scarab527

I always thought St. Germain did a pretty good job at LC. The one thing that killed him was losing a lot of talent to Andrean those years. He just couldn’t keep kids in house for some reason. As for the comments about Andrean’s current situation, I can’t say I don’t agree. I also think that Andrean is poised to slip even more in the next few years.

I guess I’ll give my thoughts on some of these games now. Merrillville-Westfield: I think the keys to this game will be the play of the Merrillville offensive line and Pirate QB Angel Nelson. When Nelson has struggled, so have the Pirates. In the Chatard game, he lost two fumbles and threw a pick. Last week against Elkhart, he let the Lions back into the game by throwing 3 picks. He’ll need to hold onto the ball and make good reads for the Pirates to have a chance. The Pirate O-Line was physically humiliated in their loss to Chatard, but this group has improved since then, and came up huge last week in opening holes for Logan to rush for 187 yards and 3 huge TDs against a pretty good Elkhart defense. They’ll need to show up big this week against an even better Westfield defense. In the end, I think this one could turn into a bit of a shootout, but I think Westfield will get some key stops. I’ll go Westfield 42 - Merrillville 28. Valpo-Zionsville This game is hard to predict. These two teams seem to play to the other teams’ weakness. From what I’ve seen from Zionsville, they’re pretty balanced run/pass, with a good RB, and three good receivers in #1, #11, and #19. The QB is hard to contain in the pocket as he’s very quick. I don’t think Valpo has played a team with this kind of balance all year, and definitely not a team who can sling the ball around like Zionsville. It’s hard to tell how the Viking secondary will match up. I expect the Vikings to dominate in the trenches, but will this matter if Zionsville can hit a few big plays to their receivers? The fact that this game is being played in Zionsville is definitely an advantage for the home team, hopefully Valpo won’t come out flat from the long bus ride. I’d like to see Valpo make a 2nd straight trip to LOS, but my gut tells me that Zionsville pulls this one out, 28-21. Hobart-Marion Can Hobart make its first state finals appearance in nearly 25 years? The defense has been spectacular, the offense has been suspect. If the defense can’t contain Marion’s two explosive running backs, I think the Bricks will have a hard time playing catch up. Hobart has hard a hard time hitting explosive plays this season. They’ll need to hit some on Friday. I think the Brickies finally exorcize their demons this Friday, and book their trip to LOS, 21-14.

Two very good points here. Andrean’s reach will probably grow when the new school is built. Also, when I played PW, all those years ago, Tri-Town was the dominate team. A lot of kids I played with at Andrean played on the Raiders too. The Tri-Town dominance has seemingly faded. I’m sorry, I’ll edit my comment to “in the past 20+ years”, is that better for you?

It’s gonna take a lot more than a new coach to get that program trending up...

Oh man, this might be one of the toughest jobs in the state. LC needs a complete and total culture shift starting from their feeder schools and moving up. They have all the problems you listed, and I would also add that LC has always had problems losing some of their best football players to Andrean as well. It’s going to take a very dedicated coach who will be in it for the long haul to turn this program around. But in all honesty, I’m not sure it can be done. As for Mason possibly taking the job, I’d say there’s slim to no chance of that happening. I think he really likes his situation in Michigan City for various reasons. Plus he moved from Schererville when he left Andrean and took the Michigan City job, so I don’t think he’ll want to move back so quickly.

Which conferences are you relating to them?

Why do you say that? I’d say it’s at least as good as it was then.

I agree with everything you said here. The best teams in the HCC have shown they can beat teams in the MIC, even the Big 4, in the regular season. But as you said, they haven’t shown they can beat the best team in the MIC in the playoffs yet. Avon almost did it in 2015, but they came up short. The HCC has all the factors for future success, but as you said, so do Carmel and CG. I don’t see Warren Central and Ben Davis going away for a long time either. I probably wouldn’t take the bet that the MIC will win every 6A title this decade either. But if you asked me to bet in 2013 that in 2020, every 6A title so far would’ve been won by one of the Big 4, I probably wouldn’t have taken that bet either.

Fair. Still, those 2 titles were at the very beginning of the decade. In the years that have followed, in my opinion, the gap between the MIC and everyone else has grown. This isn’t a knock on those other teams, the HCC has proven to be a great conference too. But the MIC has proven itself to be on a whole ‘nother level.

? 6A has been won every year by the MIC since it was first introduced.

Trust me, I’d love to see it happen. Maybe it will. But I doubt it.

The dominance of the MIC isn’t going away anytime soon. I doubt that changing scheduling is going to help. To be honest, I’d be shocked if a team that’s not in the MIC wins 6A once in this entire decade.

I disagree with your analysis of the DAC. I think the DAC has to be considered trending up. Valpo has won 3 straight regionals, Merrillville 2 straight. Valpo overcame a lot of covid and injury adversity to get there. Merrillville took down a good Elkhart team despite throwing 3 INTs, the Pirates were cruising up 14-0 until the turnover party began. Chesterton beat Penn, admittedly in a down year, but you tell me the last time when the 3rd best team in the DAC beat Penn in the playoffs. The Trojans then took Elkhart down to the wire and nearly won that game. Coach Mason told me before the season that he thought Michigan City was “a year away”, but they still took Valpo down to the wire in the sectional and had a good win over Warsaw in the regular season. I think Coach Mason feels great about his team’s prospects for next year. LaPorte played Valpo tougher than anyone expected in the sectional and had a great win over Michigan City in the regular season. I think that program is trending up. Crown Point was hit the hardest by covid this year, but this program is only a couple years away from winning 3 straight 6A sectionals. They’ll recover. Portage hasn’t been good in over a decade and definitely wasn’t going to be good this season after the Radtke fiasco combined with covid. LC is admittedly trending in the wrong direction.

