First_Backer_Inside

3 minutes ago, temptation said:

I mean, "SOMEHOW" Cathedral does it right, lol?

They're just able to because they work harder than everyone else and pay for their own school lunch or something like that.

11 minutes ago, btownqbcoach1 said:

My quick mock, I had this too. 

Two people had something drawn up that makes a lot of sense and is the same, looks like the IHSAA is gonna have to go a whole different route. Nice goin fellas 😉

Just now, JQWL said:

Because we need to meet in person for hours upon hours to decide who is the best team in your sectional?

No, it was a good pitch. You just have to think about the same problem that arises with the coaches poll every year. Unfortunately as coaches, you don't have all the time in the world. You also don't see a lot of the teams in your sectional. Yes you can have an idea of who is good but you don't necessarily get to see them on film, see who they play, etc. so trying to have the coaches seed a sectional would be difficult if you don't see everyone because records can be deceiving. Not to mention opinions of other schools, relationships between coaches, I have respect for a lot of coaches all over the state. I also know other coaches I trust about as far as I can throw them if you are catching where I'm going with this.

1 hour ago, JQWL said:

Let's say Saturday morning after week 9, the coaches of the 8 sectionals rank the teams, excluding your own team. Do it via Google Forms. The Forms get sent to the host school that's in charge of the money for the year. Then shared to each AD. Ballots have to be submitted by noon. If you do not submit a ballot, you automatically get seeded last.

This wouldn't work

On 2/9/2024 at 4:30 PM, Footballking16 said:

Ok Calpreps, Massey, create your own formula....

Literally every other state has some kind of rating or qualification system that seeds the postseason or counts for inclusion. 

That's the next step.

Once you appropriately seed the sectionals, the need for what is now considered the first round becomes redundant. There will be running clocks in 75-80% of games if and when they seed appropriately. 

We're getting there....slowly but surely. 

About the only state outside of Indiana i have a little bit of knowledge on is Illinois. From what I know, they don't have a lot of conference games. They travel a lot to play teams within their class. Because of conferences being the majority(for some schools the entirety) of the schedule, in some cases I just think things would get interesting in terms of who gets different seeds. Obviously we could go by different rating systems, but at the end of the day, if two good teams didn't play each other and one got in and the other didn't because of that rating system, you're gonna have some pissed off coaches.

If we go to the 1-16 seeding for all classes and do away with all-in, one thing that could help would be having a week 10 regular season game to schedule more of those out of conference games. 

1 hour ago, MarshallCounty said:

The winner of the Knox and Tippy Valley game has a shot. They will face each in the new NSC.

Any idea what Knox has coming back up front? I know they got some dudes at the skilled positions, but I think they lose some good lineman up front.

On 2/9/2024 at 12:40 PM, BLACKGOLD2007 said:

What does Tippy Valley have coming back, they were a strong team going into the playoffs. 

 

Graduating 16 seniors a lot of really good talent and size at the skilled positions, 7 guys on both sides of the ball combined with consistent varsity experience will be coming back. I don't think they will be as good as last year, no doubt will be a tough game for anyone, but not quite the talent coming back that they had last year.

On 2/9/2024 at 6:49 PM, jets said:

 

Maybe just ask some wrestling coaches - they’ve seemed to figure it out since the beginning of time

They also wrestle 30 matches a year. Usually after 30 matches you see a decent amount of the schools in your sectional and have a good idea of who is the dude to beat in the sectional. Not as easy to do with 9 games.

42 minutes ago, Bobref said:

They’d have to use something else or, for example, 3 of Center Grove’s regular season games in the 2024 season would not count toward seeding, since they are out of state opponents. It would hardly be consistent for the IHSAA to open up their travel policy somewhat, as they did a couple of years ago, and then adopt a seeding formula that penalizes teams for playing out of state opponents.

Good luck finding something else

11 hours ago, foxbat said:

I'll take that bet.  I think that they won't get by both Roncalli and Cathedral.  They'll be competitive, but they get Roncalli on the road this year ... and I'm not sold on the idea that Roncalli will be 4-7 again this coming season.

