You said they didn't belong in 5A. How is narrowly defeating ANYONE in the later rounds of the 5A playoffs not proof that they belong in 5A? Yes, they beat the best two 5A public school teams by the slimmest of margins. Apparently, that's all the proof you need. How dare they beat those public schools!
Public 106 Private 62
- Thread starter MS4EVER
- Start date
So glad you are finally seeing the light.
Playing the blame game though is not a virtue.
These posts basically is telling an Antioch player we don’t have a chance against a private school.
What a terrible terrible way to go about things
Life isn’t fair, deal with it and yes get better
What a pansies way to go about life
That coach or whoever posted that should be fired
It's such a begging the question type logic where a private isn't in the right class until their opponent wipes the floor with them.
Well, some people on this board say that Naz should not have even been in the playoffs at 5-4 because 5-4 teams usually get blown out and we don't want too many games with wide margins of victory.
Naz is usually a 5A/6A team but have found success in 7A by winning in 2018 and runner-up in 2019. So I would say this year there were probably in the correct class but if you took the teams that competed in 7A and placed them in 5A, it would not be very pretty for their public counterparts. Now with Naz returning 13 starters and 9 of them are current sophomores, I would think in the next few years 5A would be a cakewalk fand they would be better suited for 6A or 7A to find competitive games that are not won by wide margins.
Wow! You are a tough critic. Now the person should not just be ashamed of himself for making a true statement, but he should be fired from his job as well.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised though, for that is what our country has come to. Rather than stating the truth, by modern standards it is better to paint a false narrative so no one is offended. Apparently such a false narrative would make you feel more comfortable. Thusly, cancel culture was born. Do not state the truth. If you do, you will be fired.
Stop trying to turn this into culture wars. I'm pretty sure krock the house is thinking that whoever is responsible for the tweet is not authorized by Antioch HS to be tweeting that. If so and there is no authorization then some form of negative consequence is not unreasonable to expect. If s/he IS authorized by the school and the school is aware of the tweet, then that's a completely different story.
Last edited:
I still recall the discussion when Naz won their first title in 6A that many thought 5A was better that particular year. Then they dropped back down to 5A enrollment and many though the opposite was true. You can probably take the top 4 in those both those classes in most years and create 28 fun/compelling games. And those 8 teams probably blow out the bottom half of each class too.
If a public is one of those top 8 across those classes, it's unquestioned good on them. And privates automatically are asked "are they in the right class?"
<edited due to an error, may repost>
100% accurate. Don’t forget the enrollment is first doubled then multiplied by 1.65.
Just doubled for the male-only schools. Not the co-eds.
100% inaccurate with respect to Loyola. Solidly a 7A school in actual enrollment.
There's also something not sitting well with Antiochs methodology though I can't quite put my finger on it. In a single elimination setup with a pretty big disparity in types of schools (public v private) I don't think you can compare head to head like that. It's likely a fractional amount of matchups, but since public v public v private matchups are excluded you get potentially weird circumstances in the public v private matchups that probably are going to "favor" the minority position if there is any sort of success.
Last edited:
Hence that’s what the problem with the 1.65 multipler. It doesn’t work. In no way should LA be playing in any other class but 8A. It’s a joke that you keep bringing this up just because the IHSA got it wrong. Use the Rankings to place top teams in their correct class. Stop trying to paint the privates as the victim. I see both sides point of view but you keep pushing the envelope to the point your showing your completely blind.
Does that even sound correct. Rewind! Naz plays in one of toughest conferences in the country in your own words, but then gets to drop to 5A class for the playoffs. Yeah I would say the IHSA multipler got it wrong. Let’s use the rankings to place top teams in class for the playoffs.
Yes, I do think of that. The Catholic Blue is the toughest conference/division in the state and the Catholic Green is either the second or third toughest in the state. The Orange and White are not that far behind. So the question that follows is, why are those conferences so tough? The answer, of course, is because the teams that comprise those conferences are tough, meaning they play at a high level of ability. The common factor related to all those teams is the fact that they are associated with Catholic High Schools. So, the more difficult question to answer is, why do those teams associated with Catholic High Schools play with such a high level of ability?
The answer from the supporters of those schools tends to be that the coaches and players work harder than their public-school counterparts. The answer from the supporters of the public schools tends to be that the Catholic schools are able to attract more talented players because of the different rules governing which students may attend their school and play for their team. [That is, rules that are different from the rules governing most of the public schools.] Although I tend to believe the second view is probably the bigger factor, I cannot say I know for sure what makes those teams so strong.
