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NIUAlum2002 District Scheduling proposal fix

His proposal already bumps certain private schools up class or two from their actual size, but he's just not calling the bumping a multiplier or success factor. Boylan is bumped up to 7A. Rita and MC are bumped up to 8A, even though they are both 7A multiplied schools currently. Immaculate Conception, a school of 321 actual students and 530 with the multiplier, he has bumped up to Class 5A. Bishop Mac, a similarly sized school to IC, is also bumped up to 5A in this proposal. Marian Central Catholic, a school that the IHSA has already multiplied up to 5A has been placed in 6A in his proposal.

The more I peel away from this onion, the stronger the smell when it comes to how private schools are classified.
 
He's already multiplying and success factoring certain private schools in his proposal, but he's just not calling it that....which is kind of shady if you ask me. Boylan is multiplied up to 7A. Rita and MC are multiplied up to 8A, even though they are both 7A multiplied schools currently. Immaculate Conception, a school of 321 actual students and 530 with the multiplier, he has in Class 5A. Bishop Mac, a similarly sized school to IC, is also in 5A in this proposal. Marian Central Catholic, a school that the IHSA has already multiplied up to 5A has been placed in 6A in his proposal.

The more I peel away from this onion, the stronger the smell when it comes to how private schools are classified.

His proposal has no private district in 4A. IC, with 3 titles in 3 years, under some recent system would be success factored to 5A despite their large 3A weighted enrollment. McNamara, a small 4A weighted enrollment, would be success factored under a recent system with two titles in 4 years. Someone is going to realize that under the proposal 4A is somewhat watered down by having two full CPS districts and no private district.

This proposal also takes Kankakee away from its Southland history and places the Kays with a line of schools running down I-57, Rantoul being the closest, and Rantoul is further away from Kankakee than the Kays' current most distant conference opponent...

And I could see complaints from the larger classes that 48 schools in 8A is far too small of a class, as are 8A schools more important than 1A thru 4A (any MC fan opinion is hereby already ignored...). But I understand the logic of wanting smaller 8A districts (I don't agree with it, but I understand it). Maybe 8A should be eight districts of seven schools each, which would help absorb the missing conference...
 
OUTSTANDING work from poster NIUAlum2002 and here is a separate recap of his work all in one story.

NIUAlum2002 IHSA District scheduling counter proposal

Obviously, NIUAlum2002 put a lot of work into this and overall, I do like this version. However, selfishly speaking, playing MC-Marist-BR-LA-ND in order to make the playoffs every year would be a very difficult task.

One can say: "Well, buck up and make sure SR gets better." This is true, but I honestly would like a little easier route. Just the way I feel. The CCL Blue is a damn grind and so would SR's district under NIUAlum2002's plan.

Number-wise, SR is not a solid 7A team. She is on the lower end of 7A now due to the selective enrollment. If we're going districts, I don't think Cascia should play three 8A schools, unless they choose to.
 
His proposal has no private district in 4A. IC, with 3 titles in 3 years, under some recent system would be success factored to 5A despite their large 3A weighted enrollment. McNamara, a small 4A weighted enrollment, would be success factored under a recent system with two titles in 4 years. Someone is going to realize that under the proposal 4A is somewhat watered down by having two full CPS districts and no private district.

Mac does not have two titles in 4 years. Their last title came in 2015.
 
Very interesting! However, don't' think "rivalry" is an important factor in segregating privates (6 team districts) from public's if they're all playing under a single body that is the IHSA. Same goes for CPS schools. Either all included playing by the same rules or leave it alone.
 
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love the work and think it is much better than many of the other posted altneratives. I think keeping CPS together is only viable solution to prevent competitive imbalance.

Only concern is with 2/3 of 8a teams making playoffs. Think you risk an irrelvant regular season. Woudl rather than 24 teams in 8A with first round byes for district champs.
I thought about that. My concern though was that 8A is really stacked with great teams and I wanted to reward that a bit by having more make the playoffs. At the very least by making it 4 out of 6 I felt most teams while they wouldn't always be in the running to win a district could at least qualify for that 4th spot and make the playoffs.
 
