THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE, Sept. 25, 2014

All the games have been played, and the Inland Empire League football teams enjoyed a decided advantage over their Greater Spokane League counterparts this year.

Perhaps just as important, IEL administrators enjoyed the fact they were able to schedule more football games vs. teams much closer to home.

Of the nine games between the two leagues, the IEL won seven.

Lake City went 3-0, beating Lewis and Clark, Central Valley and Shadle Park. Coeur d'Alene beat CV and Ferris, Sandpoint beat Mt. Spokane and Lewiston beat North Central.

University High had the GSL's lone wins, beating Sandpoint and Post Falls.

"We enjoy playing the GSL," Coeur d'Alene athletic director Todd Gilkey said.

"It's been great," Lake City athletic director Jim Winger said, and not necessarily because the Timberwolves won their three games vs. GSL schools by an average of 29 points. "Things go in cycles. But to get on a school bus and go a half-hour is a pretty nice deal. We're not used to it."

AND THIS year's IEL/GSL games were the front end of two-year, home and home deals between the schools.

So, unless there are changes between now and then, Coeur d'Alene will travel to CV and play host to Ferris next year. Lake City would play host to CV, and travel to face Lewis and Clark and Shadle Park. Both of those teams play their home games at Albi Stadium in Spokane, so the Timberwolves could get two games on the artificial turf - unless Albi has scheduling issues, and one of those games has to be moved somewhere else.

Post Falls hosted University High this year, so will travel to U-High next year.

"We enjoy playing the games and they are competitive and close," Post Falls AD Craig Christensen said. "Although it is nice to play at Albi, we are just happy to have a close game against those teams."

IEL ADs hope to keep scheduling GSL schools in future years, after the current home-and-home series come to an end next year. They would like to shuffle opponents, so they're not playing the same teams year after year after year.

"We'll play anybody," Gilkey said. "We'd like to play G-Prep, or Mead, or any of those other schools. Why wouldn't we want to play any of those schools, because they're so close."

OBVIOUSLY THE shorter travel is an advantage, but administrators mentioned a couple other bonuses not immediately noticeable to the average fan.

From a scheduling standpoint, an IEL team scheduling a GSL school usually means the junior varsity and freshmen teams will also play each other. Often times, when one of the local teams schedules a team in western Washington or eastern Idaho, they can't afford to also send the JV and freshman teams as well. So the local JV and freshman teams often end up playing each other twice.

Also, schools make their money off the gate, and the closer the visiting team is, the more fans they will bring, in theory. Shadle brought a big crowd with them to Lake City last week, and with the chance to watch their record-setting quarterback, Brett Rypien, a few more local fans turned out as well.

"For a nonleague game, that was one of our biggest crowds that I can remember," Winger said.

In recent years, local 5A schools have been scrambling - sometimes into the summer - to fill their football schedules.

But Winger said, "barring somebody bailing out on us," his football schedule for 2015 should be the same as this year's - with this year's road games at home next year, and vice versa.

That would include Rocky Mountain of Meridian, which Lake City visited the last two seasons, coming to town next year, and Tumwater (Wash.), where Lake City travels on Friday, will return the trip in '15.

Post Falls' and Coeur d'Alene's schedules are set for next year too.

"In all the year's I've been doing this, I don't remember that happening," Winger said. "We've always scrambled every year."

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.