What I do know is that, like you said, those conferences/teams are strong. There are ten programs in the state that have made the semifinals at least three times in the last five playoffs in classes 5A and above. Six of those programs play in the Catholic Blue or Green (Loyola, Mt. Carmel, Marist, Nazareth, St. Rita, and Brother Rice). So, a set of eight teams (CCL/ESCC Blue and Green) yields six of the top ten programs in the state. That is strength.
What I also know is those teams operate under a different set of rules, in relation to student enrollment, than the public schools operate under.
What I do not know, with certainty, is whether or not the different rules provide the Catholic schools with an advantage. Given the strength of the Catholic programs, it is possible they have an advantage, but it cannot be proven. Further evidence is provided by how well IC Catholic, St. Francis and Wheaton Academy compete in the Metro Suburban Conference; how well Sacred Heart-Griffin competes in the Central State Eight Conference; how well Boylan competes in the NIC Ten Conference; and how well St. Teresa has competed in the Central Illinois Conference (where they all compete against public-school football teams).
What I object to is the absolute certainty with which Catholic school supporters categorically reject the possibility that the enrollment rules might give their teams an advantage. Given the available evidence, they cannot be any more certain that that is the case than I can be that the rules do give them an advantage. The supporters of these schools are absolutely certain their success is due to nothing more than that they work harder, and therefore the public schools simply need to work harder in order to succeed.
I apologize for the length of this essay, but given that it is off-season I shall continue.
I wouldn't expect anyone to trouble themselves with reading past posts from many other threads, but if they did they would find that I have never advocated having separate playoffs for the private schools. I am merely an advocate for the current multiplier and some type of success factor. I think the current success factor could be improved, but am largely okay with it the way it is. My rationale for these two rules is not based on proving the private schools have an enrollment-rules advantage. It is based solely on the provable fact that, on average, the private schools have stronger football programs than the public schools. Sports, like other after-school activities, are an extension of educating our students. If the students are to become the best they can be, they need to be challenged. That is why the best students academically are offered accelerated courses, and the best sports teams should be moved up in class if they have demonstrated success in their current class level. That is the justification for the multiplier and the success factor. It is really immaterial why some students are academically gifted, they ought to be challenged for their own development. It is really immaterial why some football programs are successful, those programs ought to be challenged for the development of their own athletes.
For the record, those are my views. 1) I am not and never have advocated for a separate playoff for private schools. 2) I am an advocate for the multiplier and success factor. 3) I reject the notion that there is a rational basis for Catholic school supporters to be absolutely confident the enrollment rules for their schools do not give them a competitive advantage.
I understand many or most of you do not care what my views are, and possibly do not care what anyone's views are other than your own, but it is sometimes useful to provide clarity in relation to complicated issues.
Last edited:
I can only speak well for Naz, and it's still mostly just my opinion, but I do think seeking out the higher level of competition was a big factor in finding better post season success. When they played a soft regular season schedule in the PSL, they were often paper tigers with a 8-9 win regular season and an easy first round exit for their opponents, and that was largely before the days of the multiplier. It looked a lot like some of these public schools, except they were the private school being trounced. Playing up competition has over time built the expectations and experience of each player from their freshman year on.
There are of course other factors. They brought in a proven head coach. But even that high level success wasn't immediate. I've seen multiple times where posters here act like it's Deion Sanders coming to CU Boulder and transfers just follow in day 1. Nah, that wasn't Naz's experience, at least. Whatever advantages they have it took a lot of time to leverage them. It's not just building one team a student at a time. They've built a program. One that certainly attracts top student athletes now, but is not simply a recruiting arm of the school.
They've also made lots of facility upgrades. First it was all the educational facilities, then a theater, and then finally it was the athletic facilities, and arguably their rapid rise to high level success could be argued to tracks most closer to those facility upgrades.
But it's not like you can argue their facilities are some inherent advantage of being a private school. Quite the opposite in many cases. While not every public school is equal (thanks to how IL funds public education) most decently large and median wealth public school probably has facilities better than most private schools.