All.... If I understand correctly no multiplier or success tax. This plan is DOA. There is no way the publics would agree to end those discriminatory policies. They would be screaming to the high "heavens" ;) an banging on the Ihsa's door to get those manipulative plans put back in.

Having said that though if something like this did manage to pass looking at the conference I follow (CS8) a non multiplied SHG would be with an enrollment of around 650 a mid to upper pack 4A team. Rochester for 2019 could go 5A in postseason play but unlikely. Their enrollment is set to drop somewhat in 2020. But it would be fun if both of those schools ended up in the same district playing 4A small ball and more importantly meeting up in the postseason. (much to the chagrin of Rocket fans) Ratsy

Rochester was tricky because I'm not familiar with what they would prefer. If they preferred to play down in 4A without their former conference mates than that could easily be fixed as there is easily another school in the region with more students that could be moved up to replace them. I just assumed they wouldn't mind playing up in 5A with all of their recent success.
 
His proposal already bumps certain private schools up a class or two from their actual size, but he's just not calling the bumping a multiplier or success factor. Boylan is bumped up to 7A, despite being a school of 856 students that has failed to qualify for the playoffs (playing a regular season closed conference schedule against the same schools he has them districted with in his proposal) in two of the past four years. Rita and Mt Carmel are bumped up to 8A, even though they are both 7A multiplied schools currently. Immaculate Conception, a school of 321 actual students and 530 with the multiplier, he has bumped up to Class 5A. Bishop Mac, a similarly sized school to IC, is also bumped up to 5A in this proposal. Marian Central Catholic, a school that the IHSA has already multiplied up to 5A has been placed in 6A in his proposal.

The more I peel away from this onion, the stronger the smell when it comes to how private schools are classified.
All good points. Here were my thoughts on why I did private school districting the way I did that I posted in the other thread.

Here was my rationale regarding private school concerns that others have raised in multiple posts. Again I could be completely mistaken but here's what I was thinking when drawing these up.

Private schools are multiplied unofficially in some cases under this proposal but it is by the private schools themselves not the IHSA. For example in 8A if it was felt that St. Rita was too small to compete in 8A they could be replaced with Benet, Carmel, Fenwick, or even St. Ignatius. That is up to the private schools to determine themselves and not the IHSA which I thought would be appealing. Ultimately we could create a scenario where no private schools play in 8A if we are using true enrollment numbers but I felt that would be a detriment to those schools for recruiting purposes and that they would actually prefer to play up in higher classes.

St. Rita and Mt. Carmel are interesting case studies because under the current district proposal they would be grouped with mostly CPS schools. What happens when those schools refuse to play and just forfeit the game? We could be looking at a possibility where Mt. Carmel and St. Rita have multiple forfeit weeks which is what currently happens in the CPS with some schools. Even if that isn't the case, these games will be so noncompetitive that I can't seeing it as being beneficial to these two programs.

For Boylan I felt that since historically they have played many 7A teams in their conference each year that they would prefer to continue that setup.

For Bishop Mac and IC I felt the same thing applied. For Bishop Mac they could always be moved down to 3A and at least play some similar sized local schools. For IC though I believe they would also be facing a lot more travel and potentially a CPS schedule of some schools as well. My understanding is that private schools would prefer to play each other even at the expense of having to play a class or two up but I could easily be mistaken on that opinion.

Finally the reason why I skipped over 4A and 3A with the privates is that the remaining private schools seemed as an average to be a 2A grouping. Does that mean 4A schools will play 1A schools? Yes it does. But I thought that these schools would fit best as one grouping. Perhaps it would work better based on pure geography, but again private schools lose their private school rivalries.
 
His proposal has no private district in 4A. IC, with 3 titles in 3 years, under some recent system would be success factored to 5A despite their large 3A weighted enrollment. McNamara, a small 4A weighted enrollment, would be success factored under a recent system with two titles in 4 years. Someone is going to realize that under the proposal 4A is somewhat watered down by having two full CPS districts and no private district.

This proposal also takes Kankakee away from its Southland history and places the Kays with a line of schools running down I-57, Rantoul being the closest, and Rantoul is further away from Kankakee than the Kays' current most distant conference opponent...

