Because an enrollment based system is the correct way to go, punishing teams for being successful is complete idiocy
(Somewhat) annual first round playoff blowout rant
- Thread starter ramblinman
- Start date
Because an enrollment based system is the correct way to go, punishing teams for being successful is complete idiocy
Please explain to this fan of an 8A private school how it is "punishing" a team to classify them with other similarly successful schools?
The operative word in the above logic is "usually". The best team in the state this year just might be JCA in 4A. This is the product of having no multiplier in place.
Enrollments have something to do with 8A-7A being generally better than 4A-5A, but not usually.
I believe the the better logic is that top-tier boundaried AND non-boundaried schools operate completely differently than other schools. Sure, there are good coaches and good systems everywhere and we will always find average programs achieving success because of it. Good coaching is indeed one of the essential building blocks of a top-tier program. After this, however, the main driver for a program's continued success is the fact that people make decisions that inevitably ends up aggregating talent in successful, well-coached, well-resourced programs. It happens in every sport and everywhere in the country. (I also make no comment or judgement about the recruiting that might take place at private AND public schools to keep the engine humming.)
Families make a deliberate decision to move in the district of a successful public school program so their talented Johnny can play with a good team, or they enroll Johnny in a successful non-boundaried school. Why? 1) Exposure to more colleges, 2) better personal development by playing with better talent and better coaching and 3) a better overall high school experience. In the case for private schools, parents will pay their property taxes to the public school and private school tuition and drive 40 minutes to get to school just to realize these benefits. In the case for public schools, parents will uproot their family, pay to sell their home, buy a new home and move in-district.
Case in point for the public schools: Rochester (enrollment of 800) is a school district people move to in order to play football. Riverton (enrollment of 2300) is not a school district people choose to move to play football, yet they are 10 minutes apart from each other as the crow flies. No debate as to who has the better football program and these two programs couldn't be more different from each other.
There are no boundaries anywhere at the end of the day. People self-select and sort themselves continually in every facet of life. Republicans and Democrats, Cubs and Sox, Bulldogs and Falcons.
You cannot achieve competitive balance in a state football organization by looking at boundaries, enrollment or three playoff wins across two years alone. Successful programs need to be classed with other successful programs with some deference to enrollment (small schools, mid-sized schools, large schools), but not 8 meaningless classes that are shifted by minuscule changes in enrollments and moving up only non-boundary schools with marginal playoff success.
8A to 6A should be one category (large school), 3A to 5A another (mid-sized schools) and 1A and 2A the third (small schools). If schools want to play in the higher enrollment classification, they can. Remove all boundary/non-boundary classifications. Have a 64 team NCAA Basketball- like tourney for the top teams in each class and a 16 or 32 team NIT-like tournament for the next level programs. Here you have close to the same number of schools in the playoffs, but the experience is more balanced.
No success multipliers. No dilution by having 8 classes and wondering who the best team is at the end of the day. And a lot of football is being played post season with more evenly matched programs.
Just one man's thoughts and having seen this over-engineered debacle play out in Illinois over 30 years.
Because when you make a successful 4A school move up to 5A, thats punishing kids.. but yet when the IHSA tried to address to real issue of private schools having no boundaries, you claimed that was unfair.. nothing but double speak
It's not punishing kids when all the schools in a class are there because they have experienced similar levels of success playing similarly competitive schedules. If anything, in a competitively based classification system, it is unfair to the lower class to NOT move up the extraordinarily successful schools.
Yes, I did claim the way the IHSA attempted to deal with non-boundaried schools was unfair...because it was. You might have thought it was more fair to your school or to the majority of boundaried public schools, but it was very unfair to the average non-boundaried school that was fortunate enough to qualify for the playoffs and was needlessly being multiplied up to a more competitive class when they had little to no chance to progress far in the class they were multiplied from.
You cannot prove to me or to anyone that the mere ABILITY to enroll kids from within a 30 mile radius automatically equates to an unfair advantage to a boundaried school that enrolls 95% of the kids within those boundaries. You cannot equate not having a district boundary to a greater degree of athletic success for non-boundaried schools. For every example you give me of a successful non-boundaried school, I will give you one that is unsuccessful. I would also be more than happy to give you examples of extraordinarily successful boundaried schools.
Consider this: If we could come up with an effective classification system that fairly classified most schools according to their competitive level, there would be no perceived need to treat non-boundaried schools differently because of the level of competitive equity that would be achieved within the classes.
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Just for fun I did a quick pass over the 8A to 6A teams in the top 64 as ranked by MaxPreps and came up with the following bracket. Forgive me if I left someone out. Teams like JCA would have to decide if they want to play into the larger bracket. I left them out. What fun.
2021 Hypothetical Illinois Large School Playoff Bracket
