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SF 35 Loyola 21 - Final

I’m not sure anyone comes within 2 scores of SF the rest of the season.
Joe Biden GIF by GIPHY News


God-tier sandbagging effort by Tuccs
 
Someone better check on Ramblinman!
LA apparently isn’t who they have been and neither are others. What is going on this year.

LA 1-2
MS 1-2
Warren 1-2
GBW 0-3
I'm here and just fine thanks.

I was never one of those who felt (or voiced) that LA's extraordinary success would last forever. I've been around long enough to learn that these things go in cycles.

Rochester, MS, PC, WWS, ESL, JCA, Montini, Carthage, Le-Win, LA...nothing lasts forever. Nothing.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not declaring LA to be dead. They might even lose a couple more games before the playoffs. But, they probably won't be making a deep run in the playoffs this year since they won't be facing less competitive programs in the first couple of rounds.
 
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.
 
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Driscoll, Providence, Rochester, Geneseo, Naz, Bishop Mac, ESL, Montini, Maine South and JCA, among others, have had remarkable if not extraordinary runs.
No disagreement there. But that's your argument, not mine. We are arguing two different things. You have decided to counter my assertion of Loyola's recent extraordinary success by arguing all-time, but that was never my point. My point is all about the past ten years. What is it about the words "recent," "ten years," and "cycle" that you aren't grasping?

I contend that Loyola has had extraordinary success in the past ten years. I am further stating that there are only a handful of programs that have experienced similar or greater success than Loyola during that time. MC, Naz, IC, Lena-Winslow, and Rochester come to mind. I'm happy to consider other schools you might think of that aren't closed or that haven't matched or bettered the sort of playoff success that Loyola has experienced in the past ten years.
 
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No disagreement there. But that's your argument, not mine. We are arguing two different things. You have decided to counter my assertion of Loyola's recent extraordinary success by arguing all-time, but that was never my point. My point is all about the past ten years. What is it about the words "recent," "ten years," and "cycle" that you aren't grasping?

I contend that Loyola has had extraordinary success in the past ten years. I am further stating that there are only a handful of programs that have experienced similar or greater success than Loyola during that time. MC, Naz, IC, Lena-Winslow, and Rochester come to mind. I'm happy to consider others you might think of that aren't closed or that haven't matched or bettered the sort of playoff success that Loyola has experienced in the past ten years.
This prompted me to go back 10 years for ESL, not too bad.
2013 6A Semi loss to Oaklawn Richards
2014 6A Qtrs loss to Peoria Notre Dame
2015 Teacher Strike (no playoffs)
2016 7A state Champs
2017 7A Qtrs loss to MC
2018 7A Qtrs loss to MC
2019 6A State Champs
2020 Covid
2021 6A Runner up Loss to CG
2022 6A State Champs
2023 6A Runner up loss to CG
2024 TBD
 

Okay, let's do recent. But not too recent. Not as recent as last week or the first game of the season. Let's confine ourselves to the ten years you specify, when it looked as though Loyola, for the first time in its 115-year history, was about to embark on a period of sustained success. Four titles in ten years--any ten years--is a notable achievement. But was it extraordinary? Yes. Yes, it was. It was extraordinary for Loyola, by Loyola standards.
 
Okay, let's do recent. But not too recent. Not as recent as last week or the first game of the season. Let's confine ourselves to the ten years you specify, when it looked as though Loyola, for the first time in its 115-year history, was about to embark on a period of sustained success. Four titles in ten years--any ten years--is a notable achievement. But was it extraordinary? Yes. Yes, it was. It was extraordinary for Loyola, by Loyola standards.
Eight years. Four titles in eight years. No other school has done that in 8A. MS got four in 9 years.

It's extraordinary by any standard. Are there schools in other classes that have done better during the past ten years or any ten year period? Sure. But I'm not arguing that nobody in Illinois has done better.
 
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All of that is well and good. But in football, the past is not prologue. It will be interesting to see how LA does in the coming months.
 
in football, the past is not prologue.

Um, it usually is.

If it were as you say, then how do you explain the same top tier programs staying in the top tier or bottom tier programs staying in the bottom tier...year after year after year? Sure, there are no absolutes. I'm talking in general terms here. But it is very rare that you see a school coming out of the bottom or middle tiers the previous year to go deep in this year's playoffs. Conversely, it is very rare that you see a school from the top tier one year become cellar dwellers the next.

That said, I do believe success, or lack of it, goes in cycles. You rarely see programs be good one or two years and suck the next one or two years and then be good again. Cycles do end at some point. MC was everyone's preferred homecoming opponent back when I was in high school. That down cycle ended for them. Laurence and Gordon were top tier programs back then...until they weren't.
 
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Um, it usually is.

If it were as you say, then how do you explain the same top tier programs staying in the top tier or bottom tier programs staying in the bottom tier...year after year after year? Sure, there are no absolutes. I'm talking in general terms here. But it is very rare that you see a school coming out of the bottom or middle tiers the previous year to go deep in this year's playoffs. Conversely, it is very rare that you see a school from the top tier one year become cellar dwellers the next.

That said, I do believe success, or lack of it, goes in cycles. You rarely see programs be good one or two years and suck the next one or two years and then be good again. Cycles do end at some point. MC was everyone's preferred homecoming opponent back when I was in high school. That down cycle ended for them. Laurence and Gordon were top tier programs back then...until they weren't.

Football team success goes in cycles?

What percentage of that team success ending occurs with changes in the coaching staff?

What successful teams have changed their coaching staffs and the success continued?
 
Football team success goes in cycles?

Not so much teams as programs. Look at Montini, for example. They had a cycle where they were extraordinarily successful. Seven consecutive seasons of titles or runner up finishes. Eight title game appearances over 10 years. Then that cycle ended. After not even qualifying for the playoffs for three straight seasons (total of 9 wins in three years), they had a nice run last year. It remains to be seen if last year was a blip or if they can continue the trend this year and solidify a new successful cycle.


What percentage of that team success ending occurs with changes in the coaching staff?

Great question. Coaching is a huge determining factor in the success of a program. Mt Carmel was mired in mediocrity for most of the 60s and 70s before Bill Barz and then Frank Lenti came on board. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about Montini's fortunes, and lack thereof, in the post-Andriano era.

What successful teams have changed their coaching staffs and the success continued?

Mt Carmel with the move from Barz to Lenti is a good example. Maine South with the move from Hopkins to Inserra is another. JCA has been pretty consistently successful with just a couple blips along the way in their past four coaches. WWS from Thorne through the first half of the Muhitch era maintained a high level of success for the most part. There are probably others, but those four are what I can come up with off the top of my head.
 
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