foxbat

This has been bantered around, but I suspect that it would be hard to get the backing on this, if it's something like SF where applied, . It's one thing to put a badge of honor on a team and say, "Hey, you're really good, so we are going to move you up" compared to "Hey, you guys really aren't all that good, so we're going to put you over here in a room with the safety scissors until you can prove to us that you won't put someone's eye out." OK, I'm be a bit / a lot facetious, but I think you'd get buy in from teams that will never ever have this apply to them to "help the other teams." Kind of like the coach's son is always the first one to vote for extra laps for anyone who's late to practice because he's riding with Dad and knows Dad's never going to be late. I think most teams/programs in the mix for possibly succumbing to this new badge of "special recognition," would vote against it ... especially if there's ANY chance that it's first few attempts get enacted half-*ssed, pardon my French, the way that SF did. The tweaking is getting better on SF, but it still needs more work and there are REAL bodies/kids that are in the lab in real time as the experiment is worked out. If it's something where you'd be eligible and could "opt" for it, I think you might have even fewer teams that would openly ASK to move down. Most would like to have the ability to say, "They made us move down" or "Well, that's the rule" as opposed to "Can we please move down a level?"

I don't think it's all that silly or illogical. I've often thought the same thing ... that there's something more than an arbitrary 300-mile rule and that there was something else tied to it. If the discussions concerning haves/have-nots WITHIN conferences, regions, classes, holds then an open-travel policy would seem to exacerbate that for the tournament. I wonder, if you plot that 300-mile radius, what does it provide in the way of average-/large-metro access. I did a quick set of 300-mile radius circles using Evanasville, Gary, Terre Haute, Ft. Wayne, and Lawrenceburg as surrogates for end-points of the state. Here's the link to the tool if you want to play around with it further: https://www.mapdevelopers.com/draw-circle-tool.php. It tends to provide relative access to the Midwest. One other interesting thing that I noticed in this is that it tends to be, with the exception of Kentucky/Tennessee and some parts of Missouri, focused on Big Ten country. Of course, it would be more questioning to have something that excluded Kentucky being on the border, but 300-miles seems to be somewhat conducive to showcasing in front of the heart of the Big Ten ... at least geographically ... without making it overtly obvious ... and just biting the bullet that a couple of SEC states might get a look. Might be as silly/illogical, but folks have done stranger things for a lot less.

Shouldn't success factor, if done better/correctly, be doing this? If so, then you don't need a multiplier for just p/p. If the idea is truly fairness, then it makes sense to spend some time and find the REAL issue tied to imbalance and address it as opposed to just using easy surrogate items like p/p. Faith Christian is a p/p and, though they are now IHSAA, I can pretty much assure you that they are not "stealing" anyone right to get a blue ring ... in anything. We also already know that p/p doesn't equate to automatic advantages ... we already had an Orwellian thread a while back that ran alongside the many-times-annually-p/p-Dead-Horse-Athon about how Noll should just hang it up in football. Faith never had football and probably never will ... and it's not due to the fact that they are a baseball/basketball/*fill-in-the-blank* powerhouse and have just chosen to exploit their neighboring public school victims in that "power sport." Ultimately, I like the idea of success factor rather than multipliers because it treats all on the basis of PROVEN advantage or PROVEN outcome as opposed to conjecture. Frankly, if we are being really honest, we should be able to look at the contents of the unmarked box and determine if there an true impact on the balance. Ultimately, I think that comes in the performance. Yes, SF is flawed and doesn't adequately do that right now, but put a four year window on it and a couple of other tweaks, and I think we are closer to making it more pragmatic than punitive.

And yet here we are. Deja vu all over again.

That's what were doing at LCC. I spent 18 years there and started before I even had boys. Many of the guys who coached with me stayed on with the youth program even after their boys had moved on to junior high, then high school, and even after they graduated. We had a guy who was a mainstay for a long time there, that had two girls and no boys, but spent over two decades coaching in the youth program. We also had LCC alums who stayed in the area and went to Purdue or Ivy Tech come out and help us coach while in college. If you can build that kind of culture, it's big. The interesting part at LCC was that, while the varsity coaches were always supportive of the youth program ... always lending players to come talk to the kids, coming out to watch the games, helping with the use of the varsity field for games, they always left the running of the youth program to the guys that had been doing it. As a courtesy, we'd always ask incoming coaches, if there's anything that they wanted us doing at that youth level and they all said, do what you've been doing, teach good/safe skills, and keep the kids engaged and having fun ... we'll teach them the plays when they get to varsity.

