Footballking16

Just now, DT said:

Penn football has become uncompetitive with thew central Indiana powers

They play a front loaded schedule and lose their momentum in thew back half due to poor quality conference opponents

This thread is not about Penn. It's about lifting the competitive profile of The Dac.  You a3e correct in your assertion regarding DAC weakness.  It will take more than fixing Penn's schedule to improve the conferences post season prospects

You’re trying to convince people why Penn should move to the DAC. Penn already plays the best team in the DAC ever year anyway, and they play 5 other opponents who are just as good, if not better than any other team in the DAC. That’s 2/3rds of their schedule. What advantageous gain does Penn have moving to the DAC? None. Sure Penn and Elkhart moving to the DAC improves the DAC, but it does nothing for Penn and Elkhart.

6 minutes ago, DT said:

How long are the Cathedral and St X contracts?

Mishawaka is no longer a conference opponent

I. Believe Marian has one all time win over Penn 

You are taking a rather myopic view of the situation

Look more at the long term, including ease of scheduling

I don’t know how long the contracts with St. X and Cathedral are scheduled, but Penn would have no problem replacing them with likewise programs when they end, something that would no longer be an option if they joined the DAC.

Same with Mishawaka and their rival status.

I don’t think you realize how bad the DAC is once you get past Merrillville, Michigan City on occasion, and Valpo who they play every year anyway. Penn doesn’t need the DAC and play a tougher schedule under their current alignment now that they would ever stand to play under your DAC proposal. 
 

You let me know when scheduling becomes a problem for Penn, because it’s never been a problem before.

7 minutes ago, DT said:

Penn - Valpo will become much bigger and more important when it is moved back on the schedule and helps determine the East Division champion.  Penn currently currenly plays no one on the back half of the schedule.  That kills their momentum and preparation for the post season.  Michigan City, Laporte, Chesterton and Lake Central and either Merrillville or Crown Point replace  their smaller NIC opponents.  Huge schedule upgrade

Without question a massive demotion and a huge disservice to a team trying to win 6A. Giving up Cathedral, St. X, Mishawaka, and Marian to play Lake Central, Chesterton, La Porte doesn’t make any sense.

11 minutes ago, DT said:

You are wrong.  Penn will see one 6A opponent on its 2021 schedule.  Under the DAC 12 arrangement, they will see 3 or 4 and their 5A opponents will be a significant upgrade over current foes  If you dont think Penn's NIC schedule filled with 2A, 3A and 4A schools and bottom tier 5A doesnt impact their competitive profile, youve got your head in the sand.

And Penn still has an open datre to schedule a PP power like Cathedral or St X

 

PENN
KINGSMEN
Coach: Cory Yeoman, 185-45 in 19th year at school

DATE	OPPONENT		EASTERN TIME				OA 0.0, DA 0.0
Aug. 20	at	Valparaiso 5A	8:00 pm
Aug. 27		LaPorte 5A	7:30 pm
Sep. 3	at	Indianapolis Cathedral 5A	7:30 pm
Sep. 10		St. Xavier	7:00 pm
Sep. 17		Elkhart 6A ©	7:00 pm
Sep. 24	at	Mishawaka Marian 3A ©	7:00 pm
Oct. 1		South Bend St. Joseph 4A ©	7:00 pm
Oct. 8	at	New Prairie 4A ©	7:30 pm
Oct. 15		South Bend Adams 5A ©	7:00 pm
©NORTHERN INDIANA CONFERENCE GAME

Penn plays one 3A opponent and that one 3A opponent finished higher rated in Sagarin than any team Penn would stand to play in your new proposed alignment, with the exception of Valpo and Elkhart who they play annually anyway.

Penn in their current conference playing:

St. X

Cathedral

Valpo

Elkhart

Mishawaka

Marian

Is a tougher schedule than Penn stands to play in any year under your DAC proposal without question. No contest.

