Esso Ayche

If the results are known between all the sectional coaches, I'd think the stigma of looking like a total a**hat would be deterrent enough. But we know that isn't always guaranteed. Perhaps automatically throwing out the two highest and lowest seeds for each team might be useful in keeping the odd vote or two out? Sure, March Madness has really always been a bust in my book. Just award the national title to the #1 rank team at the end of the season and be done with it. /s

I understand what you are saying, but I don't quite agree with it. Sure, two big hitters squaring off will fill the stands in any round, but I think you will get MORE butts in seats if those two face off in round three versus round one. There are plenty of folks out there that have huge loyalty to teams and you'd be hard pressed to get them to break away their first round game to travel to another game, big ticket or not. Impossible if they actually have a kid or family member on their team playing that night. Now, if their own team gets knocked out first or second round, that fan would be much more inclined to roll a county or two over to watch the two heavyweights duke it out since their own team is done. And I'd venture they would be a little, or even much, less inclined to make that trek if it ends up being a game that will likely end up lopsided since one of the only two real contenders has been knocked out first round. In my highly uninformed opinion with absolutely no evidence to back any statements up, the first round of any given sectional should more or less be attended, overall, roughly equally throughout that sectional, no matter the randomness, or not, of the matchups. That is to say, if you're going to have about 8000 fans attending the first round of sectional X, you probably won't swing the pendulum too far one way or the other if the two top teams meet in that round or not. Local fans will be local fans. I'm hitting GS whether they are playing Heritage Hills first round or Washington (no offense Washington). But if GS is sitting at home the week of the sectional championship, I'm more likely to be at that championship game if it is the 1-2 seed versus the 1-5 or 2-4. I think that's how you get your better attendance later in the rounds, the marquee matchup. Of course there are plenty of football fans that aren't particularly loyal to any school close to where they live, so they'll certainly hit up whatever matchup looks best whether it is week one or week three, and maybe even travel several hours for it But I'd imagine the vast majority of first round games are attended by the family, friends, and loyal (and maybe even the casual) fans of the two teams playing whether it is a 1-8 game, a 4-5, or whatever. I really feel seeding would be more likely to get more folks traveling to games in the championship round once their own team is out. Not everyone is quite as diehard as some folks here on the GID, so it oftentimes just takes more hype to get them on the road once their own season is over.

Dunno, they may need to widen the doors at LOS to get us GS fans' heads through after last year. Might need to play it in the front lot if we're fortunate enough to get that far. Do they have a back entrance with big overhead doors? 😉 Honestly I think it is back to business at the Jewel. Everyone seems to be focused on what is in front of him, trying to win that roster spot and/or do the best they can for whatever role they can fill for the team. Most of this group were back in the gym December 1st knowing they had big cleats to fill and only a few months to prepare. I think we'll have a very competitive team. We'll run a tough gauntlet of games up front that I hope we can come through not only healthy, but with a good mindset no matter if it is a 3-1 start or a 1-3 start. New leadership will be an important factor in determining the trajectory of that mindset if things start a little rough around the edges with all the new parts being plugged in. I believe this team has it in them to make a good run. How far? We'll see this fall

Whaddya askin these SIAC heathens for? They wouldn't know a good pie if it hit em smack in the gobber. 😄 I keed. For pizza I'd personally hit up Harper's on Main Street. If you're looking for something else, I'm partial to the Carriage Inn a couple minutes south in Haubstadt. The tenderloin sandwich as big as your head will cure what ails ya. Welcome to God's country!

I don't really follow the HHC much, just glace time to time because GS picked up New Albany last year and we're hosting them again this year. Curious to know your thoughts on them taking a step back in 2022. Loss of a lot of key seniors? I honestly don't know what their starting roster was made up of in 2021. I do know there were several electric players that could do damage in the open field.

Can confirm Sat is the fall back day for varsity in IL. My cousin is a 1A HC and he will start the season with 7-8 Friday games scheduled and end up with one or two, at best. I surmise it is a trickle-down effect of official shortages that prioritizes higher classes (and maybe money? Don't know if you get more money for higher classes there, or anywhere). 8-man is getting bigger much faster in IL than in IN and I think it will compound the official shortage as smaller schools keep maintaining programs with the 8-man. I don't know how many non-traditional programs will suddenly arise to 8-man, but I think it will be more of a higher maintaining of programs that would have otherwise folded, and the declining official population to cover it all.

8-man has to be Saturday if Illinois is any indicator.

I don't know how this FB suggestion on one of my recent searches fits into the greater complexity of the universe, but I'm just going to leave it here for now.

Honestly that mascot captures most of us growing up in southern/central Illinois. Should just be a wide swath of teams called the cornjerkers. Or The Corn Leaf Cuts. Either or. We played Milford many times back in the 90s. Always the worst 2 hour bus ride home.

I am aghast. @gonzoron gave me my first negative reaction. Yet, to finally gain the attention of such a GID legend... maybe I should have been trying harder this whole time? We'll call it a wash.

The Running Beige Peaceniks. Well, maybe "beige" took it too far. The Running Clear Peaceniks. Tbh, the "running" moniker may be in violation of the ADA. All right, the In Motion and/or Static Clear Peaceniks. Ok, so "peaceniks" does exclude the warmongers among us. Ok, I got it: The In Motion and/or Static Clear Peaceniks for War and/or Temporary Cease Fires. Crap... is "clear" excluding those who are opaque and/or translucent?

I was being facetious with my chagrin. But since you mention it, Indiana Fan's qualifiers for making his list include: "Recent success, moving in right direction, great leadership, places people would want to play at and be involved with." In no particular order, I'd say GS would respond with "Check, check, check, check aaand check." In the last ten years, with the exception of 2014 and 2020, GS has lost to the eventual 3A state champ or runner-up every year. Memorial (3x), Chatard (2x), Brebeuf, and Heritage Hills. That only accounts for nine years, though. Not sure what the outcome of the tenth was, but I will Google it and let you know what I find out.

