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My biggest problem all along has been the unwillingness of those who say "science is the answer", yet refuse to look at factual data and only make decisions based on emotion (fear). There was a 16 year killed in an accidental shooting here in Evansville last week. https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/2020/07/06/juvenile-dead-after-sunday-night-shooting-police/5382529002/ The week before that, two teens were killed in a car crash. https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/2020/06/28/names-2-teens-killed-vanderburgh-co-crash-friday-released/3275314001/ The week before that, an 18 year old died in a swimming accident near Jasper - at a graduation party! https://duboiscountyherald.com/b/jasper-man-who-died-after-falling-into-lake-identified If you want to only worry about football players, I can remind you that Mario McCullough of Cathedral was shot and killed in March. Are these deaths not tragic? Can we not mourn their passing because they didn't die of COVID? Football players have died of heat stroke. Football players have been paralyzed. Football players have had life-changing broken bones, ACL tears, etc. We know the risks. We take precautions. We play football.

The way I see it, if a school chooses to begin or change to 8 man...then they are looking for positive ways to invest in the community!

Good for you all. I am for any solution to expand any sport, including the game of football in its various derivatives, to communities where they deem it a) necessary for the improvement of the experience of the student-athlete, b) the body of student-athletes shows enough interest over a sustained number of cohorts, and c) the community as a whole is able to support such expansions. As it pertains to football, that could be the 11, 9, 8, or 6 man derivatives or the form of a co-operative program. I am further in favor of the inclusion of any such sport, or football derivative, under the governing body of the IHSAA should enough member schools show interest, and in some way commit, in participating in such sport. I would leave the establishment of threshold of what is considered "enough" to the IHSAA. Enjoy your conversation lads.

It's a disingenuous question to ask if mourning how someone dies is an either/or proposition. All of them are sad stories, but to draw on them for this particular conversation is an apples and oranges comparison. Car accidents, swimming accidents, and gun violence are not contagious viruses that have caused a world wide pandemic. I would add that the responsibility in the situations you mentioned does not fall on a school or coach; where it definitely will for covid.

I do not support 8-man football as well. A co-op system is the best bet for small schools in Indiana. But schools like Barr-Reeve and Loogootee, for example, will have to get other their mutual animosity. Isn't that a good thing?

I've said from the beginning, if we are going to shut down because 1 or 2 people test positive there is no point in starting. Until this virus is completely gone (which it likely never will be), there will be some spread no matter what we do. We can't be shut down forever so we have to learn to mitigate the spread as much as possible and restore some activities as much as possible. But also respect the dangers of the virus and take it seriously. But shutting everything down completely is not the answer either. Football and other sports though are going to be a lower priority. Remember through there are people who make a living in the sports industry. It's not just a game for us to watch and our kids to play.

The Indiana Football Digest is out. Order your copy at: indianafootballdigest.com

Heard Paul Finebaum this morning say CFB this year is “dying the death of a thousand cuts,” with the announcements that the ACC and B1G will play only conference games this year. The record should show I made that very same reference yesterday before those announcements, after hearing what the Ivy League and Stanford have done.g At some point a movement in any direction reaches a “tipping point.” If you’ve read the Malcolm Gladwell book, you know what I mean. It’s the point where momentum becomes irreversible, and there’s no longer any possibility of changing direction. The rest of the Power 5 conferences will announce something similar today or tomorrow. Other conferences will follow suit. Smaller schools will cancel their seasons ... because without the big payday a non-con game against a Power 5 school provides, they can’t make it financially. Then, when training camps start, you’re going to see a bunch of positive tests. Programs will “suspend” activity for a week as a band-aid. Then, some programs will cancel, or states will restrict fan attendance sharply. Other programs will “copycat,” because they don’t want to appear insensitive to the health concerns. The slide has started, and I don’t see any way to arrest it. I really, really hope I’m wrong

I do wish soccer was a spring sport.

Not quite. It only says the ends are eligible which is true of 11-man football. What they are saying is the end can be #56 and still be eligible. That's not true in 11-man. As for the big uglies losing opportunities, from my experience there are players in 1A/2A playing OL who are smaller than skill players at larger schools.

Yes, like many on this forum believe soccer to be a "silly" sport even when it the most widely played sport worldwide.

Cheaters gonna cheat https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/10/west-virginia-mail-carrier-guilty-election-fraud-altered-ballot-requests/5412010002/

No problem. I’m all for it. More direct path to the playoff.

"The fact I can say 'Old racist with failing health and credible rape accusations', and you aren't sure if whether I'm talking about Biden or Trump, tells you everything you need to know about the GOP and Democrats" Spike Cohen...Libertarian Vice Presidential Candidate Discuss

