The Clark County School District will compete as independents in high school football to avoid Las Vegas powerhouse Bishop Gorman. This unprecedented decision comes after the governing body of high school sports in Nevada tried to force the Gaels to play a nine-game league schedule.
It will impact approximately 30 schools in the 4A/5A Southern districts.
Clark County schools will not be eligible for the high school football playoffs because they broke off from the league, which leaves only the private and charter schools. The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association is now scrambling to find a solution.
Nevada tried to reshuffle its postseason.
To understand what happened on Wednesday, we must first go back to November. The NIAA approved a new realignment for high school football that would require every schools to play a full nine-game league schedule to be eligible for state and, in turn, national championships.
Powerhouse programs like Bishop Gorman and Faith Lutheran often play out-of-state games against top-ranked opponents, which cut into the amount of games played against other local high schools. The realignment would’ve prevented them from scheduling as many out-of-state games in the future.
However, the NIAA abandoned its decision after the Archdioceses of Las Vegas threatened a lawsuit.
Bishop Gorman’s administration also accused the Clark County School District principals of meeting in secret to come up with the new alignment. It claimed the NIAA board “violated multiple state and federal laws in relation to the action(s) taken before, during and after the meeting of the NIAA Board of Control on Nov. 19, 2025.” The plan was dropped in January. The Gaels got what they wanted.
That did not go over well with the Clark County School District.
Las Vegas high school football teams will boycott Bishop Gorman.
Here’s the thing.
Bishop Gorman has a significant advantage over the other public schools in Las Vegas because it can recruit. It does not want to play against inferior opponents if it does not have to.
The Gaels defeated all eight Nevada-based opponents by a combined score of 355-13 in 2025 and won the state championship game by a final score of 44-7. Even though they are almost guaranteed to lose, the Clark County Schools don’t think it is fair that Bishop Gorman doesn’t have to follow the same rules as everybody else. They also don’t like missing out on such a high-profile matchup. They want to play.
“When people start looking at what we have to play by as CCSD (schools) and what Gorman and the charter schools get to play by, are two different sets of rules,” Liberty co-athletic director and head football coach Rich Muraco told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “It’s not right. We’re playing for the same trophy under completely different sets of rules and different sets of advantages and disadvantages.”
To prove it is not messing around, the Clark County School District decided to sabotage the NIAA.
Every single high school football program in the district will sacrifice its postseason eligibility to compete as an independent. They will only play against each other — not the private schools — for at least two years.
This obviously throws a huge wrench in the Class 4A and 5A schedules.
The NIAA has engaged in discussion with all remaining postseason-eligible programs within the state to discuss the postseason formats and next steps moving forward. As of right now, only the private and charter schools are left. The other Southern Nevada district programs will not be allowed to compete in the postseason as independents. Approximately 30 teams are walking away until Bishop Gorman is required to follow the same set of rules.