Bonecrusher

Thought I was reading a Texas football forum for a sec. @foxbat makes some good points. If you stay with the all-in format, I don't know what the diff would be, aside from not having big schools play small schools, except maybe old conference rivalries could go away. 6A in IN might have difficulty finding a large enough mix of schools to change scheduling without some really long drives to opponents. In TX, you have non-district (first part of season) where you can play whoever you want and results don't count towards playoff seeding. Some look at it as a long "pre-season". In district play all teams are the same classification. We always tried to schedule a few larger schools or opponents we knew would give us a tough game (referred to as "toughening them up for district") and a few we thought we could handle to let the 2nd string get some meaningful experience. Again, there's a lot of schools - all sizes - in TX to choose from, and used to making long commutes semi-regularly (1 hour +). Also, with less schools to pick from it might be more of an issue, but districts in TX are re-aligned every two years. Some teams will stay in your district, and some new will come in, or you'll move to a different one - depends on how you look at it. So you're not playing the same teams year after year, but could be different in IN. The one thing it would reduce, as mentioned before, are the small school vs. large school games. I personally don't get that whole thing after living in TX for almost 20 years. Maybe it's the larger number of schools, football culture, whatever, but you would never have a 2A playing a 5A here. A semi-final 2A team would get smoked by an average 5A team, if for no other reason than attrition. 2A probably half to 2/3 of the guys play both ways where the 5A has 2-platoon and plenty of subs. My kids school (large 2A) never played anyone larger than a small (4A) team in non-district a couple times who was known to be a below average program. We did play above average 3A when we could. Apologies if this sounds like I'm rambling, but I am. Time constrained to post this, and lots of thought all at once.

Just now saw this thread. Looks like Heritage put it to Bluffton pretty good. Was the game actually as lopsided as the score, or was it one of those where the score is misleading? It appears that Heritage has a chance to finish second in the ACAC. Should win their last 2 games, while Bluffton probably has their hands full with AC, and Franklin is an unknown to me. Heritage is going to have to find something for that sectional with Mississinewa & Luers easily the top 2. Don't know about Oak Hill & Delta; their records aren't as good but maybe SOS is more difficult? Nice to see Heritage with some success again.

My wife is a Southern Wells grad. I see they are in a 4-way tie for the most azz whoopin's on the victim's list. Wow. Kudos to those kids for padding up to practice and play every week. That has to be a good lesson in perseverance.

In Texas that is a 6-man score.

Luers wins by single digits.

AC by a TD.

Panthers by 14

But does Merillville have city speed? Snider wins in single digits.

Answered my question. Thank you sir.

Wondering that myself, if Mishawaka exposed a weakness in the Snider D or if the run-oriented offense worked to open up the passing game that could have conceivably burned any legit D. If Snider has done well vs. other passing schemes that may have been a one-off.

I don't disagree with any of your comments. There's a lot of moving pieces and timing that go into that style of play. If a team does it well and has a good D, like Warsaw, they're hard to beat. It is interesting to watch, however for me it slows down the game too much. OTOH, I'm not a big fan of the pass happy "greatest show on turf" style either. I like to see a balanced offense. This obviously boils down to a matter of personal preference, and I can appreciate and respect your view on it. Being a former resident of NE Indiana, I hope Warsaw does well.

Interesting thread and read about Warsaw's offense. Not sure how many large schools down here are run-heavy, but there's a fair amount of small schools that like the option/wishbone/flexbone-style of offense. There's a team about an hour away from me that typically will use up the entire 40-second clock every play, in addition to running the ball 98% of the time. They played a team earlier this season that scores practically at will (one of your perennial powerhouses) and they held that team to 21 points. They still lost, 21-0, but considered holding that particular team to 21 a moral win. No offense (pun intended) to anyone, to each his own, but I find that style of play very boring. Playing keep away is fine if you got the D to stop the other team, which it appears Warsaw has so far, so props to them. I remember several games when my kids were in school, where we could shut down that 3 yards and a cloud of dust scheme, next thing they know it's the middle of the 2nd quarter and that running team is down by 3-4 scores. Hard to catch up at that point. Good on Warsaw for being competitive with that style of O. I just think at some point they will run into a team that can stop it, then that slow clock-eating offense works against you. JMO, don't flame me too bad for it.

