In a move to help shorten the overlap between the winter and fall sports seasons, high school football teams will have 11 weeks to complete a full schedule instead of 12. The new scheduling rule is effective starting in the 2011 football season.

For teams that wish to play an endowment game - an optional contest played in the first week of the season in which proceeds are shared with the NCHSAA endowment - it means not having a bye week during the regular season.

And for teams with an odd number of members like the Tri-Nine, it gets really tricky as how to schedule non-conference games.

"We have an odd number [of teams], so each of us has a natural open date. Our open date varies with every team," Fuquay-Varina athletics director Bruce Hemphill said. "It becomes more difficult [to schedule 11 games], especially if you've got an open date from midseason on because most of these schools don't have a natural open date like our Tri-Nine does."

For schools that still want to play 11 games, it means finding non-conference opponents in the latter weeks of the year, when schools are in their conference schedule.

"For a conference our size, it's going to be difficult," Apex athletics director Del Phillips said.

"I hope we can find somebody that has the same open dates as we do."

The inflexibility of an 11-in-11 rule means Tri-Nine schools have difficult decisions.

If the Tri-Nine decides as a conference that it wants to keep its bye week, teams will play just two non-conference games at the beginning of the year, including an endowment game.

But most of the endowment money doesn't stay with the school, so schools that have a road game in week two will essentially profit from four home conference games.

"It hurts you at the gates. I'd actually rather not play an endowment game but have a three-team scrimmage at the first of the season and charge people for it like a lot of people do," Phillips said.

The Tri-Nine could leave it up to the schools as far as how many games to schedule.

Those that choose to play the endowment game aren't necessarily ensured of playing 11 games. They must find two additional out-of-conference opponents or find just one and use a bye week.

But different teams will have different views on the importance of the bye week.

Football, perhaps more so than any other sport, is known for its costly injuries. Coaches look forward to bye weeks as a chance to "get healthy."

Without a bye week, coaches could lose important players to injury during the conference slate in games that have no bearing on the conference standings.

"If I'm a team that's very strong and my open date is the last week or the next to the last week, I wouldn't [want to] play anybody," Phillips said.

But since Tri-Nine bye weeks currently take up all but the first two weeks of the year, some teams are going to find it harder to schedule an 11th game. One possibility is for the Tri-Nine to find another odd-number conference and have both sides schedule each other for all the hard-to-fill open dates during their conference schedules.

Of the four 4-A Triangle conferences, only the PAC-Six has an odd number of teams, with seven. The Cap-7 will have eight teams by 2011 as Heritage High School will join the fold after it opens its doors next year.

"We'd have to sit down with [the PAC-Six athletics directors] and hope that you could fit it in," Phillips said. "If that conference wants to have that open date, then you'd have a problem."