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Jeff fits competitively in the NCC in most sports. They will ignore the travel time and abandon their Tippecanoe County neighbors because they see the opportunity to be the top dog in the NCC for football. They will compete just fine in basketball and most other sports. Harrison was the only true target of this move. Jeff was on board with it because they don’t like that Harrison has leap frogged them in every sport including boys basketball and football. McCutcheon hasn’t and would honestly be a good fit to stay in the NCC. I think the NCC schools even asked McCutcheon to stay but they were loyal to their district sibling. The problem for Harrison and McCutcheon is that they want to be a package deal, but there aren’t many schools that would want both of them in their conference. Harrison’s enrollment has grown at a faster rate than McCutcheon’s and their athletic programs are stronger across the board. McCutcheon might struggle in some conferences that would take Harrison, but Harrison may not get much competition in conferences that are a better fit for McCutcheon. In my opinion, this could have been avoided by taking a more progressive approach. Expand the conference to include a blend of the current members and some slightly smaller schools within the NCC footprint. Conference championships really don’t mean anything, they are just used to keep some people quiet when a team underachieves in the state tournament. “Well, we did win conference….” Anyway, my thought would be to add several schools to get to 16 members. Split into 2 regions (East and West), each with two divisions (Large and Small). Like this, with enrollments from the fall 2022 count day included. East Region, Large Division: Anderson 1790 Marion 1041 Muncie Central 1326 Richmond 1317 East Region, Small Division: Delta 786 Mississinewa 791 New Castle 836 Yorktown 791 West Region, Large Division: Harrison 2136 Kokomo 1497 Lafayette Jeff 2113 McCutcheon 1825 West Region, Small Division: Lebanon 1027 Logansport 1241 Western 819 West Lafayette 730 In football, each school plays the 3 in their division, 2 from the other division in their region, and 1 from each of the 2 divisions on the opposite side of the conference. That gives each school 7 conference games. It also allows them to preserve some long-time rivalries and still play 2 non-conference games against opponents of their choice. In basketball, each team plays everyone in their region (east/west) and the 4 schools from the opposite side of the conference who play in the same size-based division. So using Harrison as an example, they would play their division (Jeff, McCutcheon, Kokomo), region (Lebanon, Logan, Western, West Lafayette), and the East Large schools (Anderson, Marion, Muncie Central, Richmond). New Castle would play their division (Delta, Mississinewa, Yorktown), region (Anderson, Marion, Muncie Central, Richmond), and the West Small schools (Lebanon, Logan, Western, West Lafayette). I think this would serve a lot of the interests of all schools in the expanded NCC. The toothpaste is already out of the tube though, and many of these schools would not go for this anyway. So where do they go? I don’t have a clue. Conference Indiana might make sense if it wasn’t so far to travel for the current members. Adding Harrison and McCutcheon would bring the conference to 8 members, which is ideal. It also has a mix of schools that would fit the competitive level of McCutcheon (Southport, THN, THS) and schools that would compete better with Harrison (BL North, BL South, and CN). Those schools probably won’t even consider adding Harrison and McCutcheon due to travel, and the current members seem to be looking for other places to go already. Another possibility is to partner with the Indy parochial schools in the Circle City Conference. If they look north, they would fit nicely in the Duneland. Travel would be a concern with the added factor of time zone changes, and the Duneland schools probably have no desire to expand. The Mid-State would be ok also, but like the Duneland, I don’t think they want more than 8 members.

Agreed. I'm just speaking with logic and what Jeff should do. Would not be surprised if Harrison and McCutcheon didn't want anything to do with Jeff after all of this. Such a shame.

Makes absolutely Zero sense to me why Jeff would choose the travel nightmares and lack of overall competition in the NCC over sticking with Harrison and McCutcheon. One could argue it would benefit Kokomo all around to get out of the NCC and follow the Lafayette schools.

The question at this point is also, what happens with Jeff if its enrollment keeps it 6A? I can't imagine Jeff staying much longer in NCC with Harrison and McCutcheon out. Yes, Jeff could potentially schedule Harrison and/or McCutcheon, but if any of these schools finds a conference or a semi-stable schedule, they would only be non-conference for Jeff, at best, and might even end up not being available. That means that Jeff's STRONGEST conference foe, moving forward and based solely on last season, would be 4A/5A Kokomo. Given that last year, excluding Harrison and McCutcheon, Jeff outscored its remaining NCC opponents 251-47 and Kokomo accounted for 30 of those points alone, there's not much left for Jeff, from a football perspective at least, that would be a strong reason to stay. It was tenuous before and now even more so.