And I could see complaints from the larger classes that 48 schools in 8A is far too small of a class, as are 8A schools more important than 1A thru 4A (any MC fan opinion is hereby already ignored...). But I understand the logic of wanting smaller 8A districts (I don't agree with it, but I understand it). Maybe 8A should be eight districts of seven schools each, which would help absorb the missing conference...

Kankakee gets a tough break under this proposal and there might be a better way to keep them with the Southland which I would prefer. Feel free to take a look and see if there is a swap that works better. I couldn't easily find one which is why I put them with the I 57 schools.

4A is watered down and I suppose one of those CPS districts could be swapped further down. One of the reasons for leaving 4A and 3A free of private schools is that there are not enough private schools to group together so a couple classes were going to be without a private district. I figured 4A and 3A worked best based on enrollment but I could have also left them out of 8A and 7A or 2A and 1A instead. I thought 4A and 3A fit the best.
 
I thought I read somewhere
All good points. Here were my thoughts on why I did private school districting the way I did that I posted in the other thread.

Here was my rationale regarding private school concerns that others have raised in multiple posts. Again I could be completely mistaken but here's what I was thinking when drawing these up.

Private schools are multiplied unofficially in some cases under this proposal but it is by the private schools themselves not the IHSA. For example in 8A if it was felt that St. Rita was too small to compete in 8A they could be replaced with Benet, Carmel, Fenwick, or even St. Ignatius. That is up to the private schools to determine themselves and not the IHSA which I thought would be appealing. Ultimately we could create a scenario where no private schools play in 8A if we are using true enrollment numbers but I felt that would be a detriment to those schools for recruiting purposes and that they would actually prefer to play up in higher classes.

St. Rita and Mt. Carmel are interesting case studies because under the current district proposal they would be grouped with mostly CPS schools. What happens when those schools refuse to play and just forfeit the game? We could be looking at a possibility where Mt. Carmel and St. Rita have multiple forfeit weeks which is what currently happens in the CPS with some schools. Even if that isn't the case, these games will be so noncompetitive that I can't seeing it as being beneficial to these two programs.

For Boylan I felt that since historically they have played many 7A teams in their conference each year that they would prefer to continue that setup.

For Bishop Mac and IC I felt the same thing applied. For Bishop Mac they could always be moved down to 3A and at least play some similar sized local schools. For IC though I believe they would also be facing a lot more travel and potentially a CPS schedule of some schools as well. My understanding is that private schools would prefer to play each other even at the expense of having to play a class or two up but I could easily be mistaken on that opinion.

Finally the reason why I skipped over 4A and 3A with the privates is that the remaining private schools seemed as an average to be a 2A grouping. Does that mean 4A schools will play 1A schools? Yes it does. But I thought that these schools would fit best as one grouping. Perhaps it would work better based on pure geography, but again private schools lose their private school rivalries.
private schools are really difficult to say 7A or 8A ,Loyola would be the only school that for sure is 8A yr in and yr out.The rest would best fit in 7A!I would love to see them all stay together in a Catholic division for the rivalries
 
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I thought I read somewhere

private schools are really difficult to say 7A or 8A ,Loyola would be the only school that for sure is 8A yr in and yr out.The rest would best fit in 7A!I would love to see them all stay together in a Catholic division for the rivalries

True. You could also arrange them in 7A-4A and keep 8A and 3A empty of privates if you wanted while bumping up 6 publics fo create another 8A district.
 
Many teams get their @$$e$ beat in the playoffs.I think it is stupid for certain CPS teams to not be eligible for the playoffs.If you have a football team you should be eligible otherwise don't have a football team.Also I hear Mt.Carmel(IL) is not too willing to leave their conference in Indiana
 
The rivers in Joliet will flood due to tears if this happens! No way JCA wants to play schools like Nazareth in the playoffs.
Unlike you pussies who were too good to play in the Prep Bowl in 2017 Joliet Catholic sure as hell isn't afraid to play anybody!!!
 
Unlike you pussies who were too good to play in the Prep Bowl in 2017 Joliet Catholic sure as hell isn't afraid to play anybody!!!
Cmon Joliet Catholic is not afraid to play anyone.They are one of the historic football schools in IL and are back up again,fun to watch them win again this yr!
 
Taking IHSA numbers from this year minus the multiplier.
Actual boys in the seats:
LA 1005
Marist 814
BR 694
MC 618
SR 575

I hate this District football idea. But if it is implemented it has to go straight down the line. If not it is doomed to fail. As others have posted even ran legit it will kill enough football programs that they will go back to 6 classes within 4 years of when this starts IMHO.
 
Private schools are multiplied unofficially in some cases under this proposal but it is by the private schools themselves not the IHSA. For example in 8A if it was felt that St. Rita was too small to compete in 8A they could be replaced with Benet, Carmel, Fenwick, or even St. Ignatius. That is up to the private schools to determine themselves and not the IHSA which I thought would be appealing. Ultimately we could create a scenario where no private schools play in 8A if we are using true enrollment numbers but I felt that would be a detriment to those schools for recruiting purposes and that they would actually prefer to play up in higher classes.

You are assuming that the private schools have (or will have) some sort of all-encompassing, statewide infrastructure in which they can make the decisions/classifications that you claim they can make. Even if that were the case, I dont think the IHSA would agree with any other grouping of schools telling the IHSA where certain schools should be classified in the IHSA playoffs. In addition, if St. Rita is too small to be in 8A, do you think those other schools you mentioned would volunteer to bump themselves up or would agree to being bumped up in the IHSA playofffs by some yet-to-be-formed overarching private school group? I think you have made some pretty big assumptions here in the name of expediency.

St. Rita and Mt. Carmel are interesting case studies because under the current district proposal they would be grouped with mostly CPS schools. What happens when those schools refuse to play and just forfeit the game? We could be looking at a possibility where Mt. Carmel and St. Rita have multiple forfeit weeks which is what currently happens in the CPS with some schools. Even if that isn't the case, these games will be so noncompetitive that I can't seeing it as being beneficial to these two programs.

I agree, but your alternative is to include Rita with the likes of LWE, MS and HF in the 8A playofffs, assuming they can get past Loyola, Marist, Rice, MC, etc. in their own district playoffs. You've corrected a wrong with another wrong. The fact that Rita has been in a conference with Loyola, Rice, MC, etc. is different from where they belong in the IHSA playoffs. Right now, they are only 160 students away from being a multiplied 6A program.

For Boylan I felt that since historically they have played many 7A teams in their conference each year that they would prefer to continue that setup.

Boylan is similar to Rita. Simply because they are in a traditionally 7A conference (and experiencing very mixed results in recent years) does not mean that they would prefer to be (or belong) in the 7A playoffs. Heck, Boylan couldn't make it past the quarters of 5A this year (their best playoff success since 2013). What makes you think they would prefer to be in 7A?

For Bishop Mac and IC I felt the same thing applied. For Bishop Mac they could always be moved down to 3A and at least play some similar sized local schools. For IC though I believe they would also be facing a lot more travel and potentially a CPS schedule of some schools as well. My understanding is that private schools would prefer to play each other even at the expense of having to play a class or two up but I could easily be mistaken on that opinion.

You may be correct that many private schools prefer to play each other in the regular season (although you can't include IC and Mac in that generalization since both just recently joined a conference with public schools), but that does not mean that they are willing to play up a class or two in the playoffs as the price they have to pay to play each other in the regular season

Again, I'm amazed at the amount of work you have put into this, but I think you have made some pretty big assumptions when it comes to the playoff classification of private schools.
 
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You are assuming that the private schools have (or will have) some sort of all-encompassing, statewide infrastructure in which they can make the decisions/classifications that you claim they can make. Even if that were the case, I dont think the IHSA would agree with any other grouping of schools telling the IHSA where certain schools should be classified in the IHSA playoffs. In addition, if St. Rita is too small to be in 8A, do you think those other schools you mentioned would volunteer to bump themselves up or would agree to being bumped up in the IHSA playofffs by some yet-to-be-formed overarching private school group? I think you have made some pretty big assumptions here in the name of expediency.



I agree, but your alternative is to include Rita with the likes of LWE, MS and HF in the 8A playofffs, assuming they can get past Loyola, Marist, Rice, MC, etc. in their own district playoffs. You've corrected a wrong with another wrong. The fact that Rita has been in a conference with Loyola, Rice, MC, etc. is different from where they belong in the IHSA playoffs. Right now, they are only 160 students away from being a multiplied 6A program.



