And all those teams are scheduling based off foolishness. There is no district title anymore. Your district record has NO effect whatsoever on how you make the playoffs thus the scheduling is just old people scared to do something new. Doesn't matter when a game is played now, at least in 4A.
And of course I don't want them done early, Salem is a very mediocre team early in the year. They have a 9-6 record in the last 3 years alone for first half of the season records. Mags has 26 losses and 11 of those are from the first half of the season. They're decidedly average in September and October and this is a known fact. I would virtually guarantee you if they played Martinsburg for a decade in September they'd be 1-9 at best. They are not well prepared early in the year and the opponent doesn't even need to be phenomenally good either.
Stop this nonsense, Salem is far from invincible and you should know better as a coach. Games are good if there's a tangible benefit. When VT scheduled Nebraska, this was a good move because they benefited from playing against a team with similar talent. When VT scheduled Alabama (twice), this was foolishness and VT got their brains bashed in for 60 minutes and it did nothing to further their success. Salem will be marginally better in 2019 and should be a much better team in 2020, hence my comment.