hhpatriot04

This is what I could throw together in paint based on available resources. Anyone have a hi-res graphic of the new PAC logo... Perhaps someone was involved with printing it on a court or on a large sign? The only one I can find online is 300px wide. OK for online. Bad for print. Please check for errors... Tecumseh looks a little far west IMO.?.?.?

Do you have an updated one?

What happened to the SIAC? We thought Central was replacing Reitz (competitively) - NO We thought Mater Dei would continue to build upon its unique enrollment/experience - NO (does everyone just play soccer?) We thought Memorial would be comfortable in 4A and perhaps increase its enrollment - NO We thought Jasper would boost the overall competition - Verdict is still out, but watch out, Jasper athletics are returning to dominance. We thought Castle could compete in 5A because it has the perfect socioeconomic makeup without the threat of going to 6A - Nah Bosse, Harrison, North - The IPS of Evansville. We get it. Vincennes Lincoln - The new Mater Dei -- take your beatings during the regular season to make you better in the tournament. Helps they are in the easiest sectional, but still two steps away (or more) from being a true state competitor. We want the Pocket City to rise, but the current seems to be going in the opposite direction. Kick the bottom dwellers out of the conference, go to six or seven teams, and prosper. #WestsideNutClubFestivalBrainSandwiches

OK, here's your one free pass. What former moniker/handle(s) did you use 20+ years ago? I went by my name when I was actively working in newsrooms and reporting at the Ev Courier, Bloomington H-T, and Spencer County JD/News. Brief stint of PAC Fan or something of the sort. I believe @dawgieinthepound was still shoving Playdough up his nose then ... well he still might be.

Howdy, TGD has existed in one form or another since 1998. After some deep digging, I believe that I found one of the oldest archived Gridiron Digest forum pages... https://web.archive.org/web/20010126140300/http://sportsonly.com:80/p/1565/#post Enjoy

It seems IUPUI and UIndy have a joint ROTC program, so that would be an option ... as would just going to OCS after earning a four year degree. The connection at most military academies, let alone the academies, open so, so, so many doors in different careers. Much respect to those who manage ROTC, athletics, and the books.

Oh, the irony!

Include Cutler's rushing stats as well -- minus sacks -- because well he had a Vandy line in front of him in the SEC. If they traded places, who puts up the better numbers? Regardless, congrats to the Andrean community and Bowen on the award this season! He had a torn ACL... Just because he didn't cry about it immediately to the media. Then they took away all of his WRs, then his OL. Urlacher and other Bears teammates have repeatedly said that Cutler was a good teammate. He just didn't care about the media... I'd guess for a lot of reasons, primarily his upbringing (father was ISP, mother worked at the HS. He poured concrete in the summers and always had that kind of "I don't care" mentality which just didn't play well in national media.

Please stay on topic and away from singling out programs and/or posters. Your post is meant to troll their followers or bait them into an emotional reaction. Use the PM feature to have discussions with those posters directly, so they don't side track a thread in which actual competitive balance is the topic.

I think it's a bit unfair to only have one OL and one DL. It is five positions... I'm not a fan of giving everyone a medal, but I think we all know the qualities to for interior OL (C/Gs) are different than OTs, as are interior DL (NG/DT) vs. DE. Now, I can see the same argument for DBs, but in HS the best DB in the state can probably play both CBs and FS (perhaps not SS or "Rover" -- SS/OLB hybrid -- whatever your system calls it. More love for the hogs! ETA: I am a little surprised to see the DB, Pasch, is from a 1A school. I have never seen him play and with open enrollment kids in cities can choose to be the big fish in a small pond! How good was he? Would he have been able to cover 5A/6A receivers. (It seems he is reportedly going to Wabash?)

Cutler got his first start at QB in 1998 when the senior was injured against Southridge. Cutler, better athlete than Grossman then, better college QB than Grossman, and better NFL QB, especially for the Bears. Truth: https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/8/31/22648501/chicago-bears-qb-ranking-jay-cutler-mitch-trubisky-justin-fields

It should be open to all classes -- just as the Heisman is.

My niece should be a very talented second grader in soccer and dance next year -- I don't think she has locked on to a spring sport yet.. We are working on setting up her "permanent" residence at my father's in Santa Claus so she can go to HHHS, but the Castle AD is unwilling to sign off. It is going to take some strong arming or a bribe (Any advice? I hear Memorial are experts in the Castle talent pipeline... do you find it's best to meet in the Starbucks on Burkhardt or in Newburgh? 😛). Or in seven years, I am going to have to start caring about Castle athletics.

