Footballking16

I can't imagine Ben Davis is paying IMG to come blow their doors off. Perhaps the other way around but that just seems like an odd angle altogether. Perhaps it's nationally televised in some capacity and each school is getting a piece. About the only logical reason why this game being played makes sense.

How many are going to Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Florida, etc and have 50+ offers from every school in the country? A national all-star team is going to beat a local all-star team, by a good margin I would guess.

The whole state? Indiana as a whole has what, 5-6 guys a class who will play and contribute at major college football programs? Nearly all of IMG's entire 2 deep will have committable P5 offers (multiple) when all said and done. There will be guys standing on the sideline at IMG who won't play until the second half that will commit to SEC and B10 schools by the time they graduate.

Well in that case it's already a win for BD lol!

Beating IMG and winning the 6A title aren't mutually exclusively. You could take the top 70 players in Indiana, form an all-star team, and they still wouldn't come within 3 TDs of IMG. The talent disparity between IMG and Indiana, let alone just Ben Davis, is on a different planet.

I know there are certain high school state athletic associations who have barred their teams from playing schools like IMG for this exact purpose, Georgia specifically. I think Texas in another.

I think if Ben Davis can muster more than 100 yards of total offense and/or score (while IMG still has their 1st/2nd team in) that's something they can always hang their hat on. This game has 42/49-0 nothing at half written all over it with IMG deciding how professional they are in the second half. I think the biggest win for Ben Davis would be IMG leaving town without poaching someone like Mark Zackery for next year.

I’m aware. Why was it scheduled?

Just scoured through On3 recruiting rankings and for the life of me cannot figure out why this game is being played. IMG currently has 10 seniors who are 4 and 5* recruits and another 8 juniors who are either 4 or 5* in their respective classes. I stopped looking at recruits ranked past 300 nationally but would imagine there's at least another 10-15 kids in both the 2024 and 2025 classes who hold committable offers to more than at least 1 P5 school. Ben Davis has one kid, Mark Zackery a JR, who is rated in the top 1000 nationally (171 in the class of 2025) in either class who I'm guessing would be a special teams player at IMG at this point in his career. Is this game being televised?

My guess is for the sports that play multiple times a week you'll see extended trips. Say USC basketball is playing Rutgers in Piscataway on Thursday night, they'll be scheduled to play a school like Penn State or Maryland that Sat/Sun. Same when teams go out west. Purdue would play Oregon and Washington back to back before heading back East. I get it's a pain, but with the new TV deal that's worth almost $100mil/yr, they can definitely pull it off.

And will stand pat until the NCAA comes out and says you must be a conference member to make the playoffs and/or NBC pulls the plug on their exclusive media deal.

Cue the "Does football exists outside central Indiana" posts.

I’d just assume it’s for more “exposure” (could be way off base). Any time the word “travel team” gets thrown out it’s just assumed that it leads to more exposure as you’re playing a more nationalized schedule. Football is the one sport where your genetics play the biggest factor in getting a D1 schedule. 10-12 year old kids are the furthest thing from being developed and a huge reason why travel football has never made sense to me. Football at that level needs to be all about technique and fundamentals, not racking up trophies playing in different tournaments.

Higher concentrate of kids, more leagues, more opportunities, etc.......just spitballing. But seriously, at the end of the day there's good football all across the state and the ones committed to it start them young. CYO, CG bantam league, etc all have phenomenal programs the same way that IPS and Washington Twp have little to no structure. It reflects at the high school level.

Only if your last name is Martin or Karras (although Ted wasn't born in Indy) 😁

Didn't DT start and then sell IFD (Indiana Football Digest)? I could be way off but remember him starting his own platform a few years back and then trying to promote it here.

Violations were nothingburgers (no pun intended) but Harbaugh did lie during an investigation (per the NCAA) which is considered a Level 1 infraction and one of the most serious charges. Both Bruce Pearl and Jim Tressel lost their jobs about the same time several years back lying to NCAA investigators over several minor infractions. Can't do that and a precedent has been set.

That's all true but in a sport that has a finite # of positions for only X amount of kids, you're going to max yourself out of those extra 1,000 boys pretty quick. Carmel's shear number of kids certainly doesn't hurt its cause but I wouldn't say it's given them an over the edge advantage. They've been pretty pedestrian the last few seasons all things considered.

The enrollment gap is closing in central Indiana. Nearly every 6A school in metro Indy is approaching 3k students (if not already there) and many will soon eclipse it.

Correct. At some point it becomes a quality over quantity type deal and I think that becomes the case once you start hitting 2500 kids.

Agree with you here. There's a certain threshold where # of students become irrelevant when trying to field a 100-150 man football team grades 9-12. Every 6A team has the bodies to do this. I actually think a school of 5,000 discourages participation, especially in a sport like football. I also think Carmel loses a ton of feeder kids to schools like Cathedral, Brebeuf, Guerin, etc for this exact reason across all sports.

Not sure either qualified

Cathedral and New Pal have combined to win 6 of the 10 5A titles, Columbus East also won a 5A title but memory escapes me if they were up due to enrollment or SF from 4A. Either way, when 60% of the state titles have been won by schools who aren't 5A by enrollment its why you get mass people suggest the class is watered down. Look I know you're a Snider guy and you have to defend 5A. I'll be the first to admit that Cathedral in most years had an easier time winning 5A than they would have 4A if the SF wasn't enacted. 4A in my opinion is much stronger in Central Indiana than it is in 5A as well as the Southern part of the state and that is the draw Cathedral would have had.

Start with top 32 enrollment teams in 6A and bottom 32 enrollment teams in 1A. Those classes are now set. Bump the remaining top 32 enrollment teams in classes 1A-4A up a class and you have your new classifications. No clue what the official breakdown per class would be but you get the picture. 2A-5A would all roughly have ~64 teams.

Brag? I'm stating facts. 4A enrollment schools have dominated 5A. There's literally no argument to be made otherwise. Cathedral has the same boundaries as every other public school in Central Indiana. How many times and from how many posters do you need to be told that open enrollment absolutely kills any argument to the contrary? Cathedral has plenty of advantages over their 4A and 5A counterparts and none of them have to do with "zero boundaries". And by the way, they're still technically a 4A enrollment school. When the IHSAA