crimsonace1

You can promote your players without responding to Tim's questionnaires. There's local and regional media and established people like the Indiana Football Digest, which all a much wider reach, and puts out a professional product that supports high school football without criticizing and badmouthing coaches and programs. I'd venture most coaches don't respond to Tim's questionnaires. The program I work most closely with completely ignores him and is one of the most widely-covered and promoted programs in the state.

Here's the backstory ... he has spent years trying to take this site over, even when TA was running things. He was jealous of all the attention TA got and how big of a deal the GID was and wanted to use the GID to improve his personal brand, all while telling us we were doing it wrong. When TA passed away, he swooped in - several times - to try to make himself the "editor" of this site (even calling himself that), while posting a bunch of false rumors and "topics" that were not good for HSFB, such as his long drumbeat for "contraction." During one of the times he was claiming to be the site "editor," he began spamming head coaches, using our name, and writing them almost daily demanding they respond to his questionnaires. He couldn't help himself. He's tried to create multiple alternate sites, but none of them have worked. After his last ban here, he tried to get involved with another statewide site, but they quickly got rid of him because he told them they were covering the wrong schools (basically, he told them in very crass terms they needed to stop covering urban schools so much). That's why he puts "Gridiron" in everything - he has badly wanted to "replace" the GID since he can't take this place over.

A large school district in Central Indiana recently announced it was going to accept out-of-district transfers for the first time ... when they've quietly already been accepting transfers of star athletes.

The suburban schools still have to take them. Basically, this rule is that they cannot lose eligibility, not that they can just enroll wherever they want. If the suburban schools have a "no transfer" policy, then they won't go. Otherwise, savvy families were moving before 9th grade to get around the rule anyway.

Not a rumor that the rivalry is coming back (that was known), but "HPG" trying to insinuate it will lead to the re-formation of the 8-team MIC.

The MIC schools have to want Carmel & CG back, but never let "Hoosier Prep Gridiron" find a rumor he wouldn't create.

It's a great book about a very, very bad period in our state's history.

As someone who grew up in the hard-core Religious Right subculture/church, there are a few reasons. 1. Prior to the 1960s, many public schools were very openly and explicitly Protestant. Daily Bible readings, prayers, they basically openly embraced religious belief and practice as long as it was "nondenominational" (e.g., "Protestant"). I remember an older family member complaining about "God being taken out of schools" and saying "well, we had a Jewish person in my class and when it was her turn to read the Bible, she always read from the Old Testament." The Catholic/parochial school system developed as a means of educating Catholic students because the public schools were so openly Protestant. 2. After court rulings banned prayers, Bible readings and open religious instruction in public schools, churches (especially conservative Baptist churches) began opening their own schools. The one my siblings went to opened in 1965. There was a Lutheran school system similar to the Catholic one (albeit on a much smaller scale), but it grew post-1965, too. Some were also created to avoid segregation, but moreso in the South than in Indiana (where, thanks to the Klan's control of the state in the 1920s, most small towns had few/no Black residents, and that's where many of the religious schools were). 3. Parents began desiring their tax dollars that were supporting those "Godless" public schools be able to be used to send their kids to said conservative Baptist schools (or pay for homeschooling, which has also become a big deal in conservative/evangelical culture), and thus the voucher concept was born. Legislators, in trying to funnel money to their preferred private schools, began to villify public schools, and the distaste has grown since. In Indiana, every single bill post-2009 has been to try to weaken traditional public schools and funnel as many kids as possible to charter/private/parochial schools. And when not enough kids are doing what the legislature told them to do, they double down even more.

Competitively, a good fit. Travel-wise ... yikes.

Many years ago, a very high-profile basketball player transferred from New Castle to Anderson. Not sure what happened at Anderson over the summer, but she ended up back at New Castle. *Anderson* challenged the transfer based on it being for athletic reasons (which it clearly was, in both directions) and she had to sit out a year at New Castle even though she had played for NC as a freshman and a sophomore (and would play for them again as a senior). IIRC, Randy Zachary transferred from Anderson Highland to Anderson - and they did move - but Highland was graduating its entire front line, while Anderson was loaded (he and Mr. Basketball Kojak Fuller would've been in the same backcourt). Even though he moved to Anderson, the IHSAA denied the transfer and he ended up playing his senior season at Highland.

It was 9-11 male enrollment until class basketball started and the used the same enrollment metric for all schools (and eventually made it 9-12, as some schools - especially in IPS and Gary - have much smaller senior classes, so 9-11 was pushing their enrollments up). 9-11 was seen as useful because those would be the students in the school when the classifications took effect.

It takes a lot longer than you think, especially because there are some adjustments to the DOE data due to 13th-year students, people in career centers, et al.

I'd forgotten Class 4A was not the largest 64, but the top 20%. In that case, Kokomo is safely 4A and it looks like New Pal's stay in 3A will be short-lived, as NPHS is adding about 40-50 high school students per year right now. Not really feasible, because the enrollments aren't taken until well into the school year and close to the time of the fall tournament season to begin.

