foxbat

I'm not sure it's a question of entitlement. I seriously doubt there are many, if any, teams thinking, "Hey, we pulled one over on everyone and got a free extra game for doing nothing" or there are teams out there not practicing during the regular season and playing XBox during the week and then "strapping them on" come post-season. I mean even the teams with the worst records are working during the season ... and some of them are working quite hard. They may not have the money or leadership or community support or economic environment to make 9-0, 8-1, or even 2-7 runs, but they work. Realize that I came from a state where your season could easily be over around the third or fourth game of a season ... and that could be by a single point each game. When I came to Indiana, I will freely admit that I was 1) a big-school bigot and 2) completely perplexed by an all-in system. I've since come to love small-school ball and embraced the all-in format as a way to provide a way to "cap off" a season whether it ended at LOS or after the very first attempt. I'm as competitive as the next guy, but coaching youth changed my perspective with the realization that the sport is so much more than just the game, that the vast majority of the victories that I had with my players had little to do with scoreboards, it's a special kid that plays football and even if a guy wears a different color uniform he's still a brother in arms, and ultimately, so few of these kids will do anything on the field with a helmet on after high school, so perhaps selfishly for them, I don't have much of an issue with them getting one opportunity a year ... for four years max ... to get that one last chance to hope against hope. With the above said, I don't have an issue with the idea of seeding and I think that's a good compromise between half the folks get a chance and everyone gets a chance. It reduces the chances of top teams squaring off in the first game of a section and, potentially, saves that matchup for the sectional championship. It adds weight to the regular season for those who want/need that impetus and also accounts for those who don't sometimes have that luxury. One thing that might also provide for a compromise. although I've not yet thought out the logistics yet since I'm spitballing here, is a double post-season ... something akin to the NCAA tournament and an NIT. You could have a situation where there's a qualification to play in the state tournament and if you don't make that cut, you play in the "Indiana NIT." The main issue becomes the "championship game" in the INIT as it would/could detract from the regular state championships unless scheduled on the following weekend ... and you of course couldn't get LOS for that, but you might be able to get a couple of the local college fields.

I suspect that DC will have no issue with McCutcheon. If they do, then the winner of Plainfield-Harrison will easily take the sectional title. I'm looking forward to the rematch with Plainfield. Should be a good measuring stick for Harrison to see how far they've come. Harrison came out of the gate shaky this season. I think in that first game with Plainfield, Harrison was still a bit shell-shocked from the previous week against West Lafayette at LOS. They played well against WL, but gave up 3-4 turnovers in the second half alone ... you can't afford to spot WL 3-4 possessions. Since then, they've gotten tighter although, as I posted in another thread, they still have a propensity to put the ball on the carpet at inopportune times. Harrison had a clean game against Jeff with no turnovers; scoring on every possession except for two ... the last minute or so of the game when they sat on the clock after a pick for the win and the last 30 seconds or so of the first half after a Jeff kickoff. At the beginning of the season, the conventional wisdom, and odds-makers, had Harrison as a two TD underdog to Decatur Central. I think the odds now have them favored over DC. I suspect that Plainfield is also favored over DC now at this point of the season too. As I said, I'm looking forward to this re-match to see whether Harrison really has come along in their progress. Likewise, I'm curious to see how Plainfield has improved too. I thought they played a good first game.

How far is that ripple effect in existing conferences? Actually, I think @812FB's work would be somewhat telling and might actually go a ways to answering the conference/rivalry question. If his work reveals relatively little scheduling changes needed, then that's probably good. Something like the Harbin systems might be a good compromise for seeding sectionals in an all-in format and provides some level of post-season impact to the regular season beyond the implicit issues of getting better, getting conditioned, working on cohesiveness, etc.

Fair enough. I think early in the season, Harrison looked more like a team that was trying to figure out the gear shift on a U-Haul rental truck. Since those first couple of games, they've seemed to have figured things out ... although they are still prone to putting the ball on the turf at inopportune times. Getting that resolved will tighten things up a bit more. Thanks for the insights. I see in that LN game, it looked like LN's QB had four picks thrown. Is that because of Whiteland's coverage/secondary or bad passing decisions on the part of LN's QB?

I wonder if there's a way to take into account the win differential, but only from the losing side to address the "win or nothing" aspect. First, differential would add nothing if you are the winner ... so it takes out any post-season incentive for running up the score. For a team that loses, perhaps there's a sliding scale for points based on differential ... e.g., within 3 points you get 85% of the points if you had won, within 7 points you get 75%, within 10 you get 50%, within 14 you get 40%, lose by anything more you get nothing. I wouldn't suspect the Richmonds, Shelbyvilles, Bosses, and many of the 1-8/0-9 folks to get too many calls because they don't bring any Second Level points with them; however, some of the 4-5 teams in more evenly matched conferences ... like a Floyd Central in Hoosier Hills would be target programs for some 3A programs to pick up some decent multiplier points or maybe a Muncie Central in North Central for some 2As.