But there was no change in underlying advantage/disadvantage landscape available to Naz. Just a question of priorities. Build a baseball field, get a 3rd and 4th place baseball team about 7-8 years later, and eventually a championship. Install field turf for reliable football practice/game facility - win a state title about 6-7 years later. Softball top 4 finish followed a couple years after getting a softball field. Girls Bball and volleyball, state place/champions a few years following adding a second gymnasium. These were all basic amenities those teams lacked. If it was as simple as some portray, those things would hardly matter. But it's not so easy. If they were a public school with those offerings/facilities they'd have been the public school families try to transfer or move out of. But they built a strong, sustained educational organization that grew their school into a stable educational facility with strong leaders and a mission that families believed in enough to pay tuition for. Any high level athletic success came well after building that foundation. A public school has much less funding concerns. Public schools rarely close and vanish forever like has so often happened to private schools over the years. Nothing is guaranteed or easy, not the least of it being the athletes roaming the hauls.
And there are public schools with a really strong commitment to one thing or the other and sustain that success in things like football. Or in the case of my public high school, theater and cross country. Is it easier to direct those commitments and priorities in a private school? Maybe, in the sense most private schools are probably much more singularly driven from top down leadership whereas public schools derive decision making at the behest of the public who funds them via taxes.
But there are publics who have proven to be just as successful as the successful private school programs, given the right advantages and commitment. Private schools are over presented in the "haves", but I'm not sure it boils down to simply "recruiting" as the argument always is framed as.
I will emphatically disagree with anyone who frames its as a "work harder" issue from the students. I'm not in the business of criticizing the young athletes at any institution. I'm sure the majority of kids at every institution, public or private, work their ass off. I can't say I see much of that commentary personally, but I'm sure it exists.
No one seems to ever tell the lesser CCL schools to just work harder. Instead we get 4 team divisions and bunch of complaining about crossovers.
In recent years, I agree that Loyola hasn't belonged in any other class but 8A. Is it wrong or bad form to point out that their actual enrollment is 7A and they request to play up in 8A wrong? I did so because the other poster was incorrect in asserting that LA was a 8A sized school playing in 8A. And then another poster chimed in and said that what was incorrect was actually correct. Why does that upset you so much that I correct something that was being misrepresented as fact? Why is me bringing that up a "joke?"
Where have you been the past 20 years or so when I have been posting here practically EVERY YEAR about creating more competitive playoff classes? Do you think you are the first one to come up with the idea? You probably got your more competitive class ideas from me, and you don't even realize it!
I'm painting private schools as victims? Hey, I think that MC should be in 8A as well. I think the 32 most competitive teams, private AND public, should be in 8A, and I have thought that way for a long time. You know that I have, and I'm mystified by your position that I am somehow resistant to the very idea that I have been promoting pretty much more than any other topic here.
Are private schools the victims? Yes, when the IHSA creates discriminatory rules against them that serve to lessen their competitiveness overall. THAT's when I start getting defensive.
You and I are not far apart on what we would like to see. We are spot on in synch if your ideas are to treat public and private schools the same in creating more competitive classifications.
You have made many good, and I think true, points. I appreciate the thoughtful reply.
Naz "gets to drop to 5A?" They were in 5A last year and couldn't get past the quarters. How is that dropping? They were placed in 5A by the IHSA. How was that dropping?
If you included in your examples of inequities public schools like ESL playing some of the country's toughest competition and not playing up in 8A for the playoffs, then you would really be objective and more believable. But you don't. It's always the private school examples with you.
Random question related to the idea of getting schools to opt up into a more competitive post season bracket.
Are schools barred from engaging in non IHSA sponsored post seasons? I know the Prep Bowl exists as an example, but that's grandfathered in basically right? If schools tried to implement something similar today they'd be breaking IHSA rules?
And I guess further to that - can schools opt in or out of IHSA participation on a sport by sport basis?
Are schools barred from engaging in non IHSA sponsored post seasons? I know the Prep Bowl exists as an example, but that's grandfathered in basically right? If schools tried to implement something similar today they'd be breaking IHSA rules?
And I guess further to that - can schools opt in or out of IHSA participation on a sport by sport basis?
For the record any school, team or person that is not happy with results should do something about
Any school within the ISHA can practice/play games up until the last 8am final is played
Exactly. Nobody can know for sure. There is no way to prove it. Despite that inability to prove it, public school administrators and apologists have demonstrated a willingness to propose and enact IHSA legislation, citing as their rationale the ability to attract students being different.
