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Mind-boggling. What an awful decision by the AD’s and principals of these schools. Jeff sits directly in between McCutcheon and Harrison, there’s no way geography could be a legitimate reason for anyone with half a brain. Complete BS. Competition wise, I have no clue why you wouldn’t want your kids competing with the best teams possible. Harrison is no doubt solid throughout most sports, but they’re far from a juggernaut. Harrison softball, men’s soccer and track all have recent state championships/appearances. McCutcheon girls volleyball has been a top 5 program in the state for many years now and just won a state title 1 or 2 years ago. As to why you wouldn’t want these schools representing your conference (especially considering the very low quality of overall sports programs for the other 5 schools besides Jeff and Kokomo) is beyond me. Shame on these principals and AD’s. Cowardly and stupid decision. The NCC inches even closer to complete irrelevance

I was being somewhat facetious as I know there are no roads between Lafayette and Terre Haute. Then again, the Beef House can be reached if the route takes one from SR 26 to SR 63.

Yep. Logic seems to be absent in this situation. If I were one of those AD's I'd be hard pressed to renew any athletic contracts with Jeff. Interesting . . . What would that look like?

Ideal: Harrison, McCutcheon, Jeff, WL, Kokomo, Logansport, Lebanon, 8th spot is tough. There's no way any Indy suburbs would consider joining, so I would have to go with Crawfordsville, Frankfort or Twin Lakes. Though I think it would be extremely shocking if any of those 3 would join that conference. Crawfordsville would make the most sense to me out of those, it is relatively close to the 4 Lafayette schools. Realistic: Harrison, McCutcheon, Jeff, WL, Logansport, Lebanon. I really can't see any other schools having any interest in joining this conference, I think it would be super tough to get to 8 teams. It's pretty hard to imagine Kokomo leaving the NCC, though if Jeff were to leave, it would put Kokomo in a tough place. West Lafayette is the domino to get Jeff to consider leaving, and Jeff is the only domino that could possibly make Kokomo consider an exit as well. As far as Harrison and 6a goes, this hypothetical conference is a pretty significant step up in competition for them. Playing WL every year would be huge, and Lebanon is probably better than every NCC school outside of Jeff, Harrison and Kokomo in most major sports. Honestly having the 6 team "realistic" conference wouldn't be bad, especially for football. That gives Jeff, Harrison and WL all the very much-needed opportunity to schedule higher-quality opponents. This obviously counteracts with now having to do much more work in scheduling for other sports, but definitely doable as there are many schools across the state in a similar situation.

Those reasons of enrollment gap and geography don't make sense if Jeff isn't included. McCutcheon is the smallest of the Lafayette area schools and Jeff is currently the largest, with Harrison likely to surpass it in the near future. For competitiveness, maybe as Harrison has won the All Sports titles from 2015 - 2020 per the NCC site ... of course, it hasn't been updated since 2020: https://northcentralconference.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2020/09/all-sports.pdf. Jeff won basketball in 2019 and 2020 and McCutcheon won it in 2016 and 2018. Harrison has never won it. For baseball, Jeff won it in 2016 and 2017, McCutcheon won it in 2015 and 2019. Harrison has never won it. Boys soccer ... Harrison won it in 2014, 2016, and 2017. Jeff last won it in 2002 and McCutcheon has never won it. For football, Harrison won it in 2016 and, even though not updated on the site, won it back-to-back in 2021 and 2022. Jeff won it in 2017-2020. For women's sports, Harrison has won All Sports 2016-2020. Jeff last won it in 2003 and McCutcheon won it in 2015. For volleyball, Harrison has never won it, Jeff last won it in 1992 and McCutcheon won it 2017-2019. Soccer ... Harrison won it in 2016-2017, Jeff last won it in 2002, and McCutcheon won it 2014-2015 and 2018-2019. Softball ... Harrison won in 2017-2018, Jeff last won in 2003, and Mccutcheon has never won. Basketball ... Harrison won in 2020, Jeff last had a streak of 2017-2019, and McCutcheon has never won. Again, this is all based on NCC site through 2020. In essence, in looking at the bigger sports, the reasoning isn't really there for Harrison and McCutcheon, but not Jeff. For all sports, maybe, but not sport by sport other than the most recent for football and, even then it's only been Harrison over Jeff the last two years.

A new use for ChatGPT by the FBI: