No not directly, the Mullet Wrapper today reported the AD's explanation:
"We didn’t have the numbers due to multiple reasons, and there’s no way we could safely field a team going forward.”
They had injuries, a lot of kids quit preseason - rumor is they had more quit after Friday's Lemon Bay game. The AD claims he doesn't want to face teams short-handed. In his words:
“You gotta look at how (Charlotte and Venice) are able to platoon and what happened with us losing kids. Going through four quarters against that, someone could get hurt"
Coach Hay from Desoto, on the other hand, has another perspective:
"DeSoto County is another area team which has been faced with a similar situation.
The 0-8 Bulldogs have been undersized and undermanned all season — fielding a roster of well under 30 players — but Bulldogs coach Bumper Hay has taken a different approach to the end of their season.
“No, not at all,” said Hay when asked if he had thought about canceling his team’s season. “I don’t know how much you know about (DeSoto County’s first round playoff opponent) Rockledge, but they’re historically good and they have four or five kids in Florida’s top 100 prospects. So, that’s a tough game to go into. And sometimes as a coach with a bunch of freshmen and sophomores, you think, ‘Should we?’ “But for me, I just can’t tell a kid that I don’t believe in him enough, so we’re gonna cancel the game. I know (North Port) had injury issues and Bayshore had the same thing. But I’d walk out there with 13 and play. That’s just me though. I may have some parents tell me not to.”
I like that: But I’d walk out there with 13 and play. Charlotte finished a dismal 1967 season with 10 players and a guy in a leg cast. They made a deal with the opponent's head coach and refs that the guy on crutches would line up a foot in fair ground at the start of the play, then immediately step off the field at the snap, so they started every play with 11. The next year they were 1-9, the next year my group arrived and the year after that my Tarpons made it to the semi-final game in 1970.
But I have now lived long enough to see something I never have in football.