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If you have some "exceptions" to your theory, you need to post them so we all can see. It seems like you change your theory when its convenient. "Schools with lower enrollments and higher % of free lunches can't compete with the big boys.....unless they are a football factory...." Seriously??

Not sure why the link I posted looks funky; trying it again.

Because I know the dynamics of each of those schools and they aren't getting the inner-city OMG athletes sans Cathedral who occasionally gets some. But the deanery schools (Chatard/Roncalli/Scecina/Ritter) are nearly exclusively parochial feeders. Chatard roster listed with junior high https://bishopchatardathletics.org/wp-content/uploads/FB-Roster.pdf Roncalli roster https://www.roncalli.org/athletics/fall-sports/football/rosters Ritter https://gocardinalritter.org/teams/2716478/boys/football/varsity/roster

They need to drug test the person who gave Merrillville a first place vote instead of Center Grove.

Maybe Penn should go ahead and accept that standing invitation to join the DAC? While they would be near the top in most female sports, and many of the mens sports, they would probably be in 6th or 7th place this year in football. Once feared in the region, taking beatings by Valpo, and losing the to LaPorte and Chesterton in the past year has taken that fear away.

Sure it does. The deanery schools aren't located in inner-city Indianapolis and the OMG athletes to which you speak of aren't going to those high schools anyway. It's myth. The non-deanery kids that attend Cathedral are being pulled from Hamilton County and Lawrence Twp predominantly, none of which is considered inner-city, and Brebeuf is also pulling from Hamilton County as well as Washington and Pike Twp, also neither of which are defined as inner-city. Try again. I challenge you to attend Roncalli/Chatard this week and report back as to which "OMG inner-city athletes" catch your attention. I think this would be good for you.

Might have something to do with the suburbs? I can't speak for programs outside of Indiana, but the stats do not lie. A lot of "inner-city" flight to the suburbs in Indianapolis hence the reason that Brownsburg, Avon, Center Grove, Carmel, Westfield, etc are emerging/established powers? Just spit balling out loud. Are kids (regardless of address) flocking TO those programs in Detroit and Miami? That used to be the case in Indy, but now Marion County talent is showing up in the suburbs more often that the other way around. Ben Davis used to attract talent from Brownsburg and Avon and now its in the opposite direction. I've stated for years now that the Indy suburbs will catch up and eventually pass the Marion County schools and it looks great in August/September but just hasn't happened yet in October/November which is the reasoning for your insults. Ten years ago, I'd have been called crazy, yet here we are again with the HCC dominating the MIC as the season opens. Once again, I'd like to remind folks reading this thread that we have a poster who publicly backs CATHEDRAL speaking to the specifics of socioeconomics. Never trust a skinny chef nor a poster who backs a P/P to lecture you on the impact that socioeconomics has on athletics.

Locking the topic...way too much nonsense in what should have just been a direct message to start with.

That's awesome. With all that money you save on gas vs. a guzzing 4-wheel drive vehicle, NOW would be a great time for you to donate the the Gridiron Digest! Join the other 9 members in the top 10(number of posts) who are Boosters! Here's the link: https://gridirondigest.net/clients/donations/ It would be a great time for @Danny to donate also. The GID is the one, the only, the first church of Indiana High School Football! Show your support!

2019 & 2020. Lost to Center Grove (you may have heard of them) in semi-state. Game Over. Would you like to play again?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5684336001 Appears that Bishop Sycamore wrote bad checks at the hotel in Canton in which they were staying the night of the IMG game. This might make for a better ending than Catch Me If You Can.

Great video. A little back story: The American flag was presented to and carried by Eli Hohlt whose brother Jackson (CG class of '16 and starter on CG's 2015 undefeated state champs) is a West Point grad and a member of the 101st Airborne and just completed Ranger School.

