foxbat

Like in Olympic boxing: Although I do wonder what the reasoning for the 178 lbs. is. It would seem, since the idea of the sport is on speed and agility, that those would be the determining factors for play ... e.g., shuttle times, etc.

Are you kidding? GID is the epitome of Festivus all season long ... and apparently it's the gift that keeps giving even after the season. 😀

Hobart has nearly 27% Hispanic, 8% Black and 47% FRL, yet they have done quite well at 8-4, 11-3, 11-3 and a visit to LOS in the last three seasons.

Oklahoma doesn't differentiate in their enrollments including all the way down to the 8-man level. Seriously man? Definitely uncalled for.

There aren't too many majority-Hispanic high schools in Indiana, but of the ones that are, their football teams aren't any more than .500 at best. River Forest is about 40% Hispanic and has boasted winning seasons the last three seasons.

Oklahoma is a district-based alignment like Texas ... no conferences. Oklahoma split the 6A class for the first time back in 2014. Bixby just four-peated as 6A-II champ and has been in the state final all eight seasons that there has been a 6A-II ... having won seven of the eight seasons. BTW, who is Bixby? They are the largest team in 6A-II.

If you go here: http://www.ossaa.com/Football.aspx and click on the Class B and Class C links you can see what the Oklahoma 8-man playoffs looked like on scoring. In some cases there are definite shootouts, but in others they look like regular games ... you can click on the other class links to see the results of their 11-man playoffs.

I'm with you on this. I'm wondering if any of them were teams that had and dropped football in the past or if they are all brand new. Also interested in seeing the make-up to see if there's anything in common, besides size, in these teams such as predominantly rural or predominantly P/P or predominantly lower SES. The reason that I'm interested is that, in Oklahoma, there are quite a few 8-man teams that have come from the ranks of teams that had been successful programs in 11-man ball in the state, but due to shifts in population densities or other schools opening had gotten smaller. Does anyone know if there's a requirement/limit in Indiana 8-man ball on school size to participate or, if not, a restriction on program and/or player that you can participate in 11-man or 8-man, but not both? I'm assuming that Indiana's current quarter limit, for the most part, would keep a player from playing full-time 8-man and and 11-man in the same week, but potentially could play the same way as a kid playing JV vs. varsity in a week ... i.e., a kid could play 2 quarters JV and 2 quarters of 8-man.

Hopefully not a dropped ball!

Kind of like Keeping Up With The Kardashians? 😀

You're just not looking at it the right way. 😀

The HCC asked them to join, they accepted and the NCC terminated relationships with them a year before they were supposed to start with the HCC. Jeff ended up back in the NCC ... albeit about a decade after the NCC broke ties with Jeff. Of course, prior to Jeff heading over to the HCC they had spent somewhere around 70 years or so with the NCC. Jeff was with the NCC before heading to the HCC almost three times as long as the MIC's been around.

Minnesota and Wisconsin have a reciprocity agreement for most of their state colleges ... you can get Minnesota in-state tuition if you are from Wisconsin and attend a Minnesota state school ... so it would seem that "cooperation" already exists between the two states to a degree.

There's also a chance that both will capitulate, drop 11-man football, and join in on the new 8-man program after the inaugural year.

I'd be interested in seeing if the 13 mentioned here are new schools or just teams that are currently playing 11-man that are sliding to 8-man. If it's the former, it would would mean an increase in kids playing.

The last 10 are the hardest 10. Bend not break. # @BendNotBreak

Correct. The Division I and Division II are only figured out AFTER the playoff qualifying is determined. You are correct in that some schools will know they are going to be Division I or Division II fairly automatically. If you are one of the top largest in a district, you are going to be Division I and if you are one of the bottom two in size in a district, you are going to be Division II. If you are the third largest in a district, you could be in Division I or Division II ... same with the third smallest. Further adding a little jiggle to things is that some districts have ten teams in them and some only have six. The only one who is guaranteed, regardless of re-districting that occurs, is Allen. They are always going to be Division I because they are about 7,000+ and the largest school in the state. Unlike Carmel in Indiana, there's not as much grousing about them being a mega-school. Mega-schools, especially in Dallas, have been a way of playing the system since I was in high school back in the 70s. There used to be the Big Guys in Dallas like Richardson, Plano, and Lake Highlands, which is also where the money was at the time, that used to have huge schools. Plano finally split up albeit there's still something to the mega-school mystique. There are three Plano senior highs, Plano, Plano West, and Plano East, but they only house 11-12 grades in them. West has about 2,700, East has has about 2,900, and Plano has has about 2,600. They are fed by six 9-10 schools which house about 1,000 to 1,500 each.

Already has one ... it's called TAPPS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Association_of_Private_and_Parochial_Schools. Texas probably has around 75 teams playing P/P ball ... not including the 6-man teams.

This was part of was getting at with the low-hanging fruit too. There are already schools in neighboring states that come to Indiana to play our teams like the schools out of Ohio and Kentucky and, if you toss LOS into the mix, I bet you could entice many other schools too. That basically makes the expenses relatively low for the Indiana participants.

Kind of. The way that you are describing it is how it works for everything except 6A in Texas. There can be some decent-sized disparities within districts and in 6A. 6A spans from 7,000+ to around 2,200. My alma mater, which is out of an ISD with at least 12 6A schools in it, has roughly 3,300. Another school in our district only has around 2,300. The way Division I and Division II work in 6A for Texas is that, in a district, the top four teams advance to the playoffs. The largest two of those four go to Division I and the two smallest go to Division II. All things even, it should, theoretically have the largest teams playing each other and the smallest teams playing each other. You could, however, due to the fact that it is done post-season, have District A where the top four placement teams are the four largest in their district and the next-door district, District B, works out where its four smallest teams end up with the best records. District A's two smallest teams that place, and will go to Division II, could be larger than District B's two largest teams that place, which will go to Division I. Here are the classification cutoffs for Texas ... except 6A:

Bank of America?

Gotta wait until Saturday for those to start up. Maybe this was just the Advent list ... straightening out the paths.

There are already schools in Ohio and Kentucky that cross state lines to play Indiana teams on a regular basis. There are a couple of other programs in Illinois that have also played Indiana teams too ... like Crete-Monee and St. Joe-Ogden and some others in that Iliana border. We've also had situations where we've had kick-off weekends or early-season weekends at LOS with about eight Indiana schools. Maybe hit some of the lower-hanging fruit, with some of those out-of-state teams that are more likely to join in, and have something like a Multi-State Kickoff Classic at LOS in the first couple of weeks of the season. Might eventually strike up something post-season too.

I don't think it has to be widespread or all-in. The experience would be phenomenal for kids.

In the video, around the halfway point, the AD seems to allude that there are "athletes" at the school, but that they aren't out for football. It's probably not a critical mass running around the hallways, but there may be enough for basketball.