Lots of bad conferences. Upstate Eight, MSL East, CSL North, Antioch's Conference and most of the Catholic League sans the Blue and Orange, Chicagoland Christian, just to name a few.
There are 21 large-school conferences. In making that statement, I defined a large-school conference as a conference that produced at least one 8A or 7A participant in this year's playoff brackets. I did refer to large-school conferences in my initial post, and no, sorry, the Chicagoland Christian Conference does not qualify as a large-school conference.
The list below ranks the conferences, using a rudimentary system, to provide some sense of how strong they are in playoff competition. They are ranked, in order, based on championships won during the last five playoff years; then semifinal appearances; and then the most recent appearance. Finally, those conferences having no semifinal appearances in the last five years were ranked based on their most recent appearance, if that appearance occurred in the last 25 years.
The CCL/ESCC was listed as one conference because the IHSA does not recognize each one of their individual divisions as a conference. The same is true for the new Southwest Valley Conference.
1. CCL/ESCC (11-29-2023) The conference has won 11 championships and made 29 semifinal appearances in the last five playoff years.
2. Fox Valley (3-5-2023) Their most recent semifinal appearance was in 2023.
3. Southwest Valley (2-5-2023)
4. Southwestern (2-4-2023)
5. DuKane (1-5-2023)
6. West Suburban Silver (0-4-2023) 8A appearance in 2023
7. North Suburban (0-4-2023) 6A appearance in 2023
8. Big Twelve (0-2-2023)
9. Mid-Illini (0-2-2023)
10. Central Suburban South (0-2-2021)
11. Mid-Suburban East (0-2-2021)
12. Mid-Suburban West (0-1-2023)
13. West Suburban Gold (0-1-2019)
14. NIC-10 (0-1-2019)
15. Western Big Six (0-1-2018)
16. Chicago Public League (2017)
17. Southwest Prairie West (2016)
18. Central Suburban North (2016)
19. Upstate Eight West (2008)
20. Upstate Eight East (1999)
21. Southwest Prairie East
I consider the top five conferences to be excellent large-school football conferences. Numbers 6 - 11 are good conferences. Numbers 12 - 15 are average conferences. [Barrington of the Mid-Suburban West Conference was an 8A semifinalist last year. Both Quincy of the Western Big Six Conference and Rockton Hononegah of the NIC-10 were 7A quarterfinalists last year.] Numbers 16 - 20 are below-average conferences; and the Southwest Prairie East Conference ranks last.
One might quibble to a small degree about some aspects of these rankings, but the list demonstrates why I consider the Southwest Prairie West Conference to be a below-average large-school football conference.
1A-Lena Winslow vs Belleville Althoff