I don't think arguments are oversimplified that often here, honestly. They're just often taken wrong. Of course there are a multitude of factors, but there's enough examples of public school success story that the origin of the complaints often seem pretty hollow. If you wanna get into why Loyola and Mt Carmel can 3 peat in 7/8A and LWE can be very good but not quite that (or Naz/Sycamore in 5A) I think that's a legit conversation you can have. But peeling back the record of the source of complaints often shows a history that isn't being thwarted by private school success, but even their inability to find success among public schools like them.
That is the conversation I think we might need to start having. I personally think that the good private schools do have an advantage in terms of acquiring talent, and that the current environment of high school sports is morphing the playing field into a place where those schools are outclassing everyone by such a large margin that it's not even fun for a fandom anymore. Even those that disagree with the first part of my statement (that privates have a talent-acquiring advantage) can at least acknowledge that there are very few schools that can even be on the same field as some of the current private juggernauts (which Snetsrak61 does seem to allude to agreeing with on some level in the statement above).
I saw it every week in the prediction threads - anyone who might predict that someone might beat a Mt. Carmel or Loyola was usually dismissed by multiple posters as "no, this game won't be close. Three scores at least." And... that was pretty much always true. And the few public schools that are usually pointed to as examples of why private school success is clearly just the result of "good coaching and hard work" - Maine South and Lincoln Way East - weren't honestly as close as the scores for the games they played against Loyola. Call me an overreactor to a short time frame (that might be a fair statement... for now) but I am genuinely concerned the gap exists and is getting larger.
The two questions that don't get asked enough are:
- WHY is the experience going to be better at the private school? Why should the kid believe him?
- WHY aren't the coaches from the kid's districted school making the same call? Why shouldn't the kid believe him?
Of course they can and do make those calls, but unless you think they are just "tricking" these kids into coming, there's something
Again, this is the flawed chicken and egg logic tossed around on here. Why are these "studs" just picking up and paying $12k a year to drive to some private school?? Could maybe, just maybe, coaching and culture be the essential ingredient to attract talent, especially when you are disadvantaged from a facilities, cost, and potentially academic standpoint?
Ehhh... I don't think those questions don't get asked enough. I don't think there's any "tricking" going on either. As someone who is a fan of all high school sports, I want to think about basketball for a moment. Coaching matters there too. But there is far greater admission from basketball fans that 1-2 "dudes" raise your ceiling by A LOT. Yes, good coaches get the most out of their guys, but unless you have some
dudes you're not going to get too far come playoff time. I think the same is true in football more often than we let on. Talent is the number one factor that gets teams to win deep in the playoffs (where the coaching becomes pretty comparable and every team has a strong baseline of coaching). And winning begets winning. Which means winning draws more talent. And I think one difference between basketball and football is that
depth of talent matters a lot more on football teams (due to bigger rosters). Having size and strength and speed far down your roster makes your team unquestionably better.
Yes, football coaches that run great programs develop entire teams. But a football coach that doesn't have some
dudes and doesn't have depth of size and talent can only do so much. I read a lot on the board this year about how talented LWE was relative to everyone else. So I was excited to go to the Loyola-LWE game. The QB on LWE seems like the real deal and is clearly a great player. But I was stunned to see Loyola look so much bigger at every other position on the field. I thought they made LWE look like a JV team (I also thought the Loyola guys standing on LWE's sideline who weren't even getting playing time made LWE look like a JV team). Where was all this talent advantage of LWE I had read about? I think we had some misinformed posters, personally. And, as anyone looking at these teams stand near each other would have probably guessed, Loyola out-physicaled LWE and didn't get stopped from scoring one time the entire game on offense. LWE had the best
dude, but Loyola had a few studs of their own and way more depth of talent and size.
So back to the phone calls - yes, both sides make them. But, again, having seen the reaction myself, the kid being courted by a team that is routinely making the semis and championship games has his eyes light up because he knows he can go to a place where being surrounded by depth of talent is more or less guaranteed. The facilities and academics and all of that other stuff don't matter in that moment (and those factors feel exaggerated by some - Loyola and Mt. Carmel, for example, have facilities and programming that are close enough to any public school that it's a negligible "con" in the decision-making process). If the kid chooses to go to the private school, he can play for state trophies. He doesn't have to hope to have a few other stud football players in his class in his neighborhood. (Again, to compare to basketball, coaches hope to get 1-2 good players in each class... a class without 1-2 good players means you're going to have a rough year or two while you hope the next class has some good players - this is even more imperative in football where you need multiple good players, linemen in particular, in each class to compete at the highest level).
I know the counter argument is that the trophies are proof of the "better coaching" - but come on, let's sometimes call a spade a spade. Or at least acknowledge there's more to it than just "good coaching and good culture." Private schools don't win at a proportionally much higher clip relative to how many there are in the state because of coaching alone. There's more talent. It's the "Jimmy's and the Joe's" as someone stated above. And if there's not explicitly more talent, the different rules of acquiring it make it so that it's easier to avoid a down year. Many of the public schools are dealing with pretty drastically changing demographics. Check the school report cards - there are growing Hispanic populations in almost all large suburban high schools. This is not a sleight, but that demographic often leads to less football playing population in the school. And this demographic change has led even more of the more stereotypical football-playing population to consider private schools where all of the boys still play football (and where you're more guaranteed to always have a "good class"). I think the combination of some of these factors set up some of these private schools for a sustained period of time where they dominate nearly everyone but each other.
I end my long-winded post by restating that I want a good product. The $5 for a high school game has always been the best deal in town for entertainment. But not if it's an increasing number of blowouts. I've always thought there should be more playing around with some sort of ranking formulas. For perspective, I don't think Rochester winning so many in a row at the lower class made much sense either (but we know they can't play 8A after the thrashing they got from Loyola). Aim for a competitive balance. Which is a hard thing to define... I think it's one of those "you know it when you see it" kind of things. I do think the multiplier makes sense on some level. I think a success factor makes sense on some level (for private and public - let's get East St. Louis in the higher classes!). I'm sure there are some other tweaks that people smarter than me could think of in addition to those two factors.
