US31

The knee pad thing is the hardest for coaches because of the way the pants are made....because the pants may be getting on in years....for smaller schools, you may have several longer kids and only so many "long" pants....its hard. We always appreciate a crew that will work with us on knee pads. For the life of me I can't imagine playing without my knees covered...but the kids are used to it because we still allow "Contact" all summer in just shells. I don't get how one is allowed but on Friday night its a huge safety issue. I know the men in stripes hate the issue as much as the coaches, its the most frustrating of the "uniform" rule issues...(outside of opponents that still wear white numbers on white jerseys.😡)

I’ve shared my opinion in other threads, but to summarize what I would do with my magic classification wand, if I had it. 1A: smallest 32 (no P/P) 6A: largest 32 2A-5A: divide them up evenly…spread out the byes based on some metric if you wish Rolling 3 or 4 year SF cycle. I could lean to either one. Would you have to reclassify and move some teams around every year? Yes. Is this insurmountable? No.

There should not be any P/P in 1A. Fire away if you must…..

For this to work (which is probably a great plan for Penn unless they can somehow get in the DAC), HCC has to be week 1 or 2. HCC is all conference play once Week 3 comes around. I'd love to see Penn play some HCC teams...in fact I think they are a perfect HCC fit across all sports, just too far away. Now....how long the HCC will stay in its current form is anyone's guess.

To be fair…I don’t think there are anymore 3A schools in the NLC. Your point is spot on…but it’s 4A and 5A.

I see his argument as "Well, we're gonna lose to those teams no matter what....so we definitley don't want it to happen twice in the same year." It doesn't seem Carroll and Homestead subscribe to that logic. Not too many years ago, Warsaw would have mopped the floor with Carroll. Last year, Carroll was playing after Thanksgiving having knocking off a loaded HSE squad.

Well....perhaps they'll be back in 5A soon....and Snider might SF up. 👍 Hoping to succesfully dodge your peer sized opponents just seems to be an odd way to define a successful program. If Warsaw was playing some of the FtW powers and Penn in their Non-Con games I'd be sympathetic to that argument (and to his credit, Coach Curtis has definitley improved their non-con opponents).

But have they had ANY success OUTSIDE the NLC??? I only see once sectional champtionship as far back as 1994?? A coach Curtis team beat Penn, and then lost to MVill in the regional. Is that one singluar sectional trophy in almost 30 years success??? They have almost always went to FtW for sectionals....those are the teams Warsaw needs to beat to make a tournament run. If you look back, their season has ended in the sectionals to either a FtW area team or Penn. Currently in Sectional 2, they need to beat Penn, Carroll, or both. There aren't many teams in the NLC that are preparing them for that. Being in a FtW conference would do exactly that. Unless the goal is to be the big fish in the NLC pond....in which case, carry on. I don't begrudge then that at all....their community, their school, more power to them.

For decades I've thought the NLC is holding Warsaw back in most sports (mainly Football)....but I've never gotten the vibe they actually WANT to leave the NLC. Anyone with insight see it differently? For clarity, when I say "they" I don't mean Coach Curtis. I mean the community and school administrators.

my comment was made in jest…. Not taking anything personal…I don’t know the kid…and you’ve seen him play more than I have. Just rubs me the wrong way when we don’t appreciate the full depth and breadth of high school football, of which the option offense is alive and well. if you can’t take a joke, and have to accuse someone making a joke of “taking it too personal”….you need to look in the mirror my friend

So option QB's aren't quarterbacks anymore??? I didn't realize that rule had been changed....what would you call the kid that takes the snap from center and then makes all of the decisions that distribute the ball to his teammates in an effort to matriculate the ball down the field an score on the opponents defense? Whatever you call him....seems this kid did that pretty well

If you keep looking back you’ll see it wasn’t too long ago Goshen was playing Lake Central, St Joe, FTW Carroll, Mishawaka, Elkhart Central, etc for noncon’s. Those were respectable matchups….New Prairie feels like that. FF does not.

Coaching hires and coaches on staff in building would be my primary barometer for "support". How easy is it for you to get the people you want on staff into the building? Is your athletic department on board with growing your program? Or is it still scheduling you to play small schools out of "tradition"?

Goshen is not the same city it was 20 years ago. Not even close. NW, NR, FF all have a lot of former "Goshen" families walking their halls. I don't know how many of them are football families but a few of them are. There is a subdivision in FF that is made up of a significant amount of former "Goshen" families. Need a large amount of admin emphasis to overcome this.....from what I understand it just isn't there.

Did Goshen get kicked out????😄

Cool data. A little deceiving though because NLC does not break ties....I know one of the years in the 90's (92?), NW-GSH-WAR all tied....they each beat one of the others. So some of these should have two or three teams ranked #1.

Not having an NFHS book around....can you tell us how this is defined? Thanks Bob👍

And you were enormous enrollment wise compared to most other schools in the state (save some MIC schools). Now you fit right in the middle of some HCC schools and are much smaller than Carmel, BD. Other “North” schools have closed the gap considerably

Again….my quote was referring to the many other sports that AREN’T football.

For the record...any SF discussion I particpate in is supposed to begin with DON'T FORGET ABOUT WEBO!!! 🤪 My issue with 1A is you could very well end up with a yo-yo situation of P/Ps moving up and down "taking turns" in 1A. Lutheran, LCC, CC... Shrinking 1A down to 32 would bump some of these schools up to 2A. I don't think its unrealistic to move any other P/P up into the 33-?? 2A.

I would reiterate, I think that should only happen if we shrink 1A to smallest 32.

While I am personally in favor of the following: a 4 year minimum, "rolling" SF. 1a should be smallest 32, 6a biggest 32. Divide rest evenly by 4. No P/P in single A class of 32 smallest. I would also piggy back on your comment above and add that (IMHO) no program should be SF'd up unless they have points AND a state title. Something just doesn't seem right about SF if you are moving programs that have not actually won a title. I maybe wrong about that...but its how I feel.

Clearinghouse method was basically a system where you only count the number of kids that participate in ANY extracurricular activities. This wouldn't be difficult to do...most schools have some form of "Code of Conduct" that students have to sign in order to participate in any extracurricular (sports, band, etc), so the data isn't gonna be hard to grab. This number would be use for classificaiton, not the DOE "enrollement" number. This does a more accurate job of classifying based upon the size of the "participant" population in the school....and it doesn't matter if that school is public, P/P, charter, Hogwarts, etc The real enrollement disarity the P/P's enjoy is they don't have the (please forgive me for using this term....its the best descriptor, I can think of) "dead weight" part of the student body. They have no mandatory enrollees. ALL public schools have kids they HAVE to enroll by law. These kids may contribute nothing to the school in terms of extracurricular participation (for a variety of reasons), but they are still counted in enrollement. Now what that percentage of "never gonna participate in anything" enrollee's actually calculates to will vary a LOT. At Zionsville, Cathedral, University, West Lafayette....its probably a small percentage of the overall student body. At IPS, South Bend Schools, etc...its probably a LARGE percentage.

Not if its a "rolling" 4 year cycle. The year they acrue enough points they would bump up the next season.

Not to dig up any old dead horses...but these so called academics need to take statistics 101 again....As has been pointed out ad naseum....The advantage in P/P demographics is not who they count.....but who they NEVER have to count. The fact this went unstated in the article is due to one of more of the following: Poor quoting of the researchers statements from the Indystar. Ignorance of the researchers on the issues relavent to their study Some type of bias in study's collection methods. A "clearinghouse" method of counting students would account for this, and may have possibly precluded any need for SF.