CoachGallogly

Investment in high school football is incredibly measurable. From facility investment (weight room, AV capabilities), parent organizations, head coach salary and daily responsibilities, caliber of head coach, size of assistant coaching staff, funding of assistant coaching staff, caliber of assistant coaches, non conference scheduling, youth program organization and development, weight training courses in the daily school schedule All of these are crucial if you are doing all of these things at an elite level, then enrollment is like dumping gas on the fire, but if you are not doing all these things, and doing them well then enrollment is like dumping gas down a drain pipe

Yes I'm sure that's the case at every high school. That's the beauty of the playoffs only 6 winners out of over 300 schools. No that's statistics.

Center Grove has made it to the final four 10 of the last 11 years. It wasn't that long ago LC was in the finals 2 out of 3 years, and just whooping people. They are both in the bottom half of 6A. North Central, Lake Central, Avon, Noblesville, Crown Point, all have zero trips in the past 10 years, but are in the top 1/2 of 6A. Enrollment is not the overriding factor for each of their success or lack of success individually. There are many reasons schools succeed. Enrollment is one of those factors, but it is not the only factor, and often it's not even #1 on the list. The 3 mega outliers certainly have an extra advantage due to their size, nobody would argue that. But North Central is 98% of the size of Warren Central, and you have two very very different scenarios. It doesn't appear you are following me on this. Cutting 8 teams or 16 teams from 6A doesn't reduce the chances of the big 3 from winning. You're argument reeks of self-interest if you deny that fact.

Do you believe Tech and Perry have invested in competing at the same level as those other 3? If yes then we have issues, if not then we don't.

9/14 state finalists in 6A history have been Carmel, Warren, or BD. That's roughly 2/3 of the participants are from those 3 schools. Shrinking 6A to 24 teams, or 16 teams doesn't take BD, Carmel, and Warren down. Investing in your programs like BD, Carmel, and Warren does.

Yes the IHSAA does have a history of it. The issue in 6A doesn't seem to do with the Indy schools, it has more to do with the non-Indy schools. The reality is there needs to be some revamping of the scheduling mechanics outside of Indy for the bigger schools. The depth of schedules just don't prepare them the same way.

I'd wager the 1A schools would disagree. 🙂

Certainly possible he chose Kentucky over Bama, and those others. It's also important to remember if a college needs 4 OL they don't just offer 4 guys, they offer 8 guys and the first 4 get it (maybe they hold out a spot for the special player).

The gap is bigger for 1A.

You shouldn't make a playoff format to fit outliers, they should largely be excluded from the calculus. 6A and 1A by nature of being at the end of the spectrums will have outliers, no way around that. A good rule of thumb is you'd like the top of the class to not be 2x the bottom team in a class. If you take 6A, and remove Carmel and BD, the top of the class is Warren at 3821, and the bottom is Valpo at 2054. That's within the window I see no issues. Now if you prescribe to the theory there are major issues in 6A (I don't, but let's say you do.) There are other ways the IHSAA can mix things up, the most obvious would be to get a little creative with sectional gerrymandering. For instance you could put Carmel, BD, North Central, and Pike in a district thats 1,2, 4, and 8 in enrollment all together. That would spice things up a bit more.

That was the original plan from the IFCA but our planned got Bobby Coxed right before the finish line.

Im aware, I guess I thought we were talking all levels not just HS football.

"We're not very big, but we make up for it by being slow." -??

Since picking of receivers is allowed by default 90% of the time, and since virtually all rules favor the offense and QB, I'd love to see DB's get 10 yards to excessively bump (except the face mask or horse collar) let's level the playing field a bit. That extra 5 yards levels it a lot the DL gets a real shot now at pressure.

The idea is to reclassify using the playoff points every two years, but base it off the previous four years in a rolling format.

I don't see how it could be without eliminating a couple classes, or creating a couple more. Basketball should be chasing football not the other way around.

That happens in the football playoff set up as well. 5A currently holds that spot of being treated like red-headed step child. Some sectionals everyone gets a bye, some section's 2 of 5 have to play an extra game than everyone....

How do you suggest asymmetry is achieved among 64 teams?

The Football tourney already lacks symmetry I don't get your point

The IHSAA exists to conduct athletic competition based on the desire of the consensus of schools. If a preponderance of schools desire a relegations system....it'll happen. You're issue isn't with the IHSAA but school admin and school boards.

DT back when we put the SF together I brought up the concept of bumping teams down who had not won a playoff game in the four years span, down one level. It garnered virtually zero support in the committee, and died on the spot. There is no appetite from schools to accept such a label, and I doubt the IHSAA has any interest in forcing it upon anyone.

Also while Carmel is still growing at the high school it has begun to shrink at the elementary levels. The community is built up, very few places for a new home to be built. As this group of parents graduate their kids the high school will begin to shrink too, you wont get enough in the move in/move out exchange to keep up with the size. You already see Carmel closing elementary schools. Carmel isn't going to drop to 2000 kids or anything, but it's very likely they fall well into the 4,000's in the next decade. A question I have is how long until Westfield, and Noblesville start to close in on Carmel in size. Both of those schools are 1 horse towns, and building homes like there's no tomorrow...Westfield especially.

Berwyn-Cicero Morton in Illinois has nearly 8,200 kids.

DT classification systems shouldn't be created as a response to a couple schools it should be developed in a way that benefits most (if not all) schools in a similar fashion. Your breakdown takes a class where the smallest school is about 40% of the biggest, by creating two classes where one group gets a gap thats about 49% while the other class has a gap it's about 75%. That's hardly an equitable split for the teams in your top breakdown. An equitable break down puts Carmel, BD, and Warren in a class, and the other 29 in their own class. Obviously that's incredibly silly to do such a thing. The IHSAA would be better off keeping the same 32 setup but lumping the three in their own sectional along with North Central. But obviously there are financial implications of such a move.

Every couple years this same discussion occurs. Here is a little insight on why things are the way they are right now. First off when this was all established I pushed for a 32 team 6A, and a 32 team 1A but not a lot of support existed for that setup. While I still support that model, I will tell you that the the final product is probably the correct way to do it. Here is the mindset behind the current setup. Currently in 6A you have a 5286 enrollment at the top and 2054 at the bottom. On initial investigation this looks like the top of the class is 250% the size of the bottom of the class. While this is true it's not anywhere close to even proportional spread throughout the class. We have two very large outliers in Carmel, and BD. If you remove them the gap from top to bottom is 180%. Or well within the 2x range. 5A sits in the 140%. The gap in 6A certainly is still bigger than 5A but not but not at the scale it first appears. If you were to put the top 32 in 6A, and then make an even 64 in 5A. The gap in 5A grows to larger than the 6A spread, not by a lot but it his the 2x wall you'd try to avoid. Let's look at the 1A level then currently it appears 1A is at over a 3x spread. 380 largest school vs. 121 smallest. But again the outlier problem misleads reality in that class. If you take out the bottom two schools (actually it's 3 right now, two have the same number) you get below the 2x line at about 190%. Now what happens if you put the bottom 32 in a class by themselves (and cut out the outliers) The gap drops to below 140%. This would mark one of the smallest gaps. In addition when you do that the 2A gap goes up, the 3A gap goes up, and the 4A gap goes up. At the end of the day if you take out the outliers at the very top and very bottom the current setup produces the most tightly compacted classes we can (while still attempting to keep to the 64 or 32 team model).