Touche! Just wanted to communicate that before we start inputting (160 games * 10 weeks + tournament games) * 15 years, we want something relatively simple and transparent (like a season of a closed conference, so we can write, test, debug, then enrich the rankings.

Every game ever played would be factored in (eventually), but of course the more recent ones would have more "weight" -- determining how to set that weight in a relatively non-arbitrary way is the question... Standard deviations for example are better than saying "This season = 0.4, previous season = 0.2, two years ago = 0.1, all other previous seasons = 0.3" (or something similar).

I've used the PHP curl() functions to populate my predictor ratings (you should look at using curl() in whatever language you're using - big time saver). It has always bugged me -- and it is hard to say that because he does so much -- that Harrell doesn't keep a weekly list of scores online (he of course must have this on the backend). To the best of my knowledge, he does all of his data storage and calculations offline and then uploads them to static pages. That's pretty old school, but not surprising. When I was working at the H-T, I actually played with some of his REGEX scripts which would use an early version of JavaScript to pull scores from the Associated Press wire and format them so they would fit on the newspaper's scoreboard pages and have consistent naming systems, for example, all colleges with "State" were automatically abbreviated to St, all colleges with cardinal directions North/South/No/North/So/South would be replaced with N or S. Those scripts at the Bloomington Herald-Times he first developed in the late 1980s-1990s. Well at least I don't feel so bad "lifting" his scores, as I know from experience they are more reliable than the press wires like AP. For example, if you got a bad HS score from a wire service, Harrell's site was probably 90% more likely to have the accurate score prior to print deadline.

My thought on classes is they don't really matter. I'd favor a system that showed no bias directly built in by class. For single year rankings, this could create discrepancies, but if you start factoring in something like "Program Prestige" and "Recent Program Prestige," it should all work out. This would also help to address when say you have multiple Top 4 teams in a class in the same sectional... If you factor in previous years' success, then teams like HH or GS in the same sectional or Chatard and Roncalli don't get penalized simply because of arbitrary lines and arbitrary geography. It will probably take at least 10 years of data, but I'm hoping to eventually get it to something like CalPreps where you could compare teams from different decades... What if Roncalli 2004 played Cathedral 2021... etc.

Please keep everything on the Google Drive Sheet shared above. While Excel and Google Sheets share much of the same nomenclature, Google Sheets does have some differences, especially if we have to start tying it into macros and other projects. As you can see from the above link, I just created a small sample of games with six teams. It needs some work to develop the SoS argument. I have mainly been using the countif() and countifs() functions for pulling such data. In all, I think it is best to get something working on a small scale (lets say a closed conference like the SIAC), and then introduce the other 300-something teams. Unfortunately, not using something like Python/PHP and SQL means we can't leave comments in the "code." However, Google Sheets does have the ability to leave comments on individual cells. Good to see that there is interest and thank you @Rudy for volunteering the data so we don't have to dig it up from the Associated Press or rip it off of Harrell's site. Can I ask, what is your current input method for game nights? Source and method of input? Are you using a form or inputting directly into a table or database?

Well said. I'm not sure I would invoke deities, but I agree with what you are trying to focus on. People are people, and we are all mature enough to know that within any group of people there are some bad apples. Undoubtedly, this instance will be a learning experience for all involved, in particular the youth. Yes, this is a football board. If you aren't interested in this topic, don't click on it and don't post ... curate the content that you want to see on TGD Forums.

CUB? Pre-7th grade Castle had the only tackle football leagues for a while, but I don't see why you'd want the AAU basketball or travel baseball (don't get me started unless it's American Legion or American Legion JV) for football. Seems to work better for "individual sports": wrestling, swimming/diving, tennis, golf, running clubs, etc... Also Jasper's little secret in addition to Coach Gobert is American Legion JV baseball (in addition to a tremendous city/local youth program). I'll never slight Rockport American Legion, but Coach Gobert's approach of using American Legion baseball (not allowing graduates -- they typically play for the Jasper Reds if they're going to college) is genius. He gets his players for 30+ HS games per year and then 30+ Legion games.

All-time (non-Evansville + Castle): - Jasper - Heritage Hills - Southridge - Gibson Southern (hard to place as they've had a solid decade of success, but were a C+ program most years -- sometimes better, sometimes worse post consolidation) - Vincennes Lincoln - Mount Vernon / Boonville - Perry Central / South Spencer - Tell City (gets a boost with the 1980s and early