You HAVE to be a masochist for starting this thread. For shame, sir. Or ma'am. No judgement.

The PAC made an argument that it was Indiana's best small-school conference this year https://www.courierpress.com/story/sports/high-school/2022/06/23/ihsaa-sports-pac-4-high-school-titles/7698910001/ "The 2021-22 athletic season was a banner year for the PAC with four team state champions – Gibson Southern football, Forest Park girls basketball, Tecumseh girls basketball and Tecumseh softball – and one individual state champ in track and field with Forest Park's Rachel Mehringer (100m hurdles). Only the Circle City Conference (six) won more team state championships than the Pocket this year. Not bad for a conference with an average enrollment of 563 students."

There is an @Donnie Baker joke here somewhere. Seems like low hanging fruit, tbh.

I'm a relative newcomer to the GID (longtime lurker, first time poster), really only starting reading as a guest around 2017 when a fellow coach/friend suggested checking it out for definitely not the first time. More of an, ok, ok, I will look into it. September 22, 2017, to be precise, but let's not get into the weeds on that. I immediately knew my work productivity from there on out would be diminished by an unforseen amount. I've seen many, many references to Mr. TA over the years (mostly vague, but always positive), and I would love to hear some stories from those who knew him better and are willing to share.

Can confirm the sentiment from all sides, it's all a bit of your state of mind at any given point. When I was a kid growing up in rural Illinois 95% of my commutes were five minutes or less and 4% were under ten minutes. Going on a 30 minute drive was finally a reason to put your seatbelt on since it was so far away and you had to get on the "highway" (I know at least some of you had to have lived through that ridiculous mindset back in the day). When I lived in Charlotte I had a 12 mile commute to work that took, on a good day, 50 minutes through no less than 25 stop signs/lights. It was a game to see what my daily red light/green light ratio was. The 50 minutes were peak conditions, which which happened maybe 1 day in 3. It was frequently an hour and not uncommon to see 75-90 minutes in the evening once every other week or so. I didn't think much about it because that was just what it took to put food on the table. Now that I'm down here (that's down in God's country, for those who don't know) I travel 25 miles on rural highways in 30 minutes on the dot 95% of the time. The other 5% is during some days in the spring/fall if I get behind a tractor, and then it takes me 31 minutes. There is no way in Hades I'd take a job that made me travel much further, or with any less consistency, than that now.

I think you misspelled "tragedy"? But I dunno for sure, my aotocorekt is curenntly distabled.

It was a very exciting game for all 25 minutes. Multiple big stops by both defenses. I got a great series of pics of Triton's #22 going up and wrestling the big 50/50 ball away from the two GS DBs that bracketed him on the play that set up the go ahead touchdown in the last 30 seconds or so. A really nice, clean, strong play on both sides of the ball, 22 just came up the winner. I was super pumped I was able to get swung around and focused to get clear shots of that (though an incompletion would have been a lot cooler! Lol). On the day for GS's JV/frosh team, I was most impressed by the freshman QB. There were a very small handful of typical freshman-type decisions (forcing things that were not quite there... but not much that was hugely egregious), but he otherwise put up a ton of good balls and got touch on it when needed. A couple mistakes in the tight Triton game proved costly, but he'd get an 'A' grade in my book on the day. The freshman DB that battled Triton's 22 on the big play at the end had an overall solid day as well on the D side. Looking forward to what these young guys can do down the road!

I'm just here so I don't get fined. And so HHF takes the PAC off "steady" and into "thriving", because we don't want the SIAC being perceived as the better GID conference.

I don't think most of us po' folk can wrap our heads around $4.65 BILLION dollars and what kind of chump change that is to people like Rob Walton, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and others of that ilk. Food for thought on the Monopoly money that these people live with, and their disassociation with the common person: Jerry Jones was worth about $11 billion dollars and bought the Cowgirlsboys for a then-record (and then-unimaginable) $150 million in 1989. If you were to earn $3,600 per hour ($1/second) working 24/7/365, it would take you about four years and nine months to make enough to purchase Jerruh's Boys back then. I can KIND of, ALMOST, wrap my head around that. To do the same for Walton's Broncos... that, my friends, would take you over 147 YEARS. To look at it another way, minimum wage was $3.35 for you and me back in 1989, so working day and night 24/7/365 would have pushed us rubes to a mere 5,111 years of labor. Translate that to Walton's Broncs.... that works out to 73,217 years at the current minimum (and ever-increasingly pathetic) of $7.25/hr. So if you started earning your keep with Grug the Neanderthal back in the Middle Paleolithic era making cave art for today's minimum wage, you'd be getting somewhere close to being able to purchase an NFL team today. I'm not sure at what financial threshold things turns into playing with Monopoly money for people, but I'd say once you get to that 8- 9-figure range... you have to begin losing your grasp with the plight of the common man.

You still using Netscape as a web browser? 😄 Let us just say that this ship has sailed.

A rushing team that can throw. Also, it's slightly frowned upon to give the backup Q a bunch of passing attempts during mop up time. Don't worry, he had his reps in JV... where the average margin of victory was 37 points and the team averaged 12.8 yards per carry. BUT. We know JV isn't a one-for-one translation to varsity. That said, Next Titan Up.

He still has a FB page? I thought it was going defunct due to a lack of cash flow from sponsors that I heard through some click bait post, I mean, self-imposed rumor, I mean, click bait post, I mean the grapevine. (Ok, I'm done.) FWIW, I hope HH has a great year (games vs GS notwithstanding).

Thanks for that. I just spat my coffee onto my keyboard.