4-7 no, at least 8-1 tho my friend 😉

36 minutes ago, BTF said:

For the record, they return 3 of their top 4 tacklers, and 20 of their 27 interceptions. They have two DB's with D1 offers. Should be pretty solid on that side of the ball. That defense only allowed two touchdowns in the 2023 post season, both at the hands of Mishawaka. 

I'm not trying to be a smartass here. Snider had 52 points scored on them in the postseason. I assume you are saying backups were in for the other scores, or were the other touchdowns defensive scores and special teams by the other team? If so, that's a lot of points the offense/special teams is giving to the other team.

Yawn....Chatard

22 hours ago, Rodney said:

im bored

the hell have you people been up to?

 

ive spent my winter harassing vegans on reddit

 

but it just hasnt filled the void of football season

 

 

Been drinkin a lot of high quality H20 (and a shit ton of Busch Light) and watching the NFL playoffs. 

Been tryin to get back into hockey, but just can't do it with my Blackhawks struggling somethin awful. They need an enforcer on their team just don't have one. 

I knew a guy once who would be perfect for them. Could hardly skate and shoot, but was tough as nails. Can't remember the guys name. Ended up being a hell of a golfer tho.

31 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Did you read Mr. Hick's piece?  Here are some of the unpleasant facts:

 

If less than 2,000 students in 162 of the 290 schools in our state is what makes you feel unpleasant and keeps you up at night, I'd love to have your life.

3 hours ago, tango said:

But that should improve the quality of the soccer program. Jasper's boys program has gotten much more competitive in recent years for that reason.   

My mama said you talkin bout the wrong fooseball. We only talk about one fooseball on the digest!

Sounds like Seymour and Jasper should have 15-20 different place kickers and punters on their depth chart.

22 hours ago, IndianaWrestlingGuy1 said:

Also 0-2 the last two years for the 'ship. 

Dang, Cathedral fell off, y'all are about as good at football as public schools now.

On 1/2/2024 at 10:24 AM, Trojettes said:

Bishop Dullaghan is excited to announce that our Middle School Football Camp is back this Summer.  Bishop Dullaghan has held Camps in Indiana for over 40+ years.  This is the 29th year for our Middle School Camp.  See general information below.

• Bishop Dullaghan has announced one overnight Middle School Football Camp date this Summer at Taylor University from June 3 to June 6.
• PLEASE NOTE:  Due to availability of Taylor U. facilities this is a Monday to Thursday NOT the normal Sunday to Wednesday. 
• IMPORTANT:  Due to facilities, there are only 300 spots available.  Since we went to one camp three years ago this camp has SOLD OUT each of those years.
• 9 opportunities over 4 days and 3 nights to get better!
• To register, please visit:  https://bishopdullaghan.com/middle-school-camps/
• See camp brochure attached.
• This is a SKILLS development camp and NOT a recruiting combine.
• Open to all Middle School kids entering 5th through 8th grade in the fall of 2024.
• See website for additional information and numbers to contact with any questions.
• Spots are limited.

BDCAMP-2024-Brochure.pdf 1.95 MB · 10 downloads

Looking at the website, it says June 19-22nd, and it says the camp is already full. Is this something that needs to be updated, or is the camp already full? 

1 minute ago, tango said:

Cathedral is a 4A enrollment-level school bumped up to 6A because of the Success Factor, but I'm not aware on any p/p school with a true 5A or 6A enrollment.  

True, got me there

On 12/30/2023 at 7:42 PM, CoachGallogly said:

Or it could be you feel they way because there are no 5A and 6A private schools. 

There are 5A and 6A private schools. Stop saying dumb things, you're making p/p lovers on here look bad.

3 minutes ago, Coach Edwards said:

He was put up and so was Ross our LB/RB, who in my opinion, is one of the best LB in the state.  His stats where not indicative of his production defensively and to add that he only played about 2.5 quarters in the majority of our games.  