What you are basically attempting is to make a point based on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence. You have already admitted that it is impossible to know for sure why those teams are so strong. The problem with circumstantial evidence in this case is that it can easily be refuted/mitigated by providing examples of private school teams that have never experienced success or public school teams that have. There are many such examples.
Bingo. And that has pretty much been my counter argument all along. You are one of the first public school apologists on this message board who openly admits it.
If I may, your "evidence" is circumstantial. Again.
I'd like to point your attention to Alleman High School, the lone private high school in the Western Big 6 conference. In their conference games this year, they were shut out three times and scored a grand total of 33 points. That's actually an IMPROVEMENT over last year when conference opponents shut them out five times and allowed them to score only 14 points. What is that private school failure to thrive against public school competition evidence of?
Also, Wheaton Academy is not Catholic. You are lumping them in with Catholic programs. Is your argument about Catholic schools or private schools? Be careful. You wouldn't want this to turn into a religious thing.
I have never rejected the possibility. I do, however, argue against those who are certain that there is one. I also argue against the system that creates rules BECAUSE of this very possibility that I know, you know, and even the IHSA board knows, cannot be proven.
Nor have I claimed with absolute certainty that private school success is due to nothing more than working harder. Have I used the just work harder and get better argument despite not being absolutely certain? Sure. Can it be proven? No, but how has a lack of proof stopped public school apologists with respect to a so-called enrollment advantage?
Here is what I do know with absolute certainty about working harder and coaching better: No two kids, and no two teams, much less 500+ teams, are exactly alike in terms of the amount of effort they put forth. No two head coaches are at the exact same place in terms of the amount of effort they expend, or their knowledge of the game, or their ability to coach and be successful. There is absolutely an array on which every kid, every team and every coach occupies a different place. There's no shame in being on the left side of the mid-point on that array. It is what it is, which is human nature. So, for public school apologists not to acknowledge that and to claim that it is impossible for their team to work harder or get better, is simply ignoring human nature and/or the odds. Either that, or they are at the farthest point to the right on that array and, in fact, nobody works harder/smarter/better than them. In this state, the chances of that happening are 1 in 500+ football playing schools.
How would anyone go about proving that?
100% agree.
Last edited:
When the IHSA approached the CCL about joining a carve out was agreed for the Prep Bowl. Eventually the CCL would have joined the IHSA. At the time the Prep Bowl was outdrawing the Chicago Bears.
I understand that. Regardless, are they not an example of a public school that is playing below their competitive level in the playoffs? Before that conference rule was made, they never did petition all the way up to 8A. This is no slam on them. They would be well within their rights to play in their actual size class if they wanted. I was simply responding to corey and using ESL as an example of a public school that is not playing in a class of similarly competitive schools.
Last edited:
That does not appear to be correct. Schools can only play 9 games outside of the playoffs or prep bowl playoffs. They may continue to practice until the final day of playoffs, but may not play games.
5.073 Contest Limitation- No Boys Football team representing a member school shall, in any one season, participate in more than nine (9) games exclusive of the IHSA series and exclusive of the City of Chicago Prep Bowl series, participated in by the Chicago Public League and the Chicago Catholic League, and I8FA playoff series, participated in by members of the Illinois 8-Man Football Association.
ramblinman: You have asked, how would anyone go about proving that, on average, private high schools in Illinois have stronger football programs than public schools? It can be done using the data provided by the individual from Antioch and statistical analysis (binomial distributions to be precise). The individual provided the entire population of games between the two sets of schools since the expansion to eight classes, so the possibility of sampling errors is eliminated.
If the two sets of schools are equal in strength with respect to their football programs, the mean probability (based on a population of more than 1,200 outcomes) for each side to win an individual game will be 50%, or very nearly 50%. Given that fact, the probability of the private schools obtaining a record of 848 wins and 379 losses (as was the case), or a record better than that, is less than one chance in a billion. Since the chance of that outcome occurring randomly is so very, very, very, very small, a statistician would conclude with a 100.00% level of certainty that private schools, on average, have stronger football programs than public schools.
I did the calculations myself. I was a math major in college until I decided to switch to finance, which was the field in which I made my career. I have taken several courses in probability and statistics and am accustomed to working with numbers. [MBA from the University of Minnesota, Finance Director Village of La Grange Park, Treasurer of the Intergovernmental Risk Management Agency where I worked closely with actuaries] This information is provided because I've seen your penchant for trying to find any little crack in another person's line of reasoning, no matter how insignificant the supposed discovery is to drawing valid conclusions. I am competent in statistical analysis.