I might be the only one willing to dive in here. I do have some thoughts. Consistent, strong competition has been absent for too long, while the biggest guns in the state have only gotten more competitive with each other, all the way through their programs. I'm not sure that Penn's offensive transition to a more modern style truly fits the program's demographics, and I think that affects their ability to play the complementary style of football that defined the program for so many years. Even Penn's best quarterbacks, did not, for the most part, light it up through the air except for playing off of the run game, and they were often a significant, effective, component of the run game, even if in a undesigned way. I agree that other schools have caught up, although I disagree somewhat with the characterization of the Penn teams of yore and their size relative to the peer competition. While I played on teams that had a couple of monsters - perhaps three division 1 big guys over my four years - Penn has been a program that has gotten by with more from less in terms of physical development and impressiveness. Penn did often have average to slightly above average sized backs, and that has seemed to change over the years. That said, the team is much less impressive off the hoof relative to the top competition than they already often were in years past. The high school has employed a strength and conditioning coach for at least four years now, if records are accurate, which I imagine is a significantly shorter term than many of the other large programs competing with each other in the Indy metro area. We all know Ben Davis had a dedicated strength coach for decades. Been setting in for many years I'm afraid, and is a logical outcome of much of the success and preordained outcomes of many contests against local competition for decades. Even when the program was humming along there was apathy with regard to much of the schedule. This has been my argument for years, and I maintain that it's especially important at the freshman and junior varsity levels. Penn's freshman and JVs almost never play against the best in their age group because of the size of the local teams requires those players to take varsity reps on Friday nights. Additionally, I think that level of competition in the MIC and HCC encourages innovation and has far reaching effects within those programs. The weekly grind of competition has been a huge de facto advantage for the MIC programs, and I think that became obvious relatively early in the 2000s. Now the HCC is in a similar position. No way around it, the administration blundered in 2002, and if the invitation is still standing - truly - they have continued to blunder to this day. Plenty of evidence exists out there that Penn is comfortable with teams traveling for much of their competition in all sports. I don't know if the source is too reliable or not, but public school review has data going back into the 90s that you could comb through to get an idea. It's not aggregated but it exists. These are just some thoughts, of course.

FWIW, I see that these numbers are for grades 9 through 11 whereas the current numbers posted before it on the current enrollment of the bigger Marion County and the doughnut county schools are for grades 9 through 12. Regardless, it shows the effect of the overflow of Indy area population into those school districts. Many of the those schools use to be quiet rural schools with fairly low enrollments before the mass exodus of people from Indy over the last 20-30 years.

They’re kinda down by the balls. I gotta go

Take your vaxx card.

