SiuCubFan8 said:

is that true?
I thought the figures were very close.

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Hour drive vs 2 hr drive.

If all the favorites win, the IHSA may implode.

I don't know much about them, but I know they will be good and well coached as always. I also know that they hate Mt. Carmel and all the private schools. If I were them, and I was knocked out by the Caravan evey year........ I'd hate them too. Should be a great game between 2 really good teams. GO MC!!!

colin2229 said:

Only thing NIU has going for themselves is proximity to Chicago which allows for bigger crowds.

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is that true?
I thought the figures were very close.

Only thing NIU has going for themselves is proximity to Chicago which allows for bigger crowds.

MC63 said:

Any insights from fans or rivals?

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Very similar team to what they always are. Great defense and a pro style offense. They have been playing a sophomore QB more and more as of late and the offense has been better.

I don’t think this team is as good as years past. The caravan will be just fine.

Batavia will never be able to hang with the elite of the CCL until they change up their offense. Not going to line up and run the ball for 4quarters against these teams.

crusader_of_90 said:

Some of their faithful would choose their entire receiving corps and QB over anyone from East Side.

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Nice job hijacking a thread with incorrect info.

PowerI66 said:

You're thinking of Geneva

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Derp

crusader_of_90 said:

Some of their faithful would choose their entire receiving corps and QB over anyone from East Side.

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You're thinking of Geneva

McCaravan said:

Welcome to Chicago! Broken windows are the least of our worries. Hell I live in an area called Cop Land and I've had my car window smashed in 3 times! 😀

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I think that's why it was said as more of an offhanded joke than a shot at anybody

MC63. You can look at the season stats as an insight to their strengths. Game not gonna be close.

Batavia Season Stats

SiuCubFan8 said:

The last two game haven't been great for the D.
I'd have to look up, but they have given up way too many 3rd and long when they could have gotten off the field.

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I would say they have played better. But 21 points would have won the Green Bay game. Yes, giving up 30 points to the Vikings are too many. But every team will have games in which they give up a lot of points. Hell the Chiefs have given up more points in their last two games than the Bears, including 27 to Carolina. The difference is, they did score 30 to beat them. They won one of the games in which the defense wasn't great.

k1867 said:

Oh cool.

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I disagree with their sentiments. Not sure what you think about the topic. Your contribution is actually nothing.

crusader_of_90 said:

Some of their faithful would choose their entire receiving corps and QB over anyone from East Side.

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Oh cool.

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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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).

12-ESL
10-Loyola
9-Carmel
8-Naz
6-Montini

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.

Click to expand...

All these actual factual numbers just gives me all the feels. Yet there will still be those thst somehow choose to dispute them and just go off opinions and assumptions based on nothing.

This also further proves my point that Illinois is top heavy for football.

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.

IHSA HQ in Bloomington - ESL, Rochester, Springfield Gr, Bradley, Belleville A, etc lot closer to Normal than DeKalb. Better hotels, more things to do if you stay the nite.

Snetsrak61 said:

Its been tossed around before, but I don't think I've seen anyone take a formal attempt at laying out what it would look like.

Below posts will be a look at a Football Enrollment methodology.

Basic Method;
1. Your Football enrollment is your opponents enrollment averaged, with the top and bottom enrollment eliminated
2. I excluded out of state opponents
3. This was a judgement call, but I multiplied all private school enrollment figures. I think if a modernized FE were to be implemented this would need to be looked at. It didn't have huge impact if I did it on unmultiplied. For the private schools, an average change of 192 to the football enrollment number. Seemed to impact the smaller private schools more than the CCL/ESCC guys.

Results by class will be in the post below. Here are the cutoffs though compared to the current enrollment cutoffs in 2024

Class	Current Range	FE Range
1A	(0 - 292.5)	(220 - 325)
2A	(296.5 - 403.5)	(325 - 436)
3A	(406.5 - 542.5)	(439 - 580)
4A	(553 - 844)	(581 - 997)
5A	(848 - 1,272.5),	(1,017 - 1,373)
6A	(1,723 - 1,802)	(1,377 - 1,666)
7A	(1,604 - 2,156)	(1,666 - 2,173)
8A	(2,190 +)	(2,190 +)

Where would the 16 state finalists have been? So we'd have a least 4 new finalists. And potentially more depending how brackets were to shake out. YES, private schools have inflated. Not to be unexpected, but I'll point out that at least a couple traditional power public school programs / recent state finalists have as well: Rochester 5A, Cary Grove 7A, Prairie Ridge 7A, Kankakee 7A (probably more, but those were a few I noticed)
1A - Lena (L.-Winslow)
2A - Maroa (M.-Forsyth)
3A - Monticello
4A - Palos Heights (Chicago Christian)
4A - Mt. Zion
5A - Belleville (Althoff Catholic)
6A - LaGrange Park (Nazareth Academy)
6A - Chicago (DePaul)
6A - Lombard (Montini)
7A - Wilmette (Loyola Academy)
7A - Joliet (Catholic Academy)
7A - Chicago (Mt. Carmel)
7A - Geneva
7A - Batavia
8A - East St. Louis (Sr.)
8A - Elmhurst (York)

Classes to follow;

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Great stuff @Snetsrak61!

Some of their faithful would choose their entire receiving corps and QB over anyone from East Side.

PowerI66 said:

Path? Yes. Team? No.

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You remeber saying "I can do that while also pointing out that they had one of, if not the, easiest paths to get there in the state. Walk and chew bubblegum kind of stuff."

This statement reeks Path? Yes. Team? Yes?
Negative Nally.
I am done with semanics. Can't believe keep waisting my time with you. Have some stones and give LWC credit.