Five titles in program history, including one back-to-back. Good, yes, but extraordinary? I think they call this grade inflation.
Is that bait I see dangling before me? Ok, I'll take it.
First of all, I doubt you knew off the top of your head that Loyola has five titles in program history, which means you had to look it up. Which
means you likely overlooked a bunch of stats that would be contrary to your position that I am applying "grade inflation" to Loyola's success. For example, yes, five titles in program history, but four of them came in the past eight seasons.
Secondly, I'm not going to talk about Loyola's "program history," which dates back a very, very long time. I won't go back to 1974 which is when the first IHSA football championship was held. Nor will I go back to LA's first title in 1993.
When I was talking about Loyola's extraordinary success and how success occurs in cycles, I was referring to more recent success. How recent is recent? There's no specific answer that everyone will agree on, because recent is relative, but I'm going to pick the previous ten complete seasons because ten is a nice round number. Is that recent relative to last year? No. Is it recent relative to 1974? Yes. For the sake of discussion, cut me some slack on this, and let's not get into nit-picking definitions.
In the previous ten season, Loyola:
- compiled an overall record of 120-17 playing in arguably the most competitive football conference in the state
- compiled a playoff record of 38-6, all in 8a
- made the state title game 7 times
- won four state titles
If the above is not extraordinary success, please enlighten us as to what is extraordinary in your book. Of the 500+ football playing schools over the past 10 years, what percentage of them would consider it extraordinary success simply to
qualify for the playoffs 10 straight times, much less make 7 state title appearances and compile a 38-6 playoff record?
You are certainly welcome to your opinion that Loyola's success is merely "good," but my opinion is that it is extraordinary relative to all but a handful of programs out there during that time.