https://nypost.com/2021/08/31/liberals-take-on-larry-elder-for-california-comments/ The possibility that Larry Elder may win California’s recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom is generating acute anxiety in the mainstream media and among the activist left. Elder’s foes are responding with their favored means of destruction: by playing the race card. Never mind that the nationally syndicated talk show host is black. A series of opinion columns and editorials have accused him of being a white supremacist, or at the very least a shill for other white supremacists. Elect Elder and California will reinstate Jim Crow, state Sen. Sydney Kamlager, a Democrat from Los Angeles, has warned. The media have focused particularly on Elder’s views about crime and policing. The self-described “Sage from South-Central” maintains that criminals, not the police, are the biggest threat in the black community. According to Elder, the false narrative about lethal police racism has only led to more black homicide deaths. “When you reduce the possibility of a bad guy getting caught, getting convicted and getting incarcerated, guess what? Crime goes up,” he said recently at a campaign event in Orange County. Elder also rejects the charge that white civilians are gunning down blacks, as LeBron James maintained in a tweet during the George Floyd riots: “We are literally hunted everyday, every time we step outside the comfort of our homes.” Elder has a different take. If a “young black man is eight times more likely to be killed by another young black man than [by] a young white man,” Elder told the Orange County Republicans, then “systemic racism is not the problem.” Such statements are anathema to the establishment left, deeply invested as it is in the idea that blacks have little agency in the face of ubiquitous white racism. Few subjects are more taboo in elite discourse than the elevated rate of crime among blacks, as it suggests cultural pathologies that — at the very least — complicate the victim narrative. To the left, black crime is little more than a racist fiction. Los Angeles Times columnist Jean Guerrero claims that the crime statistics Elder has cited “over the decades to support his views and policy proposals are misleading, if not outright false, casting Black people as unusually crime-prone.” Black people are not “more inclined toward violent crimes,” nor do blacks “disproportionately victimize whites,” Guerrero wrote, citing Columbia law professor Jeffrey Fagan and other criminal experts. (Fagan was the plaintiff’s expert in a trilogy of lawsuits against the New York Police Department in the 2010s.) Fellow Times columnist Erika Smith sneered that Elder “keeps trotting out statistics that purport to show that Black people are particularly prone to murdering one another.” Unfortunately for Elder’s critics, the statistics showing vastly disproportionate rates of black crime and victimization come from some of the left’s favorite sources. CDC data show that in 2015, for example, the homicide victimization rate for blacks age 10 to 34 (37.5 per 100,000) was 13 times the rate for whites (2.9 per 100,000). That disparity is undoubtedly much greater now, given the record-breaking increase in homicides since the George Floyd riots — an increase disproportionately affecting blacks. Those black victims of homicide are not being killed by cops or whites. They are being killed by other blacks. In Los Angeles, blacks this year have committed 46 percent of homicides whose offender is known, even though they are just 9 percent of the Los Angeles population. Whites make up 28 percent of the Los Angeles population but have committed 4 percent of homicides, mostly involving domestic violence. These data, reported by the Los Angeles Times, mean that a black Angeleno is 35 times more likely to commit a homicide than a white Angeleno. Homicide data are the gold standard for crime statistics. Alas for Jeffrey Fagan and the Los Angeles Times’ other experts, the statistical conclusion that blacks are “more inclined toward violent crimes” is indisputable. What about the claim that blacks don’t “disproportionately victimize whites”? In 2019, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of criminal victimization, blacks committed 127,350 non-lethal violent crimes against whites, while whites committed 17,690 non-lethal violent crimes against blacks. In other words, blacks commit 88 percent of all interracial violence between blacks and whites. Crime apologists argue that such disproportions are inevitable because there are so many whites in the US. But in cities where racial ratios are more commensurate, the amount of white-on-black violence remains negligible. Occasionally videos and reports of interracial violence — flash mobs, knockout games, and brutal beatings and robberies — become public. If the races were reversed, there would be a national uproar lasting months; but such incidents get scant, if any, mainstream media coverage. They are the reason why the press has all but eliminated reporting on the race of crime suspects. Such voluntary action is not enough to ensure public cluelessness about the reality of crime, however. Gov. Newsom recently signed a law prohibiting California’s police departments from posting mugshots of arrested criminals if their latest crime was “non-violent.” The San Francisco Police Department has stopped posting mugshots of all criminals. Police Chief Bill Scott explained that doing so “creates an illusory correlation for viewers that vastly overstates the propensity of Black and brown men to engage in criminal behavior.” Actually, mugshots document a real correlation. If the San Francisco Police Department could undercut that correlation by posting mugshots of white muggers, does anyone doubt that it would rush to do so? Elder’s dismissal of Black Lives Matter claims about systemic police violence is also grounded in fact. Police officers are at greater risk of civilian violence than blacks are at risk of police violence. And a disproportionate source of that danger to cops comes from black criminals. Fifty police officers have been murdered this year as of Aug. 25. In 2019, there were 697,195 sworn officers in the US. That employment count would be lower now, in light of the rush of officer retirements over the last year and a half and the inability of police departments to recruit replacements. Conservatively, using the 2019 number, however, those 50 officers represent a rate of approximately seven officers killed per 100,000 on the job. Four unarmed blacks have been fatally shot by police officers so far in 2021, according to the Washington Post. (“Unarmed” does not mean compliant; the Post’s category includes crime suspects who violently resist arrest, pummel officers after knocking them to the ground, and continue fighting after being tased.) Those four black victims represent .0000085 percent of the nearly 47 million self-identified blacks, or less than one one-hundredth of one person killed by the police per 100,000. A police officer is 875 times as likely to be killed on the job as an unarmed black is to be killed by a police officer. Historically, blacks have made up over 40 percent of cop-killers nationwide — 43 percent between 2005 and 2013 — though they are, at most, 13 percent of the nation’s population. In New York City, blacks were responsible for 74 percent of the murders of on-duty New York Police Department officers between 1986 and 2020. In 2019, blacks nationally were over 37 percent of all cop-killers whose race was known. Conservatively estimating that 40 percent of the cop-killers this year have been black, 20 officers would have been killed by a black suspect in 2021, for a rate of nearly three cops per 100,000 officers killed by a black. A police officer is 375 times as likely to be killed by a black suspect as an unarmed black is to be killed by a police officer. Elder is breaking the taboos about black crime in an effort to save black lives. Police activity must be understood in the context of crime, not simple population ratios, since policing today is data-driven. Cops go where people are most being victimized, and that is in black neighborhoods. The police cannot protect black victims without having a disparate impact on black criminals. But the lies directed against cops from the highest reaches of government have led the police to back off. The Los Angeles Police Department experienced a 43 percent reduction in arrests in 2020 and a 27 percent reduction in street stops. This year, through Aug. 21, arrests are down another 28 percent, compared with the same period in 2019. Crime responded predictably. Homicides in Los Angeles through Aug. 21 are up 44 percent compared with the pre-George Floyd year of 2019; shots fired are up over 48 percent, and shootings up 44 percent. In Los Angeles County, homicides were up 111 percent this year through late May. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Latino and black victims account for nearly all the recent surge in homicides in Los Angeles. Assaults on officers also rose in 2020. Since the George Floyd riots, officers in California have been shot at, assaulted with lethal projectiles, firebombed, and run over. In September 2020, longtime felon Deonte Murray walked up to the parked squad car of two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and shot them both in the head as they sat inside. Bystanders cheered; anti-cop protesters continued the celebration later at the hospital, as the deputies struggled on life support. Yet despite this open season on cops, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón declared in December 2020 that officers’ authority may be resisted with impunity and will not be prosecuted — a declaration that strikes at the heart of civilization itself, as Elder understands. Trying to ensure that blacks get the policing they need in order to stay alive would not seem to be the gesture of a white supremacist, black or white. If Elder were running as a Democrat, the press would be celebrating the possibility of California’s first black governor. Instead, we hear nothing about “shattering glass ceilings” or “diversifying” the ruling elite. The New York Times ran an entire front-page article on Elder’s candidacy without once mentioning that he was black. (The article did claim in passing that Elder was an affirmative-action admit to Brown University, an unthinkable charge regarding a black liberal.) A column by Paul Krugman two days later was equally colorblind regarding the Elder candidacy. Has the Times renounced identity politics? Only selectively. Adjacent to the Aug. 25 front-page article was a story on New York’s new governor, headlined “Hochul Breaks a Barrier and Pledges a New Era.” The story opened with the observation that “Kathleen C. Hochul became the first woman to ascend to New York’s highest office on Tuesday.” Yet Hochul’s entry into the governor’s mansion in Albany does not even signify anything about gubernatorial voting patterns; she was not elected but slotted in after Andrew Cuomo’s resignation. Black governors have been much rarer than female ones. Elder would lead the nation’s largest state and be just the third black governor ever elected in the United States, following Douglas Wilder in Virginia and Deval Patrick in Massachusetts. Elder is indifferent to the silence regarding the “historic” nature of his candidacy. But the media’s effort to portray his run merely as a resurgence of alleged Trumpian racism depends on a shameful duplicity regarding crime and policing. As long as that duplicity remains in force, in the California governor’s office and elsewhere, the country will continue sliding toward anarchy. Always humorous to see the left trying to play the race card against a black man. He is just speaking the TRUTH. Black on black homicides are way worse than white on black.

