Old Man High Pants

DT & HHF

If the year were 2011 DT would say Gibson Southern should consider contraction.

As far as the programs are concerned maybe they should. My reason for bringing up Coach Moore is that HH's comment about "serious coaching" candidates rubbed me the wrong way. I know the young man who just resigned from Connersville, and I can assure you he is a "serious coach". Just because he'd never been a head coach before and didn't have a bunch of success doesn't mean he was a serious coach. I'd like to think the majority of coaches are serious about what they do and many times they have a lot of things working against them. D1 players can come from any school, even more reason not to contract. And a few D1 players does not make an "all time, too big to fail" program. Connersville made it to their first ever sectional championship game this year off of a two win playoff streak. Guess you can strike them off the list then.

East Chicago Central has one sectional in the last 35 years according to John Harrell. They made one semistate almost a decade ago and haven't won any playoff championships since, sounds like a blind squirrel finding a nut. How does that make them one of the "greatest ever" and "too big to fail"? I'm from the opposite corner of the state and can tell you I'd be hard pressed to find 10 local football fans who can tell me anything about them. Sounds like you're a little biased for some reason on that one. As far as Connersville and Rushville your reasoning falls apart with keeping Jay County off your list. How do you know they don't have the right coaches for the job now? How does a team like that go about hiring a what you would call "serious football coach"? And no offense to the man, I've never met him, but I'm pretty sure Eric Moore couldn't win at any of the four schools mentioned.

Your reason for adding Connersville but taking out Jay County and East Chicago Central is?

Honestly them dropping, if they do, I think will help them in the long run. They never had a chance to compete in 4A after the late 90s and haven't done much in 3A. If they were to drop to 2A I think it would give them more of a chance to be relevant in the playoffs again. Maybe at some point that can be the same for Connersville and Rushville. This year when Connersville played East Central they dressed 34 kids. Hard to compete at the 4A level when your team is that small.

Not much at all. The few people I do know who live in Brookville work in Cincinnati, about an hour drive away. Not really a place that's suffered from an economic setback, just zero growth in years. Brookville is a nice little town but it hasn't grown at all since Franklin County became a school in the late 80s. Biggest grocery store in town is the IGA, have to drive 20 to 30 minutes to get to a Kroger in either Batesville, Harrison, Oxford or Connersville. The biggest thing that brings people in is the lake but that's just for a weekend here or there.

Yeah sorry should have clarified better. The talk was the existing Franklin County school district would be split up and consolidated into other schools. Laurel would become a part of Fayette County (Connersville), Mt Carmel Union County, there was even talk of Brookville consolidating into Sunman Dearborn (East Central). Right now it's all just hearsay but my dad always told me there's the slightest bit of truth in everything you hear so who knows? This next cycle I would think the entire 3A EIAC will be in the same sectional. You have Rushville, Greensburg, Batesville, Franklin County, Lawrenceburg and South Dearborn. Add in a team or two from either Indianapolis of Louisville area depending on which way the IHSAA sends them.

Believe Franklin County's big issue area is below the high school level. Enrollment has been declining for years there, they consolidated their middle schools four or five years ago. The layoffs happened at the elementary level. While they still are a few hundred away from 2A it's not impossible for it to happen soon. https://wrbiradio.com/2021/05/17/five-teacher-contracts-canceled-by-franklin-county-school-board/?epik=1638301537990 Could be wrong. That's just what I'm hearing. South Dearborn could possibly be leveling out. The Dearborn County Country Club shut down from COVID and there has been talk of them building a subdivision on the land. Though I don't think South Dearborn would want to get back to 4A, they'll have a good chance of winning their first ever sectional by being in 3A.

A few work friends of mine graduated from there had told me a lot of the Millennial generation left and didn't come back. They live in Cincinnati, Harrison & Lawrenceburg now and have no desire to move back. Unfortunately they had to let go multiple certified and uncertified positions at the end of last year because of lack of student funding. Multiple rumors about the future of the district now which include Franklin County staying in tact and falling to 2A, outlying areas like Laurel and Mt. Carmel being consolidated into other districts, or all of Franklin County being consolidated.

South Dearborn will for sure be dropping down to 3A, leaves only two 4A schools in the conference (East Central & Connersville), with some expected shake ups on who is "Big School" and "Little School". Biggest question with the EIAC is how far Franklin County will drop. If not in 2022-23 they may very well be 2A by 2024-25.