I would agree! Both probably deserved it. Tough year of football in 3A. A lot of good players. Tough first round in the sectionals didn't help Peru's players cause at all. I'm sure who they got beat out by were more than deserving of the award as well. Fingers crossed the two can make it on their region all star team.

Wonder if the QB from Peru was put up. Would have liked to see him make it. Great dual threat player. Averaged 28 yards a pass and almost 7 yards a rush. Didn't get a lot of snaps in the 4th quarter because of the lead they had on most teams they played.

20 hours ago, FastpacedO said:

I don't thing how high he gets drafted will mean anything. Some examples Robert Mathis was a 5th Rd 138th pick from Alabama A&M, Tom Brady 6th Round 199th pick.

I don't know that he gets drafted. Definitely will have teams interested in him. Just not sure they will use a draft pick on him.

6 minutes ago, foxbat said:

A couple of things to be careful of with Chatard is that the reason that they aren't still in 4A has little to do with the IDEA of SF not working and much more to do with anomalies.  As such, I'm not all that worried about Chatard in the long run having an impact on the landscape.  Realize that Chatard has been in 4A twice under SF:

• In 2013, they ran into New Pal in its ascendancy toward a 2014 state title.  Likely half a dozen other sectionals and they would have gotten more points.  In 2014, they dropped a post-season game to Roncalli.  The problem with the 2013-2014 SF cycle is that it required 4 POINTS to stay up.  Cathedral is the only team that I recall that was part of the inaugural SF crowd that actually remained on POINTS ... a couple of others went for SF and stayed for enrollment.  Even without running into New Pal in 2013, I think the chances of most teams garnering 4 points would be hard to see happening.  Even LCC, who headed to semi-state and dropped a 3-point game with the eventual 2A winner in 2014, RCHS, only picked up a total of 2 points on the cycle.  I would not count the 2013-2014 SF cycle as an indicator for any data points because the 4-point stay requirement was high-flawed and basically made the first SF cycle more like a beta test, at best, than anything else. 
• In 2021, they went up again, but only stayed for a single season due to the "COVID factor" and the IHSAA sticking them in a sectional with Roncalli.  That year, LCC had 1 point in 2A and stayed up and Chatard had 0 points in 4A and dropped back down.  The two-year cycle problem was even worse as a one-year cycle.  

In essence, I wouldn't necessarily say that Chatard not staying up in 4A is something that will require them figuring out "how to get better" or weather 4A.  The two times that they ended up in 4A were both not what I would consider regular cycles for figuring potential/trends given the stay-point flaw and the COVID anomaly treatment.

Incidentally, I think the IHSAA is making a mistake moving from a 2-point stay requirement to a 3-point stay requirement.  Pretty much that means if you don't make it out of sectionals in any year of the cycle, you need a ring the next year to stay ... and that's getting into anomaly territory again.

 

 

Agreed, this will definitely be a problem moving forward. Not to get off topic because I know this was in a separate thread, but any idea on why the IHSAA did this? The only thing I can come up with is to make it easier for public schools to get back down to their enrollment class. I know it sounds bad, but typically public schools don't have too much success that I can remember when they are the ones success factored up. Maybe Webo and Pioneer had a little success that I can remember. Any other schools I'm missing that SF up and had sectional championship and higher success?

14 hours ago, foxbat said:

So I'm not sure I qualify as the guy you are looking to answer.  My parents both had Catholic education all of their life with my mom finishing from a Catholic college and my dad leaving Catholic college for the military and then finishing from a public university.  I went to Catholic school through 6th grade and then did public school for everything else through college.  Two of my kids have attended Catholic school, but all have also been homeschooled and attended public schools ... my three girls from Jeff and my oldest son finishing at Harrison this year and the youngest probably attending Harrison part-time for high school.  Nonetheless, I've been thinking about this issue for a bit and frankly, haven't yet been able to come up with a set of items that works for the argument as to why p/ps, in general win, that can then be applied across the board.  What I have been leaning toward though is something akin to the idea that it's less categories and more programs.  When I look at the issue in short timeframes, like this thread does every season, it's fairly easy to generalize.  Even when several short-terms are pieced together, that generalization is easy, but some things don't seem to specifically match up with the general premise.  With that said, I'm coming at this very much so from an Indiana perspective with some additional insights from Texas and Louisiana; but mainly Indiana.

