JustRules

Don't confuse DT with facts. It doesn't fit his narrative. I looked up data from last year for comparison purposes. I picked the same week for both states and used 6A for Texas and 6A/5A for Indiana. Here is what I found. Texas (92 games) - average score is 39-16 with 22% the winner scored more than 50 Indiana (44 games) - average score is 35-15 with 14% the winner scored more than 50 Colder weather could have kept down some of the scores, but it general those are pretty similar numbers.

Not sure about the communism part of the comment, but he's right that allowing up to 3 yards for lineman to be legal does make it more difficult for defenses. The reason is the defense (and officials) read run/pass based on what the linemen do. If they drive block it's generally a run read. If their first step is back it's generally a pass read. The defenders will then cover the play accordingly. With RPO, the linemen will block initially as if it's a run and the defenders will adjust their coverage/movement as if it's a run play. RPO is designed to take advantage of that. NFL allows no downfield (or maybe 1 yard) so it's a different situation there. The QB is still reading a defender to determine which option he'll use, but the linemen are much more limited in what they can do. I've never thought of RPO as high scoring. That's more of the spread, hurry up offenses. Some may run RPO but they aren't the same thing. From an officiating standpoint, I'll make two points. First, this is very difficult to officiate because someone has to be able to watch two different things (the location of the lineman and the status of the ball) at the same time and they usually don't occur near each other. If one official knows where the linemen are and another one knows the pass was thrown, that information can't be combined to determine if a foul occurred. There are techniques that can help the umpire and/or wing officials try to cover both, but it takes a lot of practice and could happen at the expense of missing something else (i.e. holding). Second, it's not missed as often as people think. They see the receiver catching a pass 6 yards downfield with a lineman next to him or beyond him and think, "how could they miss that." It's important to understand the rule. It's a foul based on the location of the lineman at the time the pass is RELEASED. Earlier in my career I would make the incorrect assumption this lineman I see downfield has to be illegal. Then I would watch the video to confirm my call and realize the lineman was only a yard to two downfield when the pass was released! I've changed my approach to only call it if I know the lineman was downfield too far before the pass was thrown (HS is 2 yards, NCAA is 3 yards). Based on video review I've almost always been correct, but it has taken many years of practice. Officials at the B1G level are pretty good at it so it's not wrong nearly as often as Fitz thinks it is. At the HS level with varying levels of skills of officials it's probably much more inconsistent.

And if we only have 280 teams the bottom 20-30 would appear to be very bad football programs. It's all relative. No matter how many teams you have there will always be a percentage at the bottom with 0 or 1 wins. I've worked games with many of these teams and for the most part they still have players that play hard and have some talent. Many of them are on your list.

The biggest flaw in your logic is we get down to 280 schools there will still be a similar number of 0-10/1-9 teams and teams with low Sagarin ratings. Then we contract them. We'll eventually have 2 teams left.

If it has worked everywhere else why wouldn't it work in Indiana? In other states is almost exclusively a small town entity. There are some really small private schools in bigger cities that pair with smaller nearby towns.

Co-Ops are very successful in rural areas of other states. I think it would be a great solution to help those schools with declining numbers or allow students at schools without programs to participate.

Public schools actually pay much better than private schools.

Time will tell on Rivers. It's only a one-year deal so if he doesn't work out they can cut him loose pretty quickly. It's a fairly calculated gamble. Hopefully they keep Brissett and go back to him if Rivers doesn't pan out. He's not a great quarterback, but he's still young and athletic and could probably be pretty good if surrounded by the right talent.

Congrats to players of both teams. The south is stacked with MIC and HCC players. Is it usually like that? I hope they get to play the game this year.

Maybe this was the secret of the all-in, random draw process the IHSAA has used for years. We don't need a regular season to determine anything! Kudos to them for their foresight.

I've always wondered how to explain the term "tone deaf". I think I finally found it.

The difference is those pandemics had vaccines and treatments, plus they didn't spike in a very short time. They were spread out and the healthcare industry could handle the volume. There are so many differences between those and this one. The CDC is not overreacting. People who are hoarding TP and hand sanitizer are. I have not seen one report on the media imploring people to stock up on those items because they will very soon become unavailable.

Just a hypothetical if they decide to scrap the Spring seasons. I'm not saying finishing the boys tournament is a better option than letting the spring sports play. But if they really can't get going until mid-May it probably doesn't make sense to start the new seasons, but it wouldn't be that much to have 3 additional games in each class (12 total). I doubt they would do both.

If they end up killing the entire Spring sports season, they could possibly have a 2 weekend event to play the last 4 rounds. Two regional rounds one weekend and semi-state/state the following weekend. They wouldn't be competing with Spring sports because they don't exist and having something for a couple weeks could be a nice recovery from what we are about to go through.

Some conferences have and will continue to do that. If things have settled down by 4/6 then the B1G will allow some regular season contests/meets through the end of the year. I wonder if playing some games would affect the possibility of the NCAA considering granting eligibility extensions to these athletes.

Just because championships are cancelled (NCAA or NFHS state associations) doesn't mean the regular seasons for those competitions are cancelled. Especially in NCAA I expect they cancelled all championship events because the funding they would have used to pay for them is likely lost with the cancellation of the basketball tournament. March Madness is 80% of the revenue for the NCAA and they exist to regulate policies and conduct championships. They don't do anything with the regular season or conference tournaments.

