Attendance was down for the WPIAL football championships at Heinz Field last Friday. Television ratings for two of the games were up.

Is there a correlation between the two? Maybe. But don't look for the WPIAL to stop putting the titles games on FSN Pittsburgh television.

"I think how our football championships are presented is a first-class presentation," said WPIAL executive director Tim O'Malley. "Whether people come to the stadium, or watch on TV, it's a tremendously positive experience for the kids.

"If people are not willing to participate actively by coming, at least the ratings show that people in Western Pennsylvania still care about this."

The WPIAL won't know exact attendance figures until next week, but O'Malley said it will be between 15,000 and 16,000. That is one of the lowest totals since the league started playing all four title games at one site in 1986.

Last year's attendance was considered disappointing -- and it was 18,525. A little more than 24,000 attended in 2007 and 2006. The record is 39,031, set in 2001, when Heinz Field opened.

Meanwhile, television ratings for the Class A and AAA games were up from a year ago. The AAA rating was 3.19, compared with 2.29 a year ago. Apparently, people were interested in seeing the battle of the backs in Hopewell's Rushel Shell and West Allegheny's Mike Caputo.

For comparisons sake, the Illinois-Cincinnati game that day on ABC had a 2.61 rating in the Pittsburgh area, and Nebraska-Colorado 1.91. Alabama-Auburn on CBS had a 4.85.

The WPIAL Class A rating was 2.18, up from 1.98 a year ago. The Class AAAA rating was 2.54, down from 3.52 a year ago. But the Class AAAA game was competing with viewers of the Pitt-West Virginia game.

The Class AA game was on tape for the second year in a row. This year's rating was .83, compared to 1.00 last year (also on tape). All told, FSN officials said about 91,000 people tuned in.

"Another thing that never gets factored is the familiarity of some of the teams that are in it," O'Malley said. "Like Clairton and Rochester. They've been there before and the people from there maybe aren't as excited to come to the game.

"But I don't think we can be disappointed. If we get 15,000 to 20,000 and get good TV ratings, then that shows people are still interested."

Sometimes you hear of a recruiting horror story where a high school player loses a scholarship. Hempfield basketball player Nate Perry lived one of those stories.

Perry, a senior guard who averaged 25 points last year, had made a verbal commitment to Appalachian State in June. He originally committed to Coastal Carolina a few months earlier but changed his mind when Coastal Carolina assistant coach Jamie Kachmarik left to become an assistant at Appalachian State. Kachmarik talked Perry into choosing Appalachian.

In September, Perry said, he was told by Kachmarik that Appalachian needed a higher SAT score.

"I had an 890 the first time and they said they needed in the 900s," Perry said. "I took it again and got a 1,010 in October.

"Then all of a sudden they told me they couldn't wait for my test scores any longer and they had taken a verbal commitment from another player. So they didn't have a scholarship for me.

"People are saying I can't keep a commitment, but they don't know what really happened. It was tough to deal with at first, but I'm sort of over it right now."

Perry said North Carolina-Asheville, Central Connecticut State and North Carolina-Greensboro are showing interest.

"I'm not real worried about this right now," Perry said. "I want to enjoy my senior season and worry about my team first. I'm not going to the NBA. I just want to get an education and then, hopefully, coach somewhere. So if I can get a free education somewhere, that would be great."

Who says you can't play two football games in three days -- and win them both.

Easton, one of the top Class AAAA teams in Eastern Pennsylvania, did exactly that last week. Last Thursday, Easton beat rival Phillipsburg, N.J., 26-10, in the teams' annual Thanksgiving Day game. Two days later, Easton beat Parkland, 21-14, to win the District 11 championship.

Pottsgrove and St. Pius X also played two games in three days. They played each other Thanksgiving Day and then met other teams in playoff games Saturday. But Pottsgrove and Pius coaches agreed to play only junior varsity players in the Thanksgiving game, won by Pottsgrove, 42-0.

In District 1 championship games Saturday, Pottsgrove defeated Interboro, 28-21, in overtime, while Pius lost to Tri-Valley, 27-14.

Mike White's "High School Sports Edition" videos are featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.