If you have read my posts I believe ESL should play in 8A heck ask their fans they have no problem playing up. I talked about Naz referring to them playing CCL teams in his words the best conference in the country and they are very competitive with those teams.
Last edited:
I have been on EdgyTim for about 20 years also and no I didn’t get my idea from you, but I do think we agree we both want a level playing field between publics and privates. I certainly want to see them both to continue to play each other in the playoffs. I just want the teams in the correct class to be competitive and fair.
Impressive Alexander. I had occasion to work in a town which had IRMA as their insurer. They do an excellent job for a lot of towns.
So I decided, why don't I check that Antioch tweets data.
And... I'm pretty sure they have bad data or bad process
I think they got 5A right. After that I don't think they got a single class right. Not sure what their method is and I'm gonna recheck my work, but uh, yea.
So there is a 5A problem? Sorry 5A publics.
And... I'm pretty sure they have bad data or bad process
I think they got 5A right. After that I don't think they got a single class right. Not sure what their method is and I'm gonna recheck my work, but uh, yea.
So there is a 5A problem? Sorry 5A publics.
IMO, the bolded above is one of the “flaws” of this type of data extrapolation.
I’m a small school guy, so for example, a #1 seed 9-0 St Teresa team is NOT “equal in strength” to a #16 seed 5-4 Chester.
Yet, as far as I can tell, the “data” assumes this game is a 50/50 flip.
Even an analysis of teams that “outperformed” their seed wouldn’t really hold up due to the way the IHSA seeds the football playoffs.
I think we can all agree that, even before the playoffs started, NO ONE believed Naz was the 11th best 5A North team………..
To put it succinctly, comparing coin flip probabilities to high school football playoff outcomes is silly, due to the increase complexity of the playoffs vs a heads/tails coin flip.
So, no response from you at all to the remainder of my post. I went through your missive and replied point by point, and you seize upon one short and simple question that I asked. Interesting.
Wrong.
The 1200 outcomes are games played by playoff qualifiers only. How many of those 848 private school wins were won by the same private school qualifiers over and over? Were half of them won by the same 10 private school qualifiers? By my quick count, Mt. Carmel has won 52 playoff games alone against public schools. Assuming the 848 wins by private school qualifiers are correct, Mt. Carmel alone accounts for 6% of those wins. Heck, close to 4% of those private school wins were from a single private school that has been closed for 14 years! 2% were from a private school that is no longer playing 11 man football.
Your previous post stated that it could be proven that, on average, private schools have stronger programs than public schools. There are some 500+ football schools in Illinois and roughly 20% of them are private. Except you ignored all the non-qualifiers to "prove" your point! You ignored all the regular season games between public and private schools! You were so eager to show off your academic prowess and professional creds that you played fast and loose with the data. You basically played bait and switch. You used the universe of playoff games between private and public schools to "prove" your point. Sorry, Mr. Mathematician, but that does not compute. Apples and oranges, Alex. Apples and oranges.
Additionally, did you bother to verify the Antioch data or are you content to take the Antioch tweet as gospel?
And yet, after all those academic and professional qualifications, you still let a mere layman like me find a honkin' big crack.
Last edited:
We have no idea who compiled that data. No idea as to its accuracy or methodology. How did they treat non boundaried public schools in their calculations?
So FWIW, here is what my initial evaluation of the playoff W% data is. I'm also doing 2001-2022, and I am not classifying open-boundary publics with the privates. I could check the numbers with that change next, but I think it'd only make the analysis further off than Antioch's
Overall Private v Public Record
879 - 471, for a 0.651 win percentage in advantage of the privates.
Each Class with Share of 50% win seasons for the publics (first column includes exact 0.500, second column excludes). And total win % for private schools. Especially on the small schools, this looks way off from what Antioch twitter posted.
One interesting aspect of this I think is still the "have" v "have-not" debate. There are about 180 public schools who have lost to, but not beaten a private. 20 of these have an overall winning playoff record. The other 160 have a cumulative playoff record of 0.271. They aren't really winning against most teams, private or public (478-1014 against public schools and 0-274 against private schools - mostly in small samples). Simply put, there is a early round competitive balance that's generally unrelated to public v private. These schools probably make the playoffs less than half the time, and they're rarely a tough opponent for whoever they're playing.
