Exactly right.
Just more proof how loath public most school fans are to lose to private schools in the playoffs. It sticks in their craw, and they can't let it go.
Instead of getting better like some public schools have done over the years (it CAN be and HAS been done), they would rather give in to expediency and mediocrity by discriminating against a group of schools that experience more success than they do. Basically, they don't want to do the work. It's like C students resenting A students and pushing for grade inflation so that they can be A students without having to put in the work.
Your explanation might have more credibility except for the fact, as I explained to you last year, I'm not a public-school fan. My views are based on where the evidence leads me with the ultimate objectives of being fair and trying to save the private schools' integration into the IHSA playoffs. My daughter taught at St. Francis for 13 years and I have attended more St. Francis games than the games of any other high school over the last 20 years. Second place would go to Nazareth Academy because I worked in La Grange Park and it was therefore convenient, plus the fact one of my co-worker/friend's kids played for the Roadrunners (so we would sometimes attend a game together).
My daughter currently teaches at a Lutheran elementary/middle school in Batavia, where my wife and I subsidize the cost of our three granddaughters' attendance. [Since my daughter teaches part-time, they do not attend for free.] Clearly, I have nothing against private schools. Nevertheless, having attended Lyons Township my freshman and sophomore years, and Maine East my junior and senior years, I am also familiar with the public-school experience. Having been a fan of Illinois high school football for many years, I am probably as close as you are going to get to an unbiased observer of the public/private debate.
Turning briefly to the comment of SiuCubFan8, the playoff success of the Chicagoland Christian Conference (as currently comprised) is not even close to the success of the CCL/ESCC, and therefore the evidence indicates no new arrangement is needed. I could not tell you the last time Chicago Christian made the semifinals, if ever. In the case of Althoff, they are an independent (which precludes the same remedy) and I don't think they have won a state football championship in at least 20 years.
Finally, as I have mentioned numerous times in the past, and I have proposed in the past, if a success factor for individual schools is to be used (which, of course, it currently is for private schools), then a similar success factor should be applied to public schools as well. The plan I've proposed in this thread would eliminate the need for a separate success factor to be applied to CCL/ESCC schools.
I do find it amusing, though, that the second someone proposes a plan that might make it more difficult for a private school to win a state football championship, the private school supporters turn into the same whiners and complainers they accuse the fans of Antioch and Sycamore to be. To those particular private-school supporters, I say, "just get better".
