

          That dropped seating capacity, for GHSA concerns, to a hair over 6,200,

          Scott Hill, the director of facilities for the Houston County Board of Education, said in August of 2016 just before the opening of Freedom Field near Houston County High, that the National Fire Protection Association fire code, which includes entrances/exits in its equation, allows for about 8,200 seats at The Mac.

          Barron Stadium in Rome is home to the Wolves as well as Shorter College. A Rome High website, currently expired, lists capacity at 5,360, while Shorter’s website states it as seating for “more than 5,000 spectators.”

          The GHSA has such an equation for postseason events, and is differs between classifications. The minimum capacity to host in Class 5A (and 4A) is 4,000, and 6,000 for 6A (which includes Northside and Houston County).

          GHSA officials traveled to North Gwinnett (7A) and Lee County (6A) to make sure those facilities were large enough to host their classifications’ finales.

          With Rome having to travel nearly 180 miles and some fans able to attend last week unable to attend this week, it’s arguable how close to the normal Warner Robins-Northside crowd Friday night will be.

          The GHSA began playing semifinals in the then-new Georgia Dome in the 1990s, with games starting at 9 a.m. It moved the finals to the Dome in 2008.

          Negotiations between the GHSA and Mercedes-Benz Stadium were lengthy, and not finalized until

          The decision to postpone last weekend’s game was a mutual decision between the GHSA and the stadium, the latter of which reportedly had liability concerns because of weather-related circumstances on the stadium property.

          Kickoff weather for Warner Robins, as of mid-afternoon Wednesday, is drastically different than a week earlier, with Friday’s high around 57 and drive-home temps around 40.