Overall, including those schools, you have 377 of 524 public schools who are the "have nots", with an overall losing playoff record. Only a handful (about 20) would flip their overall postseason record to > 0.500 if they had never played a private school.
This imbalance dichotomy does exist on the private side, but at a different scale/percentage. Here, you have 29 of 61 schools with a losing playoff record, a little less than half. And obviously since a greater portion of their total games will be against publics, their public v overall record tracks closely.
But drilling down even further, you have 11 of the 61 privates driving an overwhelming amount of the success: Driscoll, Mt. Carmel, St. Rita, IC, JCA, Naz, Montini, Providence, SHG, Newman, and Loyola account for 435 of the 879 private verse public wins at a win% >70%. And they make up half of all private school wins (beating other privates at a >50% share as well).
(Edit/note. This is 61 who made the playoffs in that time span. Doesn't include those who made no PO appearance in 21 years, if any - though I really didn't catch any obvious missing from the list)
I could also add the next three best win % private schools in Marist, Boylan, and Marian Woodstock. At that point, the remaining private schools now compete at a 0.500 level against publics. So about 1/5 of the private schools are really where this discrepancy shows. One is closed down, 2 others have only been juggernauts for about half this time frame.
Only 8 other private schools after these 14 advanced past a quarterfinal (7 having won 1 title and 1 having won 2). Though it should be noted neither Marian or Marist has won a title in this timeframe, placing 2nd once and twice, respectively). In total 53 1st and 24 2nd place trophies from the top 14 and then 9 / 4 from the group of 8.
Now if I took the top 20% of publics the bottom half of that list wouldn't be nearly as impressive at the bottom, but I could probably build a really strong 20-30 public schools whose success would look a lot like the private school 14. In fact, I can create a list of 36 who rank in the top 50 (among public schools) in both total playoff wins and playoff win %. They account for 69 first place trophies and 58 second place trophies.
Your next tier of Public schools (20 next best combined total wins and W%) account for another 10 and 24 1st/2nd trophies.
Now with ALL of this, of course, the trophies are split amongst classes because we first assign a classification and then the cream rises to the top. I wouldn't suggest that St. Theresa be elevated into a have group with Loyola anymore than I would suggest Forreston and Lincoln Way East be grouped. Whatever happens you're going to have a situation where the best see a disproportionate share of the success. Even if you can "solve" the "private school problem", the displacement created and new opportunity is just so little, because the private school share of the population is so little. High school football, like the world, is very top heavy with the haves.
I'll pick on Antioch Twitter guys specifically a little here as well. In years where they made it past the first round:
04-05: +21 margin against public , -29 margin against public
08-09: +62, +1, +1 (publics) and -24 (public) in Semis
16-17: +1 (public) and -33 (public)
18-19: +49 and +1 (publics) and -7 (private) in quarters
19-20: +57 (public) and -7 (public)
Their other 2 losses against privates in Rd 1 (17-18 and 22-23) were by 22 and 21. Granted with some small, imperfect sample sizes, but... it doesn't look like the private schools are a competitive problem anymore than other publics are. Sure the draws can be super unlucky and random... but everyone deals with that. I'm sure its salty being eliminated early when you probably weren't a bottom 16 team in your class... but that's the imperfect seeding IHSA has.
Overall Private v Public Record
879 - 471, for a 0.651 win percentage in advantage of the privates.
Each Class with Share of 50% win seasons for the publics (first column includes exact 0.500, second column excludes). And total win % for private schools. Especially on the small schools, this looks way off from what Antioch twitter posted.
Code:
1A - 16 14 0.423
2A - 8 6 0.617
3A - 10 9 0.570
4A - 5 4 0.631
5A - 2 1 0.793
6A - 5 2 0.709
7A - 6 2 0.676
8A - 5 2 0.684One interesting aspect of this I think is still the "have" v "have-not" debate. There are about 180 public schools who have lost to, but not beaten a private. 20 of these have an overall winning playoff record. The other 160 have a cumulative playoff record of 0.271. They aren't really winning against most teams, private or public (478-1014 against public schools and 0-274 against private schools - mostly in small samples). Simply put, there is a early round competitive balance that's generally unrelated to public v private. These schools probably make the playoffs less than half the time, and they're rarely a tough opponent for whoever they're playing.