Heard the same thing said about the MIC in another thread. Lord, again, I apologize for that there.

A good, sustained youth program takes A LOT more than most people on the outside imagine ... especially beyond the stuff on the field.

Schools can pretty much go wherever they want right now; just not under the IHSAA banner Private institution with its own set of rules and non-mandatory membership. Pretty much as long as they are violating discrimination laws with the activity, they can pretty much set the rule as they wish. If you want change on that rule, it's going to have to come from within. The issue that I think you'd see with this is that there just aren't enough schools REALLY impacted by the rule to get enough of a groundswell of support to overturn. I mean think about it, we couldn't enough groundswell to make a four-year window for Success Factor and that probably has more direct/indirect impact on teams than long-distance travel. Ain't that the truth. I used to complain about the fundraisers for football/baseball until my nieces got involve in orchestra.

Sure it's not cracking into that second six pack? 😁 Lord, I apologize for that.

While we often try to look at things that are similar across groups from year to year that are easily measures, like SES, enrollment, p/p or public, etc., there are other factor that weigh in that aren't as easily defined and end up being more qualitative than quantitative ... although we often try to simplify it using a proxy/surrogate that doesn't always fit and often points in the incorrect/incomplete direction of explanation. I see evidence of this in evaluating a program like LCC. Just some general ideas/numbers: For general context of where some of this is going, in part, in 1983, LCC went 0-10, followed by a 1984 season of 1-9. After that 1983 season, it was decided that that could not happen again and that a focus on introduction to football BEFORE high school was needed. That was the advent of the youth program at LCC. Prior to LCC's four-peat run, starting in 2008, and beyond, LCC's win percentage, historically as a program, was 53.6%. It's current percentage is around 60.2%. Going back to that first bullet point, from the start of the youth program to the senior year of its first players, LCC's program went about 42% as a winning percentage. From the season of that first youth program's senior class to the start of the state championship runs, LCC went just under 63% winning percentage. The O'Shea era for LCC started in 2008 and went until 2016. Coach O'Shea finished an impressive 91.9% winning percentage in his time at LCC. You could argue that he won because he was at a p/p school with money and the like, but the same argument of the four plus coaches that were there in the seasons preceding his arrival and they also had the benefit of a youth program in place that was yielding 63% wins since the first class had gone all the way through the program and through varsity. Since O'Shea, LCC is 55.7%. Same youth program, same supposed SES, slightly larger enrollment. O'Shea was the right coach at the right time while, for O'Shea, LCC was the right program at the right time. There was a unique synergy there. It wasn't that he was a 90% winning coach when he got there or even after he left, so it can't just be all about the coach. Likewise, the SES and enrollments weren't too far off for the coaches precedeing him or the coaches after him, so it can't be all about the SES or enrollment or even the p/p aspect from an internal perspective. If it was only about size, SES, p/p vs. public, then the program should be experiencing much higher numbers than they are. If it was only about the youth program, then again, you might be able to make an argument that 25 years is the magic number ... the number of years the youth program had been in place when O'Shea arrived and thus no one else before then benefited ... although the percentages say otherwise.

And the plausible deniability? 😁

It's always amazing how good your pitchers look when your bats are red hot.

McCullough's how they spell it in Scotlandtucky. 😃

That's because he's Scottish.

Recent press conference with a cameo by Warren Central.

This one has just been announced that it will take place on the big stage at LOS in Week 1. This year provides a unique opportunity for Harrison to face all of the Lafayette area schools: Jeff and McCutcheon as part of the NCC, West Lafayette to start officially, and LCC the week before West Lafayette for scrimmage.