1 minute ago, DT said:

You are wrong.  Penn will see one 6A opponent on its 2021 schedule.  Under the DAC 12 arrangement, they will see 3 or 4 and their 5A opponents will be a significant upgrade over current foes  If you dont think Penn's NIC schedule filled with 2A, 3A and 4A schools and bottom tier 5A doesnt impact their competitive profile, youve got your head in the sand.

Penn plays Valpo, Cathedral, and St. X next year. Those 3 games alone prepare Penn better than any year they stand to be in the DAC under your proposal. Your proposal has Penn in a division with all 5A teams with the exception of Elkhart who they already play anyway and a guaranteed crossover game with 6A Lake Central who wouldn’t beat most 4A teams. It’s a huge demotion and disservice to Penn under that alignment.

5 minutes ago, DT said:

With regards to scheduling, we would assign 1 automatic crossover matchup annually to extend or develop new rivalries :

Matchups as follows :

Merrillville - Valpo

Penn - Lake Central

Crown Point - Elkhart

Hammond Central - Michigan City

Hammond Morton - Laporte

Portage - Chesterton

The remaining two crossover games would rotate annually.  

 

Nuetral Site Matchups

Saturdays would be used intermittently during the season to hold Nuetral site games at Ames Field In Michigan City

Penn vs LC and Elkhart vs Crown Point would be the opening doubleheader

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAC West

Hammond Central 5A

Hammond Morton 6A

Merrillville 6A

Lake Central 6A

Portage 6A

Crown Point 6A

 

DAC East

Elkhart 6A

Penn 6A

Valpo 5A

Laporte 5A

Chesterton 5A

Michigan City 5A

Why would Penn join that conference under that scenario? They already play Valpo every year anyway, joining the DAC to gain a new opponent in Lake Central and play Merrillville/Crown Point every 3 years doesn’t prepare them for any Indy teams. Sorry.

1 minute ago, BTF said:

Ease of scheduling. In DT's scenario, a program only has to go searching for one game. In your scenario, they would have to find four games. 

DAC teams already have to find two non-conference opponents as is. Adding two more isn’t nearly as difficult as you think considering most the current DAC schools are located in a metropolitan area with nearly 10 million people. I think you’re just arguing for the sake of argument at this point. There’s no logical reason where joining a 12 team conference with the intention of never scheduling a fourth of the members makes any sense. A 6 team conference of:

Penn

Elkhart

Valpo

Michigan City 

Merrillville

La Porte

is just as strong as a 12 team conference (with those 6 included) minus the deadweight. 

3 minutes ago, BTF said:

Crossover games would be determined by the schools, not some kind of lottery. I would imagine the strongest play the strongest and the weakest play the weakest. I don't see any reason why Merrillville couldn't schedule Valpo, Penn, and Elkhart every year........or two of them at the minimum. I think you are overcomplicating this whole idea. 

What is the point of being in a 12 team conference if you’re never going to play 3-4 of the teams then lol? Quality over quantity in this scenario.

You’re better off forming a 6 team conference in which you’re playing quality opponent week in and week out.

3 minutes ago, BTF said:

Adding programs like Penn and Elkhart makes sense for any conference, including the MIC and HCC. I think you are overthinking things. The more quality programs in a conference, the better overall quality of play. It really is that simple. 

I’m not overthinking anything. How does DT’s new DAC alignment benefit a school like Merrillville? None of Merrillville’s DAC East divisional opponents prepare Merrillville for a 6A Indy team and given there’s only 3 crossover games, there’s no guarantee Merrillville plays Valpo/Elkhart/Penn in any given year and in certain years may miss all three together.

Take DT’s DAC East proposal and replace Chesterton with Merrillville, and you still have 3-4 LOS hopefuls but in a conference with half the teams. Gives you 4 open weeks to schedule better opponents. It really is that simple.

Just now, BTF said:

It doesn't change anything? Unless my math is off, now there would be 3-4 teams instead of 2-3. 

Bottom line...............it's a great idea and one step closer to fielding a northern 6a champion. Adding Penn and Elkhart to the same conference as Valpo and Merrillville = a fight with the HCC as the second strongest conference in the state. 