Before we all shoot from the hip, let's read the sources that folks are using. You may not agree with them, but the number is there ... see below with the red circle. That's where the 9% came from ... not from @Plymouthfan91 own calculations. Similarly, there's a problem in your using the total population and the current deaths as it is mixing population with sample and would pre-suppose that EVERYONE in the US has already contracted COVID AND had the eventual resolution. Also, the 135,838 divided by 331 million would yield a rate of .041% which would certainly be less than .5%, but misleading somewhat in seemingly attempting to paint 135,838 as the cap in the .5% range. Even using the total COVID cases and applying the deaths against it, you run into a number somewhere around 4.2% ... this would assume that all of the non-recovered/discharged folks ended up being recovered/discharged and none of them died. Extrapolate that to the population as a whole and you run into somewhere around over 13 million dead ... and that's at the 4.2% rate. With that said, the 135K+ deaths that we currently have includes folks who were part of the front-end of the pandemic before social distancing/lockdown, etc. In essence, the potential death rate if you CONTRACT COVID seems to be somewhere in the 9% upper range and 4.2%, or possibly lower, taking to account that the 4.2% is currently spanning a minimum of two different response environments. Looking at the post lockdown/social distancing numbers would, potentially, give a better indication of lower end. Nonetheless, applying 4.2% against the country population and you come up with a number north of 13 million deaths. Even taking a death rate after contraction of just 2%, it ends up being some 7 million+. Ultimately, what is more important in the overall scheme of figuring out "return to normal" is determining the likelihood of ANYONE getting this. The # of tests done in the US is around 40 million. Of that, we have around 3.2 million cases. As such, extrapolating that out, you have around a 7.9% rate of HAVE COVID vs. tested for. That number is likely to be a bit high because folks being tested likely think they have it or are pre-supposed to get tested. Nonetheless, it's where we mainly are on testing, so assuming roughly a similar infection and death rate, you are looking at around a .3% death rate of those that die vs. those tested and using tested as a surrogate for the population. That still clocks in at just under 1 million people against the population. Going back to @Plymouthfan91's original post, whether you are talking about 1 million dead or 7 million dead or 13 million dead, those numbers are worth being smart about especially when you consider that last year was one of the worst years on record for flu deaths and that was around 80,000 ... we are already at 50% more than that with COVID so far.

This is the same as my thoughts about general reopenings as well. There HAS to be the expectations that there will be positive tests. There's no way this won't happen. So to shut down practices, restaurants, businesses, churches, etc etc because a single positive tests occurs.... what's the point in even starting/opening up. We have to learn to live with it.

I'm not sure if anyone from Outside the Huddle ever checks this board out, but I have to say I have been impressed with their work. The last two years in 4A (Evansville Central - Dwenger and Evansville Memorial - East Noble) I have checked out their site leading up to the state finals. They do a great job promoting and reporting NE Indiana football. Kudos!

So maybe in April and May we should've listened to the science and stopped mass gatherings, made masks mandatory, and not allowed bars to open. The American people as a whole are spoiled and when they are asked to do make a sacrifice (I use this term loosely because this really isn't a sacrifice) they pout and say it is their right. This isn't the "cancel" culture but it is a "selfish" culture that we have. Now as we go down this path in the South how long before it causes those of us who listened to science and tried to do what was right have to tell our kids they will miss another sports season or another school year because of the "selfishness" of people. This amazes me bu doesn't surprise me.

Center Grove 2022 defensive lineman Caden Curry recently received offers from Michigan and Oregon.

I would edit my previous post, but my phone will not allow. Two more things and then I'm done with the @DT. First of all, your lane is very obviously not Indiana high school football in general, it is the promotion of "big school" football that produces the majority of the "talent" in the state. If that's your focus, fine, but that makes you the guy on the interstate who puts his cruise control on right at 70 and tries to pass a semi without accelerating. Sure, you're "in your lane" and "following the letter of the law" but it's also inconsiderate at best and dangerous at worst. Finally, I've coached teams that went 9-1 and teams that went 0-10 and don't you dare tell me that those kids that went 0-10 didn't take away anything positive from that season because they did. I've spoken to those kids, who are now young men, and they certainly wished things would have gone differently, but they wouldn't trade those experiences for anything. But sure, go ahead and pound the table demanding that all those experiences shouldn't happen. It's insulting, and contrary to the purposes of this forum. I'm done.

I think what the IVY league does has zero effect on anything Indiana HS football will do. It's mind boggling to me that factories in this state with 7,000 plus employees can pull this off with every age range from 18-65 in the building but we don't think we can manage the least effected demographic in much much smaller populations. What is driving fear right now is "case" counts (the media is doing a fabulous job). 80% of "cases" are asymptomatic and it still isn't known if that group even sheds the virus. Testing continues to ramp up which continues to drive up cases and folks still find a way to get worked up about percentage positives when the folks getting tested are ones who think they have it or think they have been exposed. You can't extrapolate "percentage positives" across the general population. School should go in Indiana and so should fall sports. That said, can all 50 states keep their cool and manage the inevitable event of when "cases" pop up in the building without quarantining every child who was within 20 feet of the known positives? I seriously doubt it. Fear usually wins over logic in the world we live in today.

Rensselaer had 3 HOF coaches on the same staff in the mid to late 1960s. Bill Siderewicz, Head Coach, Chris Geesman of Penn fame as an assistant and Dale Hummer of Fountain Central and Dekalb fame as an assistant. Then there was Joe Burvan who is in Wrestling HOF as an assistant and was head coach at one point with an undefeated team at Rensselaer. That was a staff.

Ethical skeptic uses all CDC data to create his overlay graphs. Very eye opening. I've cross checked his stuff with cdc numbers.

I think this will be the force behind Notre Dame joining a conference as well.

That is fake news. There is not a 9% death rate. You have incorrect information or you are trying to spread more fear.