Should be a really good one, and I'm like you, not expecting a blowout. All the cliche's about who has the ball more, who scores last, who makes the least mistakes should come into play here. That's very true. Some legit experience for the younger guys could go a long way this time of year. "The backup is only one play away from being a starter..."

FW North Side at #10 in 5A? Early on in the season OK, but seeing how things have developed for them, and their record, this is a bit of a head-scratcher for me.

That's pretty cool! It's the right sized venue for that size of team and almost literally just down the road - with a right turn at Reed. Agree it's pretty ironic that the top football income generating school in the FWCS doesn't have it's own house.

Would love to see Heritage pull this one out, but realistically it seems - from what I've read - AC should be the favored team. If ya'll were playing anyone else, I'd be pulling for you. Good to see Heritage working their way back up the ladder. Talk about timing, the wife and I are going to be visiting family in IN, and we'll be up there next Friday. If we were going to be there this week, I would have tried to check this one out. Last time I been to AC I was still in high school! Hope it's a good competitive game. A blowout either way does neither team any good at this point.

Snider shares Spuller Stadium with Northrop. The stadium is on Northrop's campus. It's a good sized place, very similar to FW Wayne's stadium. The field in your post at Snider's campus is, IIRC, used for practice/track meets/sub-varsity games. Snider is pretty land-locked. There's a thread somewhere on here, from the last 1-2 years, about Snider getting there own stadium and why it hasn't worked out so far. The two schools are only maybe 10-15 minutes apart.

Go Heritage (Monroeville) Patriots! First time since I've been on this site that I seen them with a mention in the IFCA poll... that I can remember.

Bingo! All programs have peaks and valleys. but down here where football is king, the schools with solid youth programs seem to be more consistent top performers. Case-in-point, my youngest son was the only kid in his 7th grade class that played youth football prior to then. The first part of the season he already knew and had a good grasp on what the coaches were trying to teach the other kids. Imagine if all the kids playing that year had enough experience to know most of the fundamentals they teach at that level, and already have an understanding of a very simplified version of the offense/defense that the school ran - they would have been so far ahead. One of our opponents, who is the textbook definition of a perennial powerhouse team, had a fantastic youth program. They hit the ground running in 7th grade and it was very easy to tell the difference between them and schools like ours whose kids were just trying to figure it out.

OK, now that you mention it I do vaguely remember hearing about a Arlington HS back in the day. When it changed to JH I was already out of state. Interesting... Nice to see a larger school still using natural grass.

OK, so what's up with all these high school teams - some of them larger schools - playing games at a jr. high venue? I don't live in Indiana anymore, and keep seeing this "at Arlington MS". Do they have a kickin' new stadium that's better than the high schools? Is there a push for neutral site regular season games (IIRC most of these are Indy-area teams)? Are these high schools all having work done at their stadiums concurrently? What gives? As the guy in the Dirty Harry movie said, "I gots to know!"

I think moving kickoff time back 60 minutes is the best option. I can tell you it's brutal on the field and in the stands that last couple hours of daylight in the earlier parts of the season down here in TX -- and we're used to these temps! Been 103-110 (with heat index 110-120) most of the summer. It's got to be even more difficult playing/spectating in temps like those if you're NOT used to it. Regarding time zone, I have always thought Indiana is too far west to BOTH be in eastern time and have daylight savings, or even to be in eastern w/o DST. Indiana should be on central. DST is a discussion for another thread probably.

I believe it depends heavily on the support level/buy-in from the parents and community. How well do the fans travel? How much do they get "into the game"? Granted I haven't been to a HS game in Indiana for a good while so you may be correct for Hoosier ball, but I can tell you in the lone star state where I reside now, that argument about the atmosphere lacking won't hold water.

Heck yeah! Will be interesting to see how Dwenger does, ranked where they are in this poll. Thinking they might be ranked a tad high, but it would be more than OK with it if they proved me wrong. Snider & North look about right for pre-season IMHO.

The homestead exemption here caps the tax (what you actually pay) increase at 10% of the previous year. So if my house appraisal quadruples in a year, my tax bill will still only be 10% more than previous year. Now there are a good number of people here who, for whatever reason, have not gone the homestead route - and many of them are in serious financial trouble. Recently they've said "they're not increasing the tax rate", but then they just make a ridiculous appraisal on your property to make up for it. Not exactly the same thing, but a similar mindset as the "1984" reference. Apologies to the OP for derailing this thread.