foxbat

Especially given that 1) it's really easy to get live views on them and 2) the dollar cost to look and talk is tremendously low compared to folks from other states.

Wonder how much better/worse Purdue would perform taking a "state-first" approach? It went 4-6 this year and its "biggest win" came over a school that finished 6-6 this year. All other wins came over schools that didn't have winning seasons. If Purdue were able to develop the ability and reputation for consolidating the state's talent, would they be any worse off than they are right now? And, yes, we can talk about the Drew Brees days and grabbing Texas/national talent, but realistically, Purdue's only had four winning seasons since Tiller retired a decade and a half ago. I guess the question is, how much worse would Purdue be with a heavier Indiana-centric focus? The counter argument is that no program, outside of maybe big-state programs, can rise to national prominence relying on the backs of their state talent only, but it's not like the last decade and a half has Purdue mentioned in the midwest hunt, much less the national talk.

It would seem that, but also realize that SF is going to a rolling cycle as opposed to aligning with the sectional re-alignment schedule, so some teams will be re-assigned to sectionals in off two-year cycles too. The number of teams being re-assigned via SF will likely be no more than the number of 8-man teams moving to 11-man in off two-year cycles, so I don't see it being a huge issue ... especially given that there's now already [soon-to-be] precedence for dealing with a team in off two-year cycles.

A team that started in 8-man last season ... first time ever having football in the history of the school ... has already announced that they are going to be playing 11-man next season. IHSAA has traditionally had a "cushion" season or two where new programs to the 11-man ranks aren't eligible for the post-season tournament, so that might well solve the issue. There's also the situation where you typically have to play x number of games in a season to be eligible for the post-season tourney. I think the aforementioned team that's switching isn't going to have a full season next year and won't be in the post-season tourney.

And Aledo will likely win another title making it four in the last five years.

Wonder if he's any relationship to one of the first kids, Nick, I coached in the youth program at LCC?

I was checking back through some of the old HHC stuff and Hoosier stuff and didn't see anything about football for them. Also checked Almanac, http://www.almanacsports.com/football/members.php, and didn't see anything there either.

Without football at the high school, they did garner a youth football team in 2008. They played youth ball in the Little Gridiron League and there was talk that, perhaps football might be coming back, but after just that one season, their youth program folded.

What strikes me as odd is the number of safeties that these teams had ... and some cases two in a game by a team.

That's a significant drop off when you go from four K-8 schools and a high school in the area to the equivalent of two K-6, a JH, and HS.

Yep ... tackle. I don't know if a team can compete post-season in both under IHSAA. For the most part, it almost seems like it would create a major imbalance of teams between 1A/2A size and 5A/6A as 8-man almost seems to be a classification in and off itself ... i.e., small 1A or sub-1A. So far, the teams in 8-man are all 1A-sized schools and there's only a single class of 8-man. It would almost seem that a team that could afford to have both 11-man and 8-man teams would be in a resource-rich environment with bodies and that's likely to be 4A/5A/6A size schools. I guess you could potentially see a 1A/2A/3A school that might opt for 11-man varsity and turn their JV into an 8-man, but I think that would be less advantageous in the long-run.

That's interesting as St. Ann's doesn't have a school associated with it nowadays and St. Mary currently only goes K-3rd and St. Boniface only has 4th-6th. I'm assuming that that split between St. Mary/St.Boniface may have happened later on and both might have been K-6 originally. Given that LCC almost closed in 1990 on numbers, I suspect that K-6 being split between St. Mary / St. Boniface might have been the canary in the coal mine on eventual high school numbers given that LCC numbers used to easily be in the 300s at one time.

To my knowledge, there were five/six ... possibly a couple more ... teams that played 8-man in Indiana. It was also my understanding, in talking one of the dads whose son played, that there were a couple of other programs that were playing 11-man that were moving to 8-man next season. He'd mentioned that Traders Point Christian had indications of moving to 8-man. Programs that played in 8-man included Waldron, Broad Ripple, Dugger Union, Indiana School for the Deaf, Faith Christian, and Rock Creek. Faith Christian just announced, after it's first season of 8-man, that it will be moving to 11-man next season. The big team on the block, at least from the game that I saw, is Indiana School for the Deaf. They beat Faith Christian in the game that I saw 80-2 scoring on their first play from scrimmage and Faith Christian's last ... that's not a misprint. ISD played 11-man for almost a quarter century including IHSAA tournaments and moved straight from 11-man to 8-man, so they look more polished than programs just starting out with football like Faith or those that had transition issues. Yes, the field is slightly thinner, but not by a whole bunch ... it's about 40 yards wide. Length for the game that I saw was standard 100 yards, but 8-main can be played on 80-yard fields.