You can do a DAC contraction and say the same thing. It’d actually be true. Valpo, Merrillville, MC, and let’s say Crown Point would all be better off leaving the DAC and joining Penn and/or Elkhart to make a 5-6 team conference. Would give each school much more flexibility at adding quality opponents to the schedule.

I see no advantageous gain being in a conference in this day and age given our postseason format. Being in a conference is nothing more than a schedule placeholder. Winning your conference doesn’t reward your seeding, opponent, or venue location come tournament time. Unless you play in a conference that has decent parity (MIC/HCC/SIAC), expansion makes little to no sense. 

4 minutes ago, DT said:

Neither the North Central Conference nor the Atlantic Coast Conference play a full round robin football schedule.  Both proudly crown conference champions, which are recognized by all schools in the respective leagues.  

The objective here is to "push" the DAC champion to a level higher than the conference championship.  Bringing in 3 state ranked football programs will undoubtedly raise the competitive bar in the league.  

The ACC plays a championship game at the end of the year between the two division winners that crowns a true conference champion. I don’t think adding Penn to the DAC does anything to raise the DAC’s profile. There’s 2-3 teams in the DAC that in any given year has a rays chance of making it to LOS, that doesn’t change adding Penn. Play your 7 game DAC schedule if you’re Merrillville, Valpo, or Michigan City and then add Penn and/or Elkhart as one of your non-conference opponents. Valpo essentially already does this. 

Seems compelling for football but don't see the need for expansion if 

a) you don't play everyone in your conference on a yearly basis

b) a true conference champion isn't crowned.

Would the new scheduling format with the newly formed divisions be that more advantageous? 

On 5/6/2021 at 9:02 AM, Tommy said:

City of Hammond is named after George Hammond. He was the man who invented refrigerated railroad cars.  They should be called the Hammond Ice Trains.

 

They call those "reefers" in the logistics industry, but I could see why that may not fly lol. George Hammond also ran one of the largest meat packing pants in the Midwest at the time with the largest plant being in Hammond although Hammond Packers isn't that innovative. 

23 minutes ago, temptation said:

Cool.  Thanks for the heads up.  I couldn't afford the tuition at U of C anyway.

Most can't. 2/3 of the school is on some kind of financial aid.

3 minutes ago, temptation said:

They offer dance classes as an elective at The University of Cathedral?  

If so, hook me up.

You’d be better off at North Central. Don’t let the fact that they have a large FRL % fool you, NC has one of the best theater and drama programs in the state. And it’s free!

3 minutes ago, temptation said:

Never been a great dancer honestly.

Clearly

57 minutes ago, temptation said:

Don’t forget...ZERO percent F/R/L.

Someone with Cathedral ties speaking about the lack of impact socioeconomics has on an athletic program is akin to LeBron James lecturing folks about racial inequality and human rights...oh wait.

 

Lol.

Yet you still can’t explain why 6 of the 10 largest high schools in the state (and 3 of those with <20% FRL) have average to terrible football programs, despite meeting the two metrics (mega-enrollment/SES) that are impossible to overcome. It’s no surprise you continue to dance around and talk in circles, because it doesn’t fit your narrative.

16 minutes ago, BTF said:

 

I thought he already explained it. On the surface, Cathedral (1200 students), appears to be this small school that rumbles with the best of the best...........the 6A giants. But they have no boundaries. They have a metropolis of 2 million people to recruit from. So it's easy for someone to from Cathedral to say enrollment doesn't play a VERY large role in the success of a program. That being said, I have no beef with the Irish of Cathedral. Catholic kids just play at a different level for some reason. But the fact that they have no district barriers is why no one wants to hear the opinion of a Catholic regarding strength of enrollment. 

Lol. I grew up in Washington Twp and live in Fishers today, both schools in the same metropolis with 3000+ kids who don’t have good football programs. There’s about 400-450 kids who apply to Cathedral a year from the same metropolis that have the same ability to go to HSE or North Central as they please. Not sure what that comment has to do with anything?

18 minutes ago, DT said:

Lake Central had a great football program not too long ago.  They went toe to toe with some of the best Ben Davis teams ever.  