If these numbers hold, New Pal will remain 3A in hoops for at least 1-2 more cycles (and Kokomo will drop to 3A in basketball). Mt. Vernon will move up to 5A in football (Greenfield-Central would, but two smaller Success Factor schools - Cathedral & New Pal - will likely keep them in 4A). Also in the Hoosier Heritage, looks like Delta's stay in 3A will be short-lived.

Yeah, not everyone would've seen that as a funny post and might have taken it seriously.

Sheridan is far enough away from the suburbia that it doesn't really fit the same profile as southern 2/3 of the county. It's much more of a small-town rural school. Heights has more of a small-town small suburb/rural profile, too, but Cicero has some of the suburbia from Noblesville growing northward.

Is it that, or is it the fact that a generational run of players with Hammel, Knoy, Schornstein, et al, graduated and a lot of people who used to go to Jeff are now at Harrison & McCutcheon? Again, suburbanization and the decline of the "factory towns" had a lot more to do with that than class basketball. Those declines were in motion in a lot of the NCC towns around the late 1990s, but correlation is not causation.

Among the reasons football has taken primacy in Central Indiana, "class basketball" is way, way, way, way, way, way down on the list. Honestly, anyone playing basketball in 1995 didn't stop playing in 1998 because "well, Anderson plays Richmond in the sectional instead of Elwood, so I'm not interested in basketball anymore." And anyone born after 1990 or doesn't know anything different. And even in terms of fan interest, people didn't stop going to games because the sectional opponents changed in March. I wrote a long, long piece on this a few years ago, but basically "what killed Hoosier Hysteria" were a couple of things. First, the rise of the NCAA Tournament, which basically sucked all the air out of the room come March. Second, suburbanization and the death of the NCC/factory towns like Marion, Muncie and Richmond that once packed their gyms. Even in the 1980s, most of Anderson's season ticketholders were retired. They died, their kids moved out of town to Carmel and Fishers and nobody was there to replace them in the stands ... or on the court.

I think what happened is the Mayflowers rolled into town and football became a big deal in Central Indiana. In the north, it always felt more like football country. HSFB was a big, big deal in the Region and Michiana, while the rest of us saw football as something to pass the time until basketball season except in a few pockets (Richmond, Bloomington, Evansville ...). Then, the Colts arrived and football became more of a big deal in the Indy area. Then, some guy named Peyton showed up a decade and a half later. Couple that with the explosion of the township and suburban schools at the same time, and it led to a perfect storm of football's growth in Indy (and, for that matter, you could argue football has eclipsed basketball as the primary sport in a lot of Indy-area communities). I think it's encapsulated by this ... in the mid-1990s, Rex Grossman got in touch with the Florida coaching staff, and Steve Spurrier basically said, "sorry, kid, we don't recruit Indiana." (and then Spurrier saw his film and suddenly, he started recruiting Indiana). Now, there are Indy-area kids all over the place on major programs.

Most of the Whitestown area (including Whitestown proper) - going all the way down 267 to the Hendricks County line and Brownsburg - is in the Lebanon school district.

Illinois has both the success factor and a 1.65 multiplier. However, the multiplier is waived for schools that haven't won what is their equivalent of a sectional in, I believe, four years. So they, I guess, have a "non-success factor."

I've dealt with Doyel firsthand. He went on a fishing expedition for a "hot take" story that was 100% ground in falsehood and rumor, I (along with a couple of other people) was able to head him off and get him to not run with his story. The Caitlin Clark moment he had this spring was not unusual for him. He tries to make himself the story. There are a lot of really good, professional columnists around. We've had a few in Indiana - Bob Kravitz in Indy, Ben Smith in Fort Wayne, Mike Lopresti is back writing for some statewide newspapers after his long stint at USA Today. You can have an opinion while researching and telling all sides of the story and present it. Doyel just goes straight for whatever hot take opinion will generate the most clicks.

There is more to the story. Not going to share it publicly, but Doyel is only telling half of it.

They'd be a good fit competitively and school profile-wise in the Hoosier Heritage Conference, but the drive from St. Leon to Yorktown and Pendleton is a bit of a bear. It would make more sense if Shelbyville was still in the league because they'd have an I-74 neighbor. The SWOC would really work if they'd be willing. Harrison is their next-door neighbor and they play each other every year as it is. However, because Ohio flips the golf/tennis seasons from Indiana (boys golf/girls tennis are in the fall, boys tennis/girls golf are in the spring, opposite of Indiana), they would not have a conference in those sports. Mt. Carmel dealt with the same thing when they were in the Big Eight.

FWIW, Sagarin has NP #4 and MaxPreps/CalPreps #5. Per Sagarin, NP was 8-0 against the Top 64 in the state ... and that doesn't count the no-contest against Decatur Central.