Gotcha. Sorry. It flew over my head. I withdrew my comment. My apologies.

Tipton has potential to be as good or better than they were a year ago. Majority of the defense is back from last year. The OL is all back, 1,000 yard rusher back and 2nd leading receiver. They are however breaking in a sophomore QB. At 6’3 230, he has a chance to be really good but is still getting his feet wet right now. First 2 weeks the starters played MAYBE 1 full game worth of minutes so it’s too early to tell just how good they are. One thing I do know is they’ll be well coached and well prepared.

Same, I believe they lost a returning starter at corner for the season. Tough break. Among a few other injuries but I think the others will be returning soon. However, I get the sense that a lot of teams in the area are missing key guys due to injuries or close contact.

I agree that part of this is the "decline of South Bend" (as well as other parts of Northern Indiana). But decline may not be the best term, it may be more of a lack of growth compared to suburban Indy. Enrollment data show's you some of the effects. In the 90's and early 00's Penn's enrollment was MUCH larger compared to the majority of Indy metro schools. Save a few big MIC schools. In the 90's, HSE was a single 3A school!! Penn is now very "middle of the pack" in size compared to MIC and HCC... Carmel High School 5286 Ben Davis High School 4499 Warren Central 3821 North Central 3727 Fishers 3509 Penn 3338 Lake Central 3316 Pike 3295 HSE 3273 Avon 3095 Noblesville 3001 6 schools over 2500 These are the currently used enrollment numbers by IHSAA...not necessarily the "actual" enrollments of those schools. I'd love to see mid 90's enrollment numbers but don't have the time to look. Penn doesn't have a size advantage in 6A. Further, the metro schools that have caught up in size, now have a much better "competition advantage" than Penn does in the NIC. MIC and HCC schools play "Penn's" every week. How often does Penn play near peer competition? Hat's off to Coach Y and Penn trying to fill their schedule with stiffer competition such as Cathedral. Its very hard for a large school outside Indy Metro to find the quality of competition that the larger Indy Metro schools enjoy on a regular basis. I'd also argue there is a larger "pool" of quality coaches in the Indy Metro area. Staff's change and get shaken up regularly. A quality coach can easily begin coaching at other programs without changing their address or where their own kids go to school. This is much different in other parts of the state, where changing coaching jobs/filling coaching jobs may require someone moving the whole family.

Where would they get the tenderloins from?