LC football has fallen due primarily to three main reasons :

1. Dysfunctional , poorly coordinated and mismanaged feeder program

2. Below average coaching staffs with higher than average staff turnover

3. Administrative support redirected to other sports including baseball, soccer and girls athletics.

All of these issues can be addressed if LC makes it a priority to do so.  

 

Correct. All three reasons you’ve listed ascribe lack of coaching/culture/commitment to a T. 

16 minutes ago, temptation said:

Wait, did you just say that Lake Central has a similar SES to those other programs mentioned above?

You really are lost.

I was looking at Lake Station FRL %, my mistake, which is extremely high. Lake Central has an enrollment and SES similar to that of the Hamilton Co HCC schools. They don't have a good football program which furthers my point that enrollment and SES don't mean a thing.

18 minutes ago, temptation said:

Mega enrollments can overcome/negate a high FRL population...

Again, has worked out well for Pike and North Central over the years. How is it that 3 schools within a 20 miles radius (North Central/Pike/Warren) with similar enrollments and SES can be be on such opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to football success. Surely has nothing to do with coaching/culture/commitment, right?

20 minutes ago, temptation said:

I never said it was the ONLY deciding factor but these two are far and away the two most important factors.

They aren't. I've given you half a dozen examples of why that simply isn't true. You have no rebuttal. Show me a successful program who doesn't have a combination of strong coaching/culture/commitment. Those are the most important factors. Clearly.

22 minutes ago, temptation said:

I wouldn’t expect someone from Cathedral to understand.

What does me attending Cathedral over 15 years ago have anything to do with this? I haven't mentioned Cathedral once. 

38 minutes ago, foxbat said:

This is the issue that I've seen with the arguments so far and also, to a degree also speaks to the issue of correlation and causality.  Just because enrollment CAN have an impact and just because it does for the one outlier school in the state, doesn't mean that it does for everyone in the state nor that it happens on some type of sliding scale such that for every 100 kids you add over your opponent's enrollment your chances of reaching LOS increase by 2%.  Carmel is a singular datapoint and it's hard to determine trend lines with a single datapoint ... much less policy.

Regarding SES, I also think that there's a very non-linear impact that may exist.  I haven't done the detailed analysis, but given that the new rules on FRL allow schools with 40% of more of their students to provide free lunch to ALL students to avoid the need for paperwork collection, it would seem that 40% is a good starting point for considering a school to be in a category of SES impact.  We can certainly argue whether that number should be 35% or 40% or 45% or 31.5%, but again, I'll use 40% ... we can probably mostly agree that it's probably not an item that should be higher than 50%.

In looking at 6A, eight programs have represented the class at LOS in the last decade.  Of those, half of the teams have a FRL percentage of more than 40% ... FW Snider, Warren Central, Ben Davis, and Lawrence Central.  The others represent teams with roughly 20% or less ... Carmel,  Westfield, Center Grove, and Penn.  I then analyzed the results and asked the question, "Did the team with lower FRL percentage beat a team with higher FRL percentage?"  In this analysis, I didn't look at degree or classification of the FRL, just whether it was higher or lower in absolute terms.  In other words, when Westfield and Center Grove play, they are both below 20% FRL and only 3.5% separate them, which really isn't statistically significant in this case, but Westfield is considered a lower FRL program than Center Grove.  The results?  In 10 meetings, four times the team with a lower FRL percentage won while in six of the meetings, the team with the higher FRL percentage won.  I then looked at it in terms of categorization ... that is, teams with 40% or more in the "low-SES" group and those with under 40% in the "high SES" group.  Note that, because of the huge discrepancy in represented teams, the "high SES" group actually ends up being folks with roughly 20% FRL or less vs. all of the other teams with 40% or more ... the "low SES" group ... and this allows for even clearer delineation of the low/high SES argument.  The findings?  In ten matchups:

• A high SES team, one with FRL at 20% or lower, played a low SES team, one with 40% or more FRL, in four of ten matches.  In the other six, the matchup was either two low SES teams playing each other or two high SES teams playing each other.
• In the four matchups where a high SES team played a low SES team, which was four matchups, the low SES team won all four times.
• In general categorization terms, regardless of who played who, teams in the low SES group won five matchups while teams in the high SES won five too.
• Again, as presented earlier, in absolute terms, not looking at categorization, just absolute FRL percentages, the lower FRL percentage team only won against a higher FRL percentage team 40% of the time.  Given the two bulletpoints above as well as this one, it would point to the idea that SES is a driving factor for blue ring success doesn't lie in SES.