Boylan is similar to Rita. Simply because they are in a traditionally 7A conference (and experiencing very mixed results in recent years) does not mean that they would prefer to be (or belong) in the 7A playoffs. Heck, Boylan couldn't make it past the quarters of 5A this year (their best playoff success since 2013). What makes you think they would prefer to be in 7A?



You may be correct that many private schools prefer to play each other in the regular season (although you can't include IC and Mac in that generalization since both just recently joined a conference with public schools), but that does not mean that they are willing to play up a class or two in the playoffs as the price they have to pay to play each other in the regular season

Again, I'm amazed at the amount of work you have put into this, but I think you have made some pretty big assumptions when it comes to the playoff classification of private schools.

Fair enough. Obviously any private school can simply be grouped by geography and enrollment and then just play whatever publics are close by but it seems to make for a fairly boring regular season in my mind. With privates taking 5 of the 8 finalist spots in 8A-5A this past year I didn't think playing a class or two up playoff-wise would be that big of a concern. I assume Loyola, Rice and Marist think of themselves more as 8A schools come playoff time not 7A or 6A but that could just be me I guess.
 
Fair enough. Obviously any private school can simply be grouped by geography and enrollment and then just play whatever publics are close by but it seems to make for a fairly boring regular season in my mind. With privates taking 5 of the 8 finalist spots in 8A-5A this past year I didn't think playing a class or two up playoff-wise would be that big of a concern. I assume Loyola, Rice and Marist think of themselves more as 8A schools come playoff time not 7A or 6A but that could just be me I guess.

I'm completely fine with Loyola as a multiplied 8A school in the 8A district that Soucie put them in. I don't think that will be boring, or any more boring than when Loyola has to play crossovers against CCL schools like DePaul Prep or Leo.

I understand that Loyola is an outlier and that it will be boring and problematic to watch schools like MC, SR, Marist, BR, etc. stomp all over CPL schools. But that's the IHSA's problem and the CPL's problem. Don't make it a private school problem. If the CPL schools don't want to play private schools then their options are to drop football, forfeit the games, or find a better solution that doesn't involve making certain private schools play in classes above where the IHSA has them now.

The issue is you are moving SOME schools up and keeping some in place. Just keep the damn multiplier and form districts. But don't put in a 2X multiplier for some schools and 1.65 for others.
 
I thought about that. My concern though was that 8A is really stacked with great teams and I wanted to reward that a bit by having more make the playoffs. At the very least by making it 4 out of 6 I felt most teams while they wouldn't always be in the running to win a district could at least qualify for that 4th spot and make the playoffs.

What i would look at doing would be to combine 7A and 8A into a mega class. Start their season a week early and have a 64 team playoff. Think this solves alot of issues. From a competitive perspective, not concerned about the enrollment gaps. I'd argue the smallest 7A team could be competitive with anyone in the state.
 
What i would look at doing would be to combine 7A and 8A into a mega class. Start their season a week early and have a 64 team playoff. Think this solves alot of issues. From a competitive perspective, not concerned about the enrollment gaps. I'd argue the smallest 7A team could be competitive with anyone in the state.

I might play around with that this weekend and see what we get. That sounds intriguing.
 
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Fair enough. Obviously any private school can simply be grouped by geography and enrollment and then just play whatever publics are close by but it seems to make for a fairly boring regular season in my mind. With privates taking 5 of the 8 finalist spots in 8A-5A this past year I didn't think playing a class or two up playoff-wise would be that big of a concern. I assume Loyola, Rice and Marist think of themselves more as 8A schools come playoff time not 7A or 6A but that could just be me I guess.

NIUAlum2002, I think Ramblinman makes some very solid points. And I also believe your proposal has some very good points and nothing is perfect. Can you adjust some of your suggestions? I honestly think a Rita and MC should be somewhere else. SR and MC should be in the same district. And I know MC will play anyone, but having both those schools playing 8A schools is unfair. Look at SouthsideCFD's post about the number of boys at those schools and go from there?
 
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