It seems to work in the Catholic League/ESCC, so…

[olderbytheminute]

Several years back the Catholic League and East Suburban Catholic Conference went to this four-team “division” format, giving up automatic playoffs bids to league winners and one result is getting more league teams into the playoffs by having more teams reach the 5-win mark.
Question: what if the 8-team North Suburban Conference went to two four-team divisions.
For example. Stevenson, Lake Zurich, Libertyville and Warren would be one group and Zion-Benton, Waukegan, Lake Forest and Mundelein could be the other.
Play 3 division games and 2 crossovers. That gives each school a chance to play for other opponents instead of the current two.
The problem of course is finding games weeks 3 and 4 outside the conference.
Which gets me to this: What if a lot of conferences did this?
The Northern Lake County Conference is eight teams with haves and never haves. What about Round Lake, Grayslake Central, North Chicago and Grant I one division, and Lakes, Antioch, Grayslake North and Wauconda in another.
The 10-team Fox Valley Conference could split into two fives. That’s four division games two or three crossovers for each team and two or three other games.
Obviously scheduling would be a challenge. But this season the luck of the scheduling draw has Warren losing its Week 5 game and then playing the league’s four bottom feeders in weeks 6-9 making me wonder how prepared the Devils will be for the postseason.
After seeing I think an 83-0 score by some area team this weekend, it’s gotta be frustrating for a coach to find a teaching moment when a play is wildly successful no matter how poorly it is executed.

 

[Catch--22]

That plan could help some teams that struggle more, depending who they play in those extra non-conference games. It’s not working out for the CSL North this year. It’s a 6-team league, so it’s not exactly like the scenario you described. But they do have non-conference games in Weeks 3 and 4 rather than crossovers with their bigger rivals in the CSL South. Unfortunately, they played those games versus teams from the Mid Suburban League and lost every single one…. 0-12. Instead of getting 4 or 5 teams in, they’ll only get 2.

 

[whitesox05]

So Lake Forest is going to miss the playoffs for the second time in 17 years and all of a sudden they've achieved also-ran status? I think LF will keep playing their rivals and Warren can make other arrangements if the conference is not good enough for them.

 

[olderbytheminute]

So Lake Forest is going to miss the playoffs for the second time in 17 years and all of a sudden they've achieved also-ran status? I think LF will keep playing their rivals and Warren can make other arrangements if the conference is not good enough for them.

You of course are picking the one team on the north suburban conference that already has a perfect setup.
The Scouts have 3 sure built-in wins every year which they would keep in a split. Then they currently play “up” in their other league games against quality opposition which makes the team as playoff ready as possible.
That is why Lake Forest is always a danger team in the playoffs. Their situation is similar to some Catholic League teams that play bigger schools in the regular season and then drop down in level of competition for the playoffs. Teams like that are always dangerous and highly regarded for the postseason.
My suggestion does not help the Lake Forest type schools. But it also does not hurt them as they are only losing two of the quality opponents and maybe in years when the Scouts and Stevenson are not slated to play each other, they schedule each other anyway.
I have zero way to prove this, but I think football took an unbelievable hit during the Covid shutdown and that the sport is heading toward life support at schools where it is not a huge thing.
My unproven guess is that this year, the first year in which basically all pre-Covid season varsity players have graduated, is a season in which the spread between haves and have nots is growing.
And I think that spread is possibly going to grow each coming year.
Obviously there are schools that are yo-yos.., some years up and some some years down. I am not writing about them.
I am concerned that the list of never competitive teams is growing. This year I read that Sandwich and Urbana dropped varsity football for lack of interest,
Those are not Class 1A size schools. I worry that could hAppen on a more frequent basis down the road, and I am just trying to find a way to assure that won’t happen.

 

[The_Oldfan]

Am I wrong, or isn't it an IHSA requirement that a conference be at least 5 teams to qualify for an automatic championship bid?

 

[JCHillmen]

Am I wrong, or isn't it an IHSA requirement that a conference be at least 5 teams to qualify for an automatic championship bid?

I believe it is 6. But most conferences can have 95 percent confidence that their champion would have enough wins to qualify for the playoffs anyway without needing the automatic bid.

Really only a bad league with teams that play tough crossovers/non conference have to worry about it happening. So the southwest prairies struggling division benefits from the auto qualifier. Not many other leagues need to worry about that auto bid.

 

[Panthers1211]

Several years back the Catholic League and East Suburban Catholic Conference went to this four-team “division” format, giving up automatic playoffs bids to league winners and one result is getting more league teams into the playoffs by having more teams reach the 5-win mark.
Question: what if the 8-team North Suburban Conference went to two four-team divisions.
For example. Stevenson, Lake Zurich, Libertyville and Warren would be one group and Zion-Benton, Waukegan, Lake Forest and Mundelein could be the other.
Play 3 division games and 2 crossovers. That gives each school a chance to play for other opponents instead of the current two.
The problem of course is finding games weeks 3 and 4 outside the conference.
Which gets me to this: What if a lot of conferences did this?
The Northern Lake County Conference is eight teams with haves and never haves. What about Round Lake, Grayslake Central, North Chicago and Grant I one division, and Lakes, Antioch, Grayslake North and Wauconda in another.
The 10-team Fox Valley Conference could split into two fives. That’s four division games two or three crossovers for each team and two or three other games.
Obviously scheduling would be a challenge. But this season the luck of the scheduling draw has Warren losing its Week 5 game and then playing the league’s four bottom feeders in weeks 6-9 making me wonder how prepared the Devils will be for the postseason.
After seeing I think an 83-0 score by some area team this weekend, it’s gotta be frustrating for a coach to find a teaching moment when a play is wildly successful no matter how poorly it is executed.

Upstate 8 could split also playing the upper half of the fox Valley and the lower half playing Lake County teams