Now that the football playoff picture is taking shape, there are some changes to remember in how the N.C. High School Athletic Association uses endowment games.

Endowment games are non-conference contests where the two schools send 25 percent of the gate money to the NCHSAA and split the remaining gate.

When teams had 12 weeks to play 11 games, almost all teams played an endowment contest. When the season was cut short to 11 weeks this year, some teams chose to take a bye week instead of playing an endowment game.

In the past, if a team played an endowment game (and pretty much everyone did), they would get one non-conference game dropped from their 10-game record, which is used by the NCHSAA to seed the playoff teams.

That meant that if a team played an endowment game and went unbeaten in the non-conference, it would have to drop a win when getting seeded. In any other case, it would get to drop a loss.

But this year something is different.

Teams will only drop the endowment game itself, win or lose.

So for those games, they're almost exhibitions. They have no bearing on the playoffs since they will not count toward them.

"Almost," is the operative term here. The game still goes down on the overall record and in the school record books.

For Athens Drive, that means dropping a loss to Lumberton. Middle Creek would drop its only non-conference win (against Northern Durham).

Panther Creek's endowment game is later this month when the Catamounts step out of conference to face Jordan.

It's a small change, but one that coaches must be wary of when getting ready to send in their records to the NCHSAA for playoff seeding. In the past, errors in records turned in have delayed when pairings are announced.

Staying busy: Two Tri-Nine defensive players are staying active this season.

Green Hope junior Terry Whitehead has 86 tackles this year (through six games).

Meanwhile, Athens Drive junior linebacker Daniel Riddle is averaging 14.3 tackles per game and has 100 tackles already this season.