The premise has often been, if there isn't some advantage, then how does x percentage win y percent of the time?  @Bobref has pretty much trademarked on GID that correlation doesn't necessarily indicate causation.  That got me to thinking through some things that, rather than focusing on the generalities and trying to make an all-encompassing theory, I'd look at some case studies and try to work from there.  Also, and I don't recall who it was that asked the question in another thread, but what got me thinking about this was a general question that was asked about 6A ... which was never really fully answered or even really solidified.  The question was, and is very similar to the question first posited in the thread, "Why is it that only four teams/programs have ever won 6A?"  It went on to, and rightly so, point out that there weren't similarities between the schools as there are differences in size, FRL items, communities, offenses/defenses, etc. It just kind of ended up as a mystery.  Four teams out of roughly 40 teams that have been in and out of 6A since its inception 11 years ago, roughly 10%, have not only won SOME of the titles, but ALL of the titles in that class.  What is the categorization that defines that four programs that you could "bottle" or is it something much more complex that can't fit on a bumper sticker?

So let me start and see if the idea can perhaps be expanded by others with some real discussion on things.  The program that I'm most familiar with is LCC.  A couple of my kids attended Catholic school until the 3rd and 5th grade, but I coached in a youth program there for 18 seasons.  LCC first started playing ball back in 1958.  As seen in a couple of other threads currently in play, while LCC has a mystique about it that has it mentioned as a storied p/p powerhouse, it's really been about the last 15 years or so that LCC has probably earned that mystique.  It entered into a storied four-peat era back in 2009-2012, but prior to that, it was pretty much feast or famine according to season outcomes on Harrell's.  So I'll ask the first question that catches my eye with LCC and the statements often made about p/p in general.  If p/p have the automatic advantage, why did LCC have such gaps between its pre-four-peat timeframe?  Starting from 1976, until 2009 ... a 34-year period ... LCC got out of sectionals four times with gaps of 13, 10, and 6 years between each.  Incidentally, in every season for LCC, until 2021, when their season ended without a state title, it came at the hands of public schools ... only the last three seasons, in 2A, has LCC's season been ended by another p/p.  BTW, not just one p/p-killer public school, although Pioneer has a storied tradition for jousting with LCC, but over a dozen public schools have delivered deathblows to LCC's post season.  So if the idea that there's an inherent p/p advantage that LCC has, then why was it not there in force in the 34-year period and, probably more importantly, what were the MANY public schools doing that was causing LCC seasons to end really early in that timeframe?

Of course, Noll is always mentioned.  Noll has a very storied past in that it never seemed to have any p/p mojo outside of 1989 when it won 3A.  Outside of that, according to Harrell's, Noll made it to a sectional championship only three times, never making it out of the sectional, and has been ousted in the first game of sectionals for the last decade ... all by public teams.  

Ritter has an amazing past.  Five state titles with three in 1A and two in 2A.  For a long time, they were one of the poster children for p/p dominance, but now, closing in on a decade, no one whispers their name anymore.  Their last state title was in 2016; however, since then, they haven't made it out of a sectional.  They've also not even been close oustings.  The closest they got was this year's 23-point second sectional game loss to Eastern Hancock.  Maybe they have a string of "bad classes" ... the opposite of those "good classes" that public school lament might SF them unfairly into the next higher class ... but, for all of the talk about p/p mojo, four losing seasons in the last seven and three of the last four would seem to indicate that reloading, which is fairly automatic for p/p schools as I've been told, would seem worrisome and not in line with the meme.

Heritage Christian ... an often forgotten p/p ... maybe because they aren't Catholic.  Only has around a two-decade history history according to Harrell's.  Has back-to-back state appearances in 2007-2008 with one blue ring.  Outside of that, two sectional titles in 2019-2020.  Has a mix of being ousted by both public and private schools.  Fairly good records, but not really drawing any of the p/p ire directed at the categorization as a whole.