Especially given the breadth of the diocese ... stretching from Illinois to Ohio. And Guerin's just approaching its 20-year anniversary.

That's not what I said nor what I inferred. Inactivity is inactivity, regardless of the reason. I also included the line in that same post "In essence, the state/IHSAA doesn't have to delve into the reasons, and frankly it shouldn't make a difference to them anyway for sports-related reasons, and so it protects the privacy of the kids/families and respects the dignity of the kids in not having to "tell" or "defend" their position." Incidentally, reading is never a negative way to spend ones time; no matter what the topic.

Not sure of the inference there, but frankly if a kid just wants to go to school and be done with it, I don't see anything wrong with that. That's his life. Had a lot of friends in school who just wanted to do their required school time and that was it. Never wanted to do a minute more than what was required by the state at or with the school ... everything else was "their" time. Some of them went home and played music in their own bands. Some read. Some worked. Some hung out at their local church or community center. More power to them. Frankly, the reasoning for not being active isn't really anyone's business.

I don't know about long-term and they've only played since 2006, but LCC has and will have a natural rivalry with Guerin since they are the only two Catholic high schools in the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana. LCC is the smaller, older brother and Guerin is the bigger, younger brother ... and you know how siblings can be.

Interesting. Is that part of the old cluster system ... the points per class?

This is why I think using a general inactivity measure as opposed to categorization would work well. The REASON for inactivity wouldn't matter. A kid in a wheelchair that has to use eye motion to move the chair and technology to speak counts the same as a kid who works the family farm instead of extra-curriculars because his dad died of a heart attack at 40 and left his mom to raise him and his three younger siblings who counts the same as a kid that just wants to go to school, do his time between 7:30 - 3:00, and then go home and read manga. In essence, the state/IHSAA doesn't have to delve into the reasons, and frankly it shouldn't make a difference to them anyway for sports-related reasons, and so it protects the privacy of the kids/families and respects the dignity of the kids in not having to "tell" or "defend" their position. As for the age, I think the IHSAA already has an issue for age, in terms of participation, so the adjustment to the "activity count" would be to subtract out someone who is ineligible by age for IHSAA participation even if they are active in some other activity. For example, a 22-year old involved in the chess club would be ineligible for IHSAA participation in sports, so that school's activity enrollment would be decreased by one.

The only concern that I see in this is that, indirectly, there's a negative connotation that kids with special needs are "dead weight" burdens at their schools. That's likely to bring some type of cause of action activity which, as we've identified numerous times here on GID, is something the IHSAA wants to avoid like the plague. With that said, I have to imagine that, in addition to all of those other stats that the schools and state tracks like race, language, FRL status, ISTEP scores, college placement, etc. there is most likely a participation stat. That is, what percentage of the student body is involved in one or more extracurricular activity tied directly to the school. That percentage could then be used to determine the "activity classification" or "activity enrollment" of a school. This number would/could incorporate special needs kids, but would not directly target/reflect them. In addition, for kids classified with a disability or special needs who were active, e.g., the one-armed kicker that you mentioned, would not automatically/erroneously be omitted from the active count. This would address the potential issue that the IHSAA would wish to avoid, would provide a more accurate count rather than just generally categorizing, and would also allow for several factors to be considered. In addition, it is applied to all schools equally regardless of p/p, public, charter, etc. classification. The main problem is that it would likely be a school-reported figure, so it would be be potentially subject to finagling, but it might be a small enough finagling number/impact that it wouldn't matter. The only other issue, tied to finagling, would be outright reduction in offerings for students with disabilities ... or other groups. In order to keep its activity count low, a school could decide to reduce offerings like unified flag football or unified track and field. Similarly, schools might reduce smaller activities where only single-activity students are involved like chess club to gain advantage in the "activity enrollment" impact. One way to combat this, or actually provide incentive to embrace activities like unified sports, might be to offer a "bonus" reduction for having these programs. Instead of a school's mindset that it would be a hit to the activity enrollment to have these programs, it would not only be beneficial to the students to offer them, but also to the school to have these.

As Gordon Lightfoot used to sing, and as applies to the IHSAA, "If I could read your mind, love, what a tale your thoughts could tell."

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.

Appreciate it!

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.