At a minimum absolutely! If these cancellations and social distancing are effective in reducing the spread the diagnosis and mortality counts will be lower. We'll have no idea how much lower and we'll never know if they were absolutely necessary (I'm trusting the infectious disease people they are). But the canceling of everything and impact on the economy short and long term will definitely be historical.

This phase will be behind us, but I doubt it will ever be a distant memory. I've told my kids they are living through and witnessing something that will be talked about for centuries.

Absolutely true! The same applies to well marked grass fields too, but less likely to be variability on turf fields. Most good officials will also spot most first downs with the nose of the ball touching the back of a yard line. This way the officials can use the lines on the field (much less arbitrary) than the sticks on the sideline (very arbitrary). If you spot the ball between the yard lines, the back stake has to estimate about where it is between the lines from at least 20 yards away. He could easily be off by a foot or two. Then you have the person setting the clip (which is used in the event of a measurement or resetting the chains). He/she is at least a little closer to the line, but still a couple yards away. That could be off by 2-4 inches. If you don't have the benefit of using the lines to determine a first down on your spot, even that becomes an estimate (if an official tells you they know exactly where the spot is to the inch, they are lying). Then add in the potential movement as they are running in to give the spot to the umpire, you could easily have a couple inches of variability. But by using the yard lines, the wing officials can now use the yard line similar to the goal line and make a judgement of whether or not the ball reached that physical line. If they do they spot it as such and we move on with a first down. If in their judgement the ball was short of the line when it became dead they can spot it as such some distance short. No need to measure in most cases. We maybe have 1 or 2 per yer now. Robert Faulkens hates this mechanic because he thinks it's a college mechanic. It's not specifically called out at any level. It's just a good mechanic most officials at all levels learn to use, especially when they have good lines on the field. Turf fields generally are going to have very good, consistent lines, and they are much easier to see and use on the field.

Every study I've heard has a payoff of 10-years when installing turf. This is based on the money saved to grass field maintenance, seeding, line painting, etc. Most fields seem to last about 10 years. The replacement cost is less than the original installation because the foundation is already there. I assume that means the pay back is even sooner. So yes it is an expense to the taxpayers, but in the long run it's no more than not installing the turf. And you get a lot more use out of it than grass. Your issue based on other posts isn't about turf. It's about schools funding extra curricular activities in general.

That's not what I said. By your account the PWO prevents them from joining a lower level team. If that's true it creates an opportunity for someone else to attend that school. That trickles down to ultimately create an opportunity for someone who maybe wouldn't have been able to do it. That's not entirely the case, because there are no defined limits to the number of players the D3/NAIA. Many of those teams have the capacity to take more players. But if the PWO going to IU turned down a scholarship to attend UIndy, that does create an opportunity for a player who only had a PWO to UIndy (or possibly only a D3 non-scholarship offer) to get a scholarship offer. That's a win for him!

At least he's in good company because most D1 programs have at least some level of PWO programs. I guess every coach is negatively impacting the smaller schools in their state. And those schools have PWO programs as well. Heaven forbid more young people get an opportunity to be on a college football team.

His sole intent is to make sure Ball State, ISU and others remain unsuccessful!

LN girls won state this weekend. The boys swim team finished in the top 20 in state swimming. Only Carmel and Center Grove in the MIC finished ahead of them. Warren Central and North Central were the other only MIC schools that scored points. 48 of the 240 schools in the state scored at the meet. Looking at the MIC vs. HCC in swimming, the HCC is stronger. Here is how their teams finished in sectional and state: Fishers - 2nd in Sectional 8, 4th in State Zionsville - 1st in Sectional 12, 5th in State HSE - 1st in Sectional 8, 6th in State Avon - 3rd in Sectional 11, 13th in State Brownsburg - 1st in Sectional 13, 17 in State Franklin Central - 3rd in Sectional 13, 22nd in State Westfield - 2nd in Sectional 9, no points at State Noblesville - 3rd in Sectional 9, no swimmers at State 3 teams in the top 10 and 6 in the top 25 is very impressive. Westfield and Noblesville also have very good swim programs, but this shows how hard it is to score at state. Meanwhile in the MIC: Carmel - 1st in Sectional 9, 1st in State Center Grove - 2nd in Sectional 16, 9th in State Lawrence North - 2nd in Sectional 14, 19th in State Warren Central - 4th in Sectional 14, 24th in State North Central - 1st in Sectional 14, 39th in State LC - 6th in Sectional 14, no points at State Ben Davis - 4th in Sectional 13, no swimmers at State Pike - 6th in Sectional 13, no swimmers at State This just shows that sports vary from conference to conference. Munster, Chesterton and Penn are 3 of the other top 76 teams. Carroll and Franklin round out the top 10. None of those teams are top 25 teams in football. If you are only focusing on football as the only sport to determine where a school should be you are not looking at it from the perspective of an athletic administrator.

One of the recent seasons, LN won a sectional title in 11 of their 17 sports. They are almost always in the middle or upper in the conference in other sports. Outside of the main sports of football and basketball, schools like BD, WC, and Pike are generally the bottom of the conference. This includes tennis, swimming, cross country. softball, etc. If you frame of reference is only football and basketball you are not seeing the entire picture.