Bobref

Because of the type of work I do, I spend a lot of time in hospitals and physicians’ offices. I confess, i don’t understand how, on the one hand, health care providers complain loudly over the niggardly reimbursement system of Medicare -and the insurers who take their lead from it - while on the other hand, every hospital I see has got significant construction underway, is building freestanding outpatient centers in the community, is buying up physician practices, etc. They’re obviously making money somehow.

That’s an easy one. Leave it up to each school to decide. Do away with the IHSAA rule altogether.

Yeah, but he’d have that prized Alabama diploma. [insert sarcasm emoticon here].

I addressed your statement that, if you don’t like the travel rule, try to get it changed and, failing that, either leave with it or get out of the IHSAA.. You responded by attacking me personally, e.g., “shiesty,” which means “unscrupulous.” It’s the very definition of an ad hominem argument. And it’s noteworthy that you still haven’t actually addressed the issue under discussion. My post was a fair characterization of your position, as expressed. If you didn’t express what you really meant, that’s your fault, not mine.

Ad hominem, last refuge of the intellectually weak.

That is true academically and across the entire spectrum of extracurricular activities, including athletics. What’s the point?

No one’s arguing that. The discussion is about whether the travel restriction represents a wise policy. Things like you mentioned are definitely factors to be considered ... on the local level, not the one-size-fits-all approach the IHSAA rule currently imposes. And frankly, your “IHSAA, love it or leave it” approach adds nothing to a reasoned discussion of the subject.

Enforced mediocrity. And it’s even a poor way to accomplish that. Some schools can afford better weight rooms than others. Will we begin regulating that soon? I look forward to someone demonstrating how the ability to have those kinds of experiences translates to an unfair competitive advantage on the field. After all, there are all kinds of things that give one school an advantage over another, but they’re not unfair.

And some are. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcook/2019/04/22/the-issue-with-hiring-youth-sports-referees-may-be-that-the-pay-stinks/#232881902380

Title IX doesn’t necessarily require equal numbers of sports. It requires substantially equal opportunities. That’s why many colleges actually do have more women’s sports teams than men’s ... because football is all male and there are so many participants in it.

Possibly because they realize it’s none of the IHSAA’s business and that schools should be free to make their own decisions on what type of travel experiences they want to afford their student athletes?

Which is more likely to happen, schools taking positive dramatic steps to treat officials better - and I’m not talking about a PA announcement before the game encouraging everyone to be nice - or schools doubling their budget for paying officials?

Sigh ... I was thinking something more along the lines of recruitment/retention strategies. 😅

A little disappointing, DT, that an out-of-the-box thinker like yourself hasn’t mentioned the officiating crisis that is very real at all levels of high school football in Indiana. We are getting to the point where you are going to see more Friday night games shifted to Saturday because of the shortage of officials.

I played at Cuyahoga Falls when I was a sophomore. or jr. at St. Ed’s. Remember a real bruiser of a fullback named Doug Root. Of course, that was back when dinosaurs walked the earth. 🤣