Overall, including those schools, you have 377 of 524 public schools who are the "have nots", with an overall losing playoff record. Only a handful (about 20) would flip their overall postseason record to > 0.500 if they had never played a private school.
This imbalance dichotomy does exist on the private side, but at a different scale/percentage. Here, you have 29 of 61 schools with a losing playoff record, a little less than half. And obviously since a greater portion of their total games will be against publics, their public v overall record tracks closely.
But drilling down even further, you have 11 of the 61 privates driving an overwhelming amount of the success: Driscoll, Mt. Carmel, St. Rita, IC, JCA, Naz, Montini, Providence, SHG, Newman, and Loyola account for 435 of the 879 private verse public wins at a win% >70%. And they make up half of all private school wins (beating other privates at a >50% share as well).
(Edit/note. This is 61 who made the playoffs in that time span. Doesn't include those who made no PO appearance in 21 years, if any - though I really didn't catch any obvious missing from the list)
I could also add the next three best win % private schools in Marist, Boylan, and Marian Woodstock. At that point, the remaining private schools now compete at a 0.500 level against publics. So about 1/5 of the private schools are really where this discrepancy shows. One is closed down, 2 others have only been juggernauts for about half this time frame.
Only 8 other private schools after these 14 advanced past a quarterfinal (7 having won 1 title and 1 having won 2). Though it should be noted neither Marian or Marist has won a title in this timeframe, placing 2nd once and twice, respectively). In total 53 1st and 24 2nd place trophies from the top 14 and then 9 / 4 from the group of 8.
Now if I took the top 20% of publics the bottom half of that list wouldn't be nearly as impressive at the bottom, but I could probably build a really strong 20-30 public schools whose success would look a lot like the private school 14. In fact, I can create a list of 36 who rank in the top 50 (among public schools) in both total playoff wins and playoff win %. They account for 69 first place trophies and 58 second place trophies.
Your next tier of Public schools (20 next best combined total wins and W%) account for another 10 and 24 1st/2nd trophies.
Now with ALL of this, of course, the trophies are split amongst classes because we first assign a classification and then the cream rises to the top. I wouldn't suggest that St. Theresa be elevated into a have group with Loyola anymore than I would suggest Forreston and Lincoln Way East be grouped. Whatever happens you're going to have a situation where the best see a disproportionate share of the success. Even if you can "solve" the "private school problem", the displacement created and new opportunity is just so little, because the private school share of the population is so little. High school football, like the world, is very top heavy with the haves.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
| 2.39% | 53 | 31.55% | 24 | 14.29% | 23.92% | 9.6x | |||||||
| 6.15% | 69 | 41.07% | 58 | 34.52% | 37.80% | 6.1x | |||||||
| 1.37% | 9 | 5.36% | 4 | 2.38% | 3.87% | 2.8x | |||||||
| 3.42% | 10 | 5.95% | 24 | 14.29% | 10.12% | 3.0x | |||||||
| 80.00% | 27 | 16.07% | 58 | 34.52% | 25.30% | 0.30x | |||||||
| 6.67% | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00% | 0% | 0.0x |
I'll pick on Antioch Twitter guys specifically a little here as well. In years where they made it past the first round:
04-05: +21 margin against public , -29 margin against public
08-09: +62, +1, +1 (publics) and -24 (public) in Semis
16-17: +1 (public) and -33 (public)
18-19: +49 and +1 (publics) and -7 (private) in quarters
19-20: +57 (public) and -7 (public)
Their other 2 losses against privates in Rd 1 (17-18 and 22-23) were by 22 and 21. Granted with some small, imperfect sample sizes, but... it doesn't look like the private schools are a competitive problem anymore than other publics are. Sure the draws can be super unlucky and random... but everyone deals with that. I'm sure its salty being eliminated early when you probably weren't a bottom 16 team in your class... but that's the imperfect seeding IHSA has.
Last edited:
If I am reading your first table correctly, the lowest four playoff playoff winning percentages by private schools in games played against public schools come in the smallest four classes.
But, wait, doesn't that data directly contradict and render moot of all the whining we hear about the smaller public schools and the uphill battle they face against private schools? Doesn't that data fly in the face of posters who feel that all 1A through 4A private schools should be bumped up to 5A because the small public schools are behind the 8 ball relative to private schools?
Similar threads