 

 

 

Good analysis. Appreciate it.

@temptationwill spin this in a way that shows a low SES can be overcome by a mega-enrollment only to sit on his hands and not be able to explain the decades long struggles of North Central, Pike, and Lake Central who have SES similar to Warren and Ben Davis as well enrollment. Rinse, wash, repeat. 

19 minutes ago, temptation said:

You do realize that four of the teams listed above are probably still top 20-25 programs in the state, correct?  North Central, Pike, HSE and Fishers play BRUTAL schedules and their final W-L record makes them appear worse than they are.

Well duh they're still "good programs" when compared to the other 350 some playing football programs in this state. Not sure that makes it some kind of accomplishment, especially considering they have mega-enrollments and/or very high socioeconomic demographics, the two metrics you claim no program can overcome regardless of how untrue that statement may be. 

21 minutes ago, temptation said:

I've already stated that there is no excuse for Noblesville and Lake Central and those programs' lack of success falls at the feet of the coaching staff/athletic department.

So clearly high enrollment and SES aren't the only two metrics impossible to overcome? Glad we got that out of the way

24 minutes ago, temptation said:

As for your last question, there is no doubt that the commitment at Warren is higher than it is at Pike, but I will also add in that the westside suburban sprawl from Marion County to Zionsville, Brownsburg and Avon is playing a larger role at Ben Davis and Pike than it is at Warren Central as it would relate to New Pal/Greenfield.  The east side may eventually catch up but right now, the western suburbs are booming and players who would normally be at Pike/Ben Davis are popping up in Hendricks/Boone County.

There's 3500 kids at Pike and 3700 kids at North Central. I don't care who is moving where, that isn't a crutch. Isn't it coincidental that once North Central hired a proven coach and made a commitment to its football program you started to see results? Shocking I know. Nearly happened last time they tried it, Streiff just didn't stick around long enough even though NC was on their way. 

17 minutes ago, MICFan34 said:

Could it be something intangible, like tradition? Except for a few years under Moyers, Pike has very little to no tradition, while WC is arguably one of the most tradition-rich programs in the Midwest. 

Tradition I would lump into culture, but I have maintained the three most important aspects to sustaining a successful program is coaching, culture, and commitment. Warren Central has all three of those factors, cannot say the same for Pike even though they share similar enrollments and socioeconomic demographics.  

16 minutes ago, temptation said:

You're lost dude.  Never said commitment/culture WASN'T a factor but it is a DISTANT third to the two metrics I mentioned and the latter (culture) is impossible to build over the long haul without the two metrics I've repeatedly cited.

Once again, as a CATHEDRAL poster you just need to sit this one out dude.  You've embarrassed yourself enough here.

North Central

Pike

Lake Central

Noblesville

HSE

Fishers

All schools with either mega-enrollments or high socioeconomic demographics and in some cases both. All have average to terrible football programs despite possessing the two metrics you deem impossible to overcome. You're talking in circles and looking more and more ridiculous with each passing post.

What is the difference between Pike and Warren Cenntral. And don't you dare tell me 200 students. 

19 minutes ago, temptation said:

I already mentioned that Noblesville has little excuses, as they have both the enrollment and SES to compete at a high level...therefore it falls at the feet of the coaching staff and the lack of a commitment (@DT's words) by the athletic department TO football.

LOL.

How much did it pain you to say commitment/culture plays a much bigger factor than what you are giving credit? How can Lake Central field a non-competitive football team but has a championship caliber baseball program?