2021 was more disappointing for Harrison than the 2020 season vs. Zionsville. Harrison is still on a rise as a program and still is feeling out the start/stops and sputters that often hit a team as they make that transition. My boys have only been on the inside of the Harrison programs for about the last four years or so, so my understanding of the inner-workings is somewhat limited. From what I've seen, however, the program is in an ascendancy and should see, hopefully, increased productivity in the coming years. I don't know that Harrison is better equipped to take out Decatur Central ... I'm not very familiar with DC. What I have seen with the Harrison program in just the last few years, from a behind the scenes perspective, is increased competition at the undercard levels in building the pipeline. A couple of seasons ago, Harrison had the largest freshman football class in the history of the school. That team closed the gap with Westfield to a TD. Last season, that freshman team as JV squad, forced Westfield to come from behind and kick a 40+yard field goal to escape with a 1-point win. Historically, those games were never anywhere close with Westfield being heavily dominant. I was looking forward to the Harrison-Westfield matchup season this year as a measuring stick to see if that idea of undercard moving through the pipeline pays dividends or not; however, Westfield won't have Harrison this upcoming season as they are going in a different direction facing off against Lawrence Central and New Pal while Harrison will faceoff against Plainfield and down-the-road foe West Lafayette. In the past couple of seasons, Harrison's undercards have played a modified schedule rather than the NCC undercards. Harrison's freshman squad played a couple of games against JV squads in the NCC rather than freshman counterparts and also played non-NCC when varsity played NCC. Harrison's JV squad did similar a couple of times, since the NCC counterpart was playing Harrison's freshman squad, and played non-NCC competition like Chatard. Where all of that will take Harrison is still to be seen. Realize that it was just about a decade ago that Harrison had three back-to-back 0-10 seasons, so Harrison is still very much in a building part of the program. Nonetheless, there's a lot of excitement as to where the program is and where it can get to. The biggest downfall in all of this for Harrison, at least from where I see it, is that they are making good strides and doing well, but they are going to get thrust up into 6A before they likely get the chance to "stabilize" the growth that they've been seeing. It is what it is though and you take the hands that you are dealt and move forward from there. Hopefully the buy-in and momentum remains ... a good showing in 5A these next couple of seasons could go a long way feeding that fire.

It's about three years late and they got the benefit of a pair of visits to LOS in the interim. Harrison's in the same boat in that they have a two-year two-minute warning that 6A is coming and a couple of seasons to do what they are going to do in 5A before heading up to a new bag in 6A.

This will also become even more prevalent as resources become tighter. With strained resources, students outside of +/- 1 standard deviation start to suffer more. As you mentioned, in some of the smaller schools, it's not even the +/- 1 standard deviation that get the resources. I recall a family of a kid that I coached many years back that ended up transferring to a 5A school because, as his sister with special needs got to school age, the family needed to be somewhere that could provide those services. I know another family in town where their kids are split between the local p/p and the public schools because one of their kids is gifted and talented and that academic program was not available at the p/p when he started in the program as an elementary school kid. These are situations where it pretty much either existed or didn't, but as you point out, there can certainly be a problem where it's not 0/1 but somewhere in between and spread out too much ... not quite 0, but much farther away from 1.

Twin Lakes JV baseball has played Harrison ... Western plays baseball both JV and varsity against Harrison. My son says that Western has a pretty decent baseball team when they play them.

West Lafayette has already scheduled Jeff in the past and also plays McCutcheon regularly. They are scheduled to play Harrison this year. They also play Western fairly regularly as well ... two seasons on, two seasons off. Outside of Lebanon, I'm not sure that the proposed new league give WL any more than a greater opportunity for injuries which could derail a season. Folks claim that West Lafayette needs to "toughen up" to make a deeper run, but realize that, with the exception of 2020, WL tends to drop their season to the eventual north representative at LOS and their last seven seasons have resulted in a blue ring or were ended by a p/p: 2021 - Lost 24-14 to state runner up Brebeuf 2020 - Anomaly season losing to Guerin 20-18 2019 - Lost to state champ Chatard 42-14 who beat Heritage Hill 34-3 at LOS 2018 - Won state 2017 - Lost 13-10 to state runner up Brebuef 2016 - Lost to state champ Concordia, 62-27, who beat Lawrenceburg 56-14 at LOS 2015 - State runner up losing to Chatard 31-7

Normally I would, but I was thinking that my wife would have posted it before me if she had seen it first, so I didn't feel as guilty. Matter of fact, I know a few guys on this site and their wives and their wives would have beaten them to the punch as well.

If you're married, you're already jinxed. 😀

They run this quite well; especially in 1A matchups.

So what you are REALLY saying is that you made an off-hand comment and dragged females into a fight that they weren't really part of. There was NO LOGIC at all in including females as part of the post. If your argument is that some admins don't value sports like others do, then we are in agreement. If you want to either because of misogyny or, using your own words, being "witty and stupid and a smartass" or just plain old mistake and slip pf the tongue included females, then we are not in agreement. I think that most folks that SERIOUSLY follow sports and know real sports fans will show you a large number of RABID fans both male and female. The moms of the kids that I've coached over two decades of VOLUNTEER activity have been some of the biggest backers of football that I have ever known and have been to bat doing the heavy lifting often to make things happen; especially when the spotlight ISN'T on them. As for the schools I represent, your guess would be completely wrong ... but then again, more spaghetti for the pot apparently.