It seemed to me that two points were being made. First, 7 on 7 success doesn't always translate into fall championships. Although there often is disagreement among posters as to how valuable 7 on 7 play is, I don't think most would disagree with the sentiment that 7 on 7 success does not guarantee a November championship. So it doesn't seem that is the point that created controversy.
The second point was that East St. Louis sometimes underachieves based on their talent. Therein lies the controversy. The following has been said by others earlier in this thread but is worth repeating here; regardless of whether or not the statement regarding underachievement is true, when dealing with high school teams and high school athletes no useful purpose is served by expressing such an opinion. There may be some value occasionally for a coach to express that view to his team if he thinks it is true. But for those on the outside looking in, there is little to be gained by expressing such an opinion. Doing so may have represented a minor indiscretion on the part of colin2229 in my humble opinion. I emphasize the word "minor".
From that point the controversy escalated because one contributor to this board has the unpleasant habit of denigrating in exceedingly harsh terms any views and opinions from fellow posters with which he disagrees. He uses words such as asinine, dumb and moronic which, even if technically they are directed at the comments, have the unfortunate effect of disparaging the fellow poster himself (the author of the comments). It reflects a remarkable lack of class and I'm grateful there are very few contributors to this message board that display that kind of conduct.
One of the benefits of being an old retired guy is that I can take a couple of hours on a Tuesday afternoon and watch (for a second time) a great high school championship game. I did so today. It is possible that the genesis of the current controversy were comments made by the announcers of the game. They referred to the game as a "David versus Goliath matchup" several times and described the talent level of the Flyers as "mind boggling". Then, in almost the very next breath, they would talk about the 20 penalties East St. Louis committed in the quarterfinals against Lemont and the 19 penalties they committed in the semifinals against Crete-Monee. It is, perhaps, understandable how colin2229 came to hold the views he has.
Having just watched the game and feeling free to express my opinion because of its positive nature, I can unequivocally state that East St. Louis did not underperform in the championship game. They cut way down on the penalties and turned the ball over only once (late in the game under pressure to make a play). As far as coaching... they made the necessary adjustments in the second half to hold a high-scoring Trojan offense to only 7 points. They were playing an unbeaten team that had allowed no previous opponent closer than 14 points, and came up just one point shy. They nearly overcame a ten-point halftime deficit. The Flyers played like champions. They played an excellent team that had to play an almost perfect game to beat them by one point.
In closing I would like to address the more technical question of whether or not the Cary-Grove offensive line was blowing the East St. Louis defensive line off the ball. Here, I must say, I side with colin2229 and ClownBaby. The movement of the offensive line was much more lateral in nature rather than pushing the D-line downfield. The Flyer defense seemed to have difficulty making the correct reads in the first half, which often happens to all teams when playing an option offense for the first time in a long time. One can win with talent and one can win with skill. The two are related but they are not the same. The former reflects natural ability whereas the latter represents acquired ability. That is why it is normally talent that gets recruited. The coaches think, normally correctly, that the skill level can be developed. Talent for the most part cannot be taught. The two traits are not mutually exclusive. One can be both talented and skilled. Kudos to both teams for getting the most out of their players' abilities. As for us on the sidelines, it might be best if we discontinue suggesting in some vague way that our fellow posters have some kind of nefarious motive for expressing a relatively innocent opinion.