This is correct. Due to quarantines we can not play until Saturday. Valley would prefer to find another game than play on Saturday. From what I understand if Valley does not find another game, then we will play Saturday.

Sorry, here is one by the unassailable Associated Press: https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-sports-football-education-200cef8f86d7e10d7f484de8e8672f5c

Are you sure? I’ve been told Fox News is “fake news” by some… Can you provide an alternate source?

Retired Ron is the new version of the Winamac fan who's name shall not be mentioned. #ChangeMyMind #Stalker2.0 #Creep @DTfacebook group is pretty good too. And it's "free".

Highland will be playing at Knox on Friday

How sad is this?

Hell, it even has a nice ass hotel when you enter the entrance and full furnished villas too

Quick pop in tonight Hope all are enjoying a start of their seasons. Looking forward to next 7 weeks of Hoosier Conference action for my Bombers, starting with Hamilton Heights Word on the street is we will have someone's WagonMaster Virginity taken pre game. Good Luck Hoosier Conference!! Cheers

IMG is not a high school program. They need to stop being placed on ESPN. Show real high school programs. I don’t want to watch IMG. That’s not high school football. Now mix IMG with with Bishop sycamore that is just absolutely ridiculous. What I don’t get is that IMG played Bishop sycamore last season… so wouldn’t have IMG have known and understood what they were going up against?? Just ridiculous

Following Western Boone the last 3 years, who went South all three years, it seemed like they were rarely challenged in the South. Only one of their 15 games prior to the state finals in those 3 years ended up as a single-score victory. That was in 2018 against TIpton.....who was promptly moved to the North for the next two years. Just feels like the better programs in 2A have been, and are still in the North to me. Eastbrook. Pioneer (at least the past 2 seasons). Luers. Andrean. Tipton. RC. Bremen. Eastside. But it's a new year and the past does not necessarily repeat itself so we'll see what happens. We're only 2 weeks into solving this year's puzzle.

Frank Caliendo is awesome

Haven't had a chance to post reactions from last week yet. Not much to change the tune I have been spouting. Mishawaka is head and above the best team in the conference this year. I don't care if Marian and Elkhart both lost a lot from last year or had other injury/COVID issues. Outscoring those two teams 71-16 in their victories cements them as the team to beat. The pecking order beneath them is where things are shifting. Northridge is obviously rising, but I do not think we will have an accurate view of the Raiders until week 5 when they visit Warsaw. I can't tell you that Adams and St. Joe are all that good this year, and getting to play NLC cupcakes Wawasee and Plymouth the next two weeks won't show much either. However, there is no denying the defense is quite possibly the strongest of the conference. They'll need it against the Tigers and Cavemen. I am not overly worried about the Warsaw loss at Michigan City. The Wolves have some DUDES on their team, and were especially big on the defensive line. That didn't allow the Tigers to get going on offense, and digging yourself into a 3 touchdown deficit early using "Bart Ball" makes it tough to come back. Those early mistakes sealed the nail in the coffin early for Warsaw, and honestly, that will always be the case. It's an offense built to play even or from ahead. Behind? Tough tough task to ask. Concord bounced back with a good win over rival Jimtown, and their defense has looked every bit as strong as Northridge's, but I'm still not sure what's going on with their offense. Only Wawasee has scored fewer points through two weeks in the conference. Anyone have any insight into the offensive woes occurring for the Minutemen? Kudos to the NorthWood coaching staff and athletic administration working together with Logansport to play on Friday. I cannot imagine playing an opponent on 24 hours notice and not being able to game plan/scout. However, I applaud everyone involved in getting the kids an opportunity to play the game. This week's game against Concord will be a true test for us to gauge both programs IMO. Congrats to Goshen on beating up the Little Sisters of the Poor in their out of conference schedule. I will be shocked to see them win again until week 8 when they visit Plymouth. But who knows... maybe they'll surprise between now and then. Hard to gauge how impressive their victories have been considering SB Clay is quite possibly the worst team in the state. Plymouth and Wawasee... not much to say. Both programs are down bad, but someone has to be. At least one of them will get a victory this season when they matchup in week 7.

Indeed. #18 is putting up some stupid numbers against some big schools. Will be a test for our DBs for sure.

North certainly has an offense that can put up numbers, but as you alluded to, their defense looks kind of shaky early on. They gave up almost 500 yards of total offense to BNL last Friday and that included a 68 yard run, 68 yard pass, and a 77 yard pass that were all TDs.

I got an idea for you and Bob (he liked your comment)... You donate to First Church and I will donate here.