Culver Academy has been around since the mid-1980s, yet only has a pair of sectional titles spaced a decade and a half apart ... 2000 and 2015.  Again, almost never referred to or draws the ire of the p/p category and I've NEVER in over two decades of being in Indiana ever once heard anyone talk about the unfair advantage that Culver Academy has, not only as a p/p, but a p/p that has had students on its rosters from foreign countries!  Wanna talk about recruiting or being outside of a youth program circle?  Also, Culver Academy used to be Culver Military Academies, so I'm pretty sure that their lack of state titles wasn't due to not being competitive.

Again, I don't have a specific answer to your question because the general answer that folks hope is given doesn't fit with all of the categorization.  Just the subset above actually refutes the generalized statements that tend to be made.  Also, I see the issue as being more complex than many of the bumper-sticker takes that have been bantered around.  I think there's something to be said for focused, driven groups in a school, but similarly, I would contend that Noll, LCC, and others have been equally focused, driven, etc., if the narratives are to be fully-embraced, but the outcomes don't seem similar.  With that said, what I think MAY be an issue is that there may be advantages that come from said make-ups, but that they aren't uniformly autonomous and that what's actually happening, which dovetails back into the 6A questions is that programs, and not necessarily categories, have figured out how to wield/harness the power as opposed to demographics.  I also believe that, and Ritter and LCC look like interesting cases for this, that while a program may be able to leverage some type of advantage, it isn't necessarily something that's inherent and automatic by birthright of categorization and, for example in the case of Ritter, it may be something that isn't eternal.

Thank you for posting this. When looking at your LCC paragraph I'm not sure what the answer was prior to the four-peat. Just a little bit before my time. Obviously the game of football has changed just a little bit since then, so the style of play could have factored into that possibly. My dad has always told me at the end of the day, no matter how good of a coach you are, if you don't have some dudes on your team, making a deep run in the tournament is difficult. The stars and sectionals can all aline, because we are in Indiana, for you to get a good draw and make a deep run with an average team and really good coaching. But eventually you are gonna run into a team with better dudes than you have. My only argument and frustration comes from the rate at which some of these p/p's, not all of them which you did a great job of pointing out and going into detail about, are reloading year after year. Can public schools do it to an extent? Yes but it doesn't seem to always happen as quickly as the p/p's. When an off year for a team is a sectional and regional championship, I'd say that ain't too bad. 

I agree. We shouldn't just throw all the p/p's in their own division because I stated this in another thread early in the season when in the right class they make the class as a whole and the football in it better. Example, take a look at Rochester over the past four years. Started 0-10 four years ago. Every year the mindset is we have to beat LCC, everything that is done is to beat them. Haven't been able to do it, but we have reaped the rewards in the regular season by winning a lot more games because of what the mindset is leading up to the season and the work put in. Chatard in 3A a little different. Unlike LCC, Chatard hasn't been able to stay up in 4A, so they come back down right when things seem to be looking up and rattle off two more state championships and then its back to 4A. So how do we fix this?

I think we have to realign sectionals and classes every year. Put the SF on a 4 year cycle like many have said, but the one adjustment is if a team wins a state championship move them up into the next class the following year. Where it gets hairy is how to determine keeping the team up or down and for how long in that remaining 3 or less years. This is something I wouldn't be good at determining but maybe someone could help me out with this part. I think this would help with those 2 peat public teams that have a good class that wins two state championships and then dips for the classes under them to get beat up on for two straight years. It also gives a Chatard more time to see if they can break through that 4A wall they can't seem to get through. It also gets a team out of a class faster after winning a state championship. Again not perfect, put it's a suggestion to this problem we think we have that can move the stronger p/p's around easier while not punishing those that aren't the strongest football programs.

9 minutes ago, jets said:

The answer you seek is OBVIOUS - but since I'm a public school representative I guess I don't qualify to answer lol...

You would be correct on that as well