Agreed, I was surprised by this prediction, especially after how tough Concordia played Chatard last week.

1. Thank you for proving my point. 2. YOU brought up human capital, I just stated that fact that companies are already working as if certain prospective employees have higher human capital than others, and that educational history is a large part of these calculations. This is a fact. Again, why do people go to better colleges? And why do parents send their kids to better high schools? It is to increase their human capital in the eyes of employers. 3. I’ll ignore all the rather sad “woe is me” stuff in your comment. If PPs can’t succeed in sports with all the advantages they have, including the huge one you just mentioned, that’s their fault and they have no one to blame but themselves.

You don’t think nepotism happens at places other than unions? That’s funny. And is nepotism not just an overestimation of someone’s human capital, in this case based on where they went to school? You don’t think that happens at plenty other places? And the study found a 20% increase in female career earnings, that’s not significant? It also found a positive relationship among male earnings and private high school, just not as significant as females. Career earning power is a direct indication of how companies view you in terms of human capital. If you don’t think that counts as evidence, you’re the one wasting people’s time, but you’ve been doing this the whole time so it’s not surprising. The study also lists other studies which have shown positive relationships between career earnings and private high school. You haven’t understood my arguments this entire time which is funny. You keep saying my claim was that employers “leap down” to private high school graduates, which is obviously true in certain cases like I just mentioned and which you had no response. You’ve been arguing with everyone on this thread that PPs don’t have obvious advantages and honestly it’s looking very embarrassing and desperate on your part. Maybe when you pull your head out of the sand we can have a real conversation about this but I have a feeling that isn’t going to happen any time soon. Good day sir.

No, clearly you’re not very good at this. It seems you have a hard time following arguments. But if you want some anecdotal evidence, though, and more evidence than the scant amount you’ve asserted about what is likely your imaginary company, here in the Region, many of the Unions are filled with Andrean alumni. So much so, that in many of them, you can get your foot in the door just by being an alum yourself. I’ve heard similar stories about LCC and Eli Lilly. When I went to Andrean, local employers would literally come and recruit seniors every year to come work for them, and would always talk about how they preferred us to the public schools kids. These stories are really a microcosm of the superior job-networking you, in general, get at a private school compared to a public school, because of better-connected guidance counselors and more opportunities to harness these connections due to a smaller enrollment. Couple this with the fact that more and more jobs require a college degree, which a private high school education puts a person in a better position to obtain than their public school counterpart, and all the advantages a private school has over the average public school in terms of “human capital” are clear. The article I linked had all of this information, but I shouldn’t have expected you to read it anyway. But here’s another article that finds positive relationships between private high school education and career earnings, if I haven’t been clear enough for you. Hopefully you’ll actually read this one, but I doubt it. http://ftp.iza.org/dp10135.pdf

Lol the point I was making clearly flew miles over your head. I wasn’t comparing the teachers at all and the fact you think I was is honestly hilarious. The comparison was how companies view the graduates of each in terms of their human capital. Educational history is clearly taken into account when companies are recruiting. High school education matters for college recruiting. And college matters for how much human capital companies view you as having. Go look up starting salaries out of college for Ivy leagues vs Public colleges if you really need evidence of this indisputable fact. Here’s an article from the official college admissions website about how sending your kids to private school increase their chances of getting into an elite college, which as just mentioned, increases their human capital in the job market. https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/private-vs-public-hs/ So yes, I have plenty of evidence and could easily provide more, but I’m sure you still wouldn’t get my argument anyway. And you still only can have your own weak anecdotal evidence of whatever podunk company that you run.

Lol. Your anecdotal evidence is cute. If you don’t think companies recruit based on education history, I don’t know what to tell you. Why do you think kids go to Ivy League schools instead of Ivy Tech. Works the same way with high schools. To try to deny this is either painfully ignorant, or a rather pathetic attempt at trying to deny the obvious.

I mean, in terms of recruiting for companies, many companies specifically target prospective employees that went to private high schools, or at least public high schools in wealthy districts. So in this way, some companies clearly see a difference in the “human capital” of people depending on the school they went to. This is an indisputable fact.

Westfield also just routed what was likely the SAC’s best team, Homestead. As a huge region homer I’d love to see the Pirates pull this one out but I highly doubt they can.

http://scoreboard.homestead.com/football/capsFri.htm#loaded

Was actually just thinking about this today. I’d say 4A South has some very good teams this year, but the North is weaker than 3A North and arguably 2A North as well, as Marion lost by 3 TDs to an Eastbrook team that couldn’t make it out of a 2A sectional and Hobart lost by 11 to an Andrean team that only made it to regionals. Other posters have commented on how the SF “hollowed out” 4A, and this year, specifically in the North, that seems to be the case.

Agree with a lot of what was said here. John Harrell predicts Merrillville-Westfield at 38-17. I think it’ll be closer than this, but I too think Westfield wins. Valpo’s defense has been their saving grace this season, if Zionsville can’t contain Jones and Dingman on the edges, Valpo may be able to ride Burbee to a grinding victory, like they have most of the season. But with Cathedral waiting, maybe it’s a better thing if they don’t win. As for Hobart, I still think they have to be favored this week, but you’re totally correct, a few weeks ago, I would’ve said Hobart was the favorite to represent 4A North at LOS. But these past two weeks, specifically the game against Lowell, have me doubting this team. Marion also seems to be rolling right now. Hobart will need to play much better this week.

Great, maybe they can actually win something in 1A.