I'm not familiar with Ohio football's breakdowns, but are divisions the same as classifications in Indiana ... except inverse? Also, does Ohio have self-selected conferences like Indiana or do they have more assigned district/region competition like Texas does? In briefly reading the description/process, the pros seem to be: Difference of victory doesn't matter, so it would not reward/encourage run-ups. Provides some benefit to scheduling teams in higher classes; albeit that doesn't necessarily correlate to better competition. Pretty objective in the scoring. The cons that I see though seem to be: Teams don't seem to be overly rewarded for taking risks. Since a loss to a team, even by a single point, means you get no points at all for the game and, worse, no future points for the rest of the season from that team, it tends to push teams to be conservative in their scheduling. For traditional powerhouses, they will likely be less risk-averse, but then again they tend to be anyway. For average teams, they will tend to be more risk-averse in a system like this than in an all-in format. As an example, LCC scheduled St. Joe Ogden from IL back in 2004 and 2005 resulting in two losses of 42-0 and 51-33. It provided a couple of opportunities to play out-of-state as well as higher level competition. They also scheduled Jeff in 2017 and got blown out at home 54-0. Even as a more competitive team, it would seem that a scoring system like Harbin would have "persuaded" LCC to avoid those scheduling choices, whereas an all-in format provides no negative consequences to taking such as risk/opportunity ... at least not as it pertains to the post-season. It would seem that teams need to be able to have some analytics knowledge to be able to adequately assess the potential impact of scheduling and, with the nature of high school ball being what it is, it will be harder to get a benefit from that analysis, not only season-to-season, but over time. This could cause action contrary to the first bullet point, but with little ROI in being too risky as opposed to "just risky enough." Conferences, in their current form, in Indiana would likely provide some impediment to the system. In the write-up, the team being referenced, Orrville, seemed to be 6-2 after eight weeks of play and had "enough points (but barely) to be one of the top 8 teams in the region." Orrville had 14.075 and the cutoff for Region 14 was 13.85. I could be misreading the article and the overall impact, but 6-2 after eight games and being "barely" in the qualifying groups seems to produce some angst.

Best way to even the score when you are hosting "Dirty, Cheatin' Catholics" at your facility is to make sure to have a Fish Fry, but lose the utensils. True "Dirty, Cheatin' Catholics" can't resist a fish fry during tailgating, even outside of Lent, and will eat the fish with their fingers; making it harder for their receivers and backs to hang on to the ball.

Like the guys at the Oscars who aren't favorites to win their category. They always say something like, "It's an honor just to be nominated amongst all of these talented people."

But there are more Catholics at GS than Chatard.

Now you've done it. If you thought there were arguments around Sagarin for qualifications, you know the sentiments, and "discussions," that surround the polls. At least you didn't suggest the AP poll.

And therein lies the problem. It's not whether a computer can do the math, it's the question of the algorithm employed ... and, as this thread has shown, we haven't even gotten anywhere close to algorithms yet.

Having seen both Harrison and Whiteland, what's your assessment there?

Oh, OK. That's not what I would have considered a junior high. Yes, I would definitely agree that K-8 programs/building are dying breeds; even amongst Catholic schools. In Catholic schools, more so than in public schools, is the realization that early Catholic school often leads to later public school; not because of anything bad in the schools, just the nature of the beast. There are different break points in Catholic education. Some folks will do Catholic education through 2nd grade then head to public schools. The catalyst? The kid has made their First Communion. The break between 6th/7th grade or 5th/6th depending on whether there's a 7th/8th junior high or 6th/7th/8th junior high as tuition rates tend to jump at that break and also folks look at that as a natural switching point if the Catholic education is in competition with secular. Of course, the last break ends up being that junior high / high school break. Again, tuition and the competition component comes into play. There's also the realization of cost/demand and parish connection. In Lafayette, we have one parish's elementary school that is K-3 that feeds into another parish's 4-6 and another parish that is K-6. Three parishes do not have schools associated with them. There's only one JH and one SH and the JH/SH occupy the same building/campus. The reality of costs/savings/demand make K-8 not sustainable in a situation like this. I suspect that, for public schools, it's more an issue of economies of scale and consolidation as opposed to a demand-linked issue.

TSC has six; three for Harrison ... Battleground, East Tipp, and Klondike ... and three for McCutcheon ... Southwestern, Wainwright, and Wea Ridge. By contrast, Jeff has just one ... Tecumseh.

OK, that there was funny. I don't care who you are.

LCC was south last year in 2A and Harrison is south in 5A this year.

Lutheran. Would make it back-to-back undefeated seasons.

Not if you used something akin to the Elo rating which looks at wins/losses and pretty much ignores margins/scores. Sagain used to include this on his Indiana high school football site, but seems to have removed it. You could blunt the impact of run-ups, although not necessarily the propensity for them to happen, using Sagarin's "Predictor" stat, since once you get to a certain margin, more doesn't matter.

Jeff couldn't have played spoiler in a better fashion. As the Harrison game ended and we were leaving the stadium, the last score we'd heard was 30-14 with Kokomo leading and we all figured that Harrison would be sharing the NCC title with Kokomo. Jeff came back and scored a go-head TD with under a minute left, but left the door open with getting the PAT blocked making the score 32-30, committing a personal foul that was assessed on the kickoff, forcing them to kick from their own 25, and then kicking the ball out of bounds giving Kokomo the ball on the 50. A pick though sealed the game for Jeff. Jeff dangled that win out in front of Kokomo all the way up until the end and then snatched it out from under them. That's a spoiler all right!

Harrison over Richmond 42-8. Final Richmond picked up a 90-yard passing TD in the waning moments.

Harrison leads Richmond 35-0 at half. Running clock in 2nd half.

I raised this issue in another post along with the potential major shakeup of conferences maneuvering x number of programs for post season and either leaving other programs behind or shoving them out of conferences. This could produce several sub-par conferences with no real opportunities for improvement or, potentially worse, more "independents" that can't get a conference to entertain admitting them under any circumstances. In Texas, the primary reason for Texas cutting out half the state's participants has more to do with logistics and much less to do with competitiveness. Texas has an 11-week season to play 10 games ... they have a bye week baked in to their season ... and their championships finish, this year, on December 17. They can't really afford to have any more folks involved outside of the top four from each district unless they want to hold their championships on Christmas Eve.