guerinfbfan said:

3rd year in a row for the Ramblers and Dukes.

York played Loyola close in 2023, losing 23-14.

They'd lost to them in 2022 30-3.

They've closed the gap a bit.

Can they beat LA? Sure they could. They'll need Massel and company to be pretty darn near perfect on offense.

I'm not sure I'd wager my mortgage on the Dukes winning, but I will be rooting for my former teammate Don Gelsomino and his Dukes Saturday night.

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IHSAfan207 said:

Wow, so much of what I have been thinking but articulated in a manner I could only wish to do. Thank you for that write up and information bomb! As a fan of good competetive football but newer to these boards, I just want to see more balance in competition.

This right here is what it's all about:

"Pairing schools of competitive equity together for the playoffs leads to competition, struggle, and perseverance - the hallmarks of a true champion and a benefit to all the kids lucky enough to experience them."

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Snetsrak61 said:

All very well stated.

When I broke down the numbers the other year, going back to the start of 8 classes, it was pretty evident that:

Among elite programs that private schools held a competetive edge, but nothing necessarily crazy. Observationally this isn't hard to believe with the two most trophied schools by a long shot both being private schools. A standard that the LWEs and Main Souths can't eclipse, but do compete well against.

Then the next tier was your tier of schools that was not quite elite, but consistently strong. In this tier any private-public difference was totally wiped out.

Then in the lowest tier, programs that will almost never reach a semis let alone finals it was likewise nearly equal to perhaps a slight public edge (razor thin).

But why the perception? I think there's a statistical fallacy we don't notice when we just compare private school verse public school record, which is a common stat used in these arguments.

Think of two equally matched schools competing for the state title, one private and one public. We can probably do this at any of the 6 classes that are split this year.

The public school may very likely have made it to the finals beating all public schools along the way. Maybe they beat one private along the way. So we get perhaps no new data all along the way. The private school on the other hand may very well have beat 3 or 4 public schools along the way. So we get a 3-0 tally to add to our overall private v public record. Conversely whenever there is a weak private school that's bounced in round 1 we only get a 0-1 record to combat the other direction. They can't go get beat again to reinforce their lack of success. Or perhaps they get bounced by a private and we get NO data displaying a weak private even if a large number of public programs may have beat them as well. You can play out this same story in your tier two programs. In your typical private v public quarters matchup its likely we accumulated a 2-0 private-public record one way and a null record the other. Even if the public wins, that quarter of the bracket yields a 2-1 private-public record edge.

Basically the private schools are just a more extreme representation of the have and have nots that define the entire state of HS football. And the difference in opportunity of matchup helps skew that imbalance into a greater public v private divide when we only scratch surface of total record.

So where do we go? Private schools on average should be playing slightly higher than their enrollment than a comparable public school and the waiver program should IMO be eliminated or based on more structural components than a 2 year rolling record that yo-yos private schools up and down every two years.

To the extent that success is a component of classifications it should be applied to both private and public schools. Though I tend to also think it should be zero factor. The objective IMO should be : fair opportunity to field a competetive team. Equality of outcomes shouldn't be the goal, but rather access to opportunity. So enrollment should still be a big factor. Lena Winslow or Byron are top 50 programs if you beleive a ranking system like Massey, but it'd be pretty silly IMO to say they'd be a high-mid seed school in a second best playoff that would match them with tons of 7A and 8A schools if you could line up all schools on a strictly rating basis.

As to football enrollment: it matches regular season to playoff better. Naz absolutely has benefited from having a tough regular season record that preps them well for 5A. It's a totally valid competetive advantage that nearly any small to mid size team could take on in theory. Obviously there's other advantages and disadvantages too, but that goes for every school - just a matter of how you use those advantages. But maybe that opportunity shouldn't exist : you play against the size of school in the playoffs that got you there. Not unreasonable. It would certainly help elevate private school classifications on the whole (with perhaps a slight modification needed that doesn't drag down some of the 8A schools to 6/7A).

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corey90 said:

This isn’t the playoff caliber defense we all thought they would be. Talent is there but something is off. Can’t stop the run, giving up to many yards especially in key moments. Pass defense is suspect but it could be because our d-line isn’t getting enough pressure. They are not terrible but definitely not great. Maybe Eberfool isn’t calling the right scheme in the right moments? Eberfool is the defensive coach so maybe that has something to do with it. Who knows but certainly not the defense we thought we had.
We will see tonight if they can rally against Detroit.

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BornNRazed said:

Loyola wins in a rout. Can't have a trap game in the Championship.

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stonedlizard said:

This all largely depends on how you define the objective of the playoffs, especially in a multi-class playoff system.

I'd love to see a single playoff. In the absence of that, I believe the objective should be to produce playoff classes of teams with ~equivalent competitive equity. I don't care where the team is located, whether the parents pay for their kids to attend the school, or what arbitrary lines are drawn to dictate who can attend. Pairing schools of competitive equity together for the playoffs leads to competition, struggle, and perseverance - the hallmarks of a true champion and a benefit to all the kids lucky enough to experience them.

Enrollment-based classification is an easy and understandable starting point towards this, however quickly proves itself as fundamentally flawed. On it's own, it has a poor correlation towards competitive equity. The IHSA seems to realize this too given varying attempts throughout the years to layer adjustments on top of enrollment (football enrollment, multipliers, success factors). Some of these help towards a competitive equity-based objective. Some could have helped, but have been applied inconsistently and/or illogically.

At the high school level, competitive equity-based systems are possible though, do exist (see Arizona, California, Georgia to name a few), and can be achieved without separating schools based on closed vs open enrollments.

A few things to note...

Whether you choose to accept these or not, there is a fact basis at the Illinois high school level:

• Coaches and programs do make a difference
• The potential population of students available to a school does matter to a degree

When these two aspects have positively aligned for a given school we've seen massive 'success' in the current playoff structure:

• Since 2000, there have been 182 IHSA champions crowned across all classes, but only 80 unique schools have earned a championship; 40 of those have won multiple championships in the same time period
• Those 40 schools are responsible for 142 (~78%) of all championships since 2000
• The winning most school (Rochester) and 27 of the 40 (~68%) schools winning multiple titles since 2000 are public
• 16 schools are responsible for ~47% of all championships and 10 of these are private

You can almost see the Pareto.

This disparity - 40 schools responsible for ~78% of all championships; 24 schools responsible for ~60%; 16 schools responsible for ~47%; 7 responsible for ~26% - often manifests itself in the public vs private debate because it's easy (those top 24 or 16 or 7 schools are well-known and well-recognized as public or private), because it's fun (good programs make for passionate fan bases which makes for passionate debates and passionate message boards), but mostly because people naturally look to assign blame for a perceived unfairness to the proverbial villain or 'other' instead of recognizing that it's the system itself that is predominant factor behind the disparity.

Take the red pill.

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tuccs said:

I think the Massey line is a fair line. No way Naz is anywhere close to a favorite in this game. Barely won in the regular season and its going to be cold and windy on Saturday.

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tuccs said:

I got a bit overzealous no need to start a Holy War

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tuccs said:

5 championships for the mighty CCL ESCC!! 7 Championships for the Catholics! Next year we are coming for their precious 6a too.

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Wassup13 said:

Massey has JCA as 6 point favorites.

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Irish LB said:

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McCaravan said:

Batavia will hang signs and make sure its very well known that they are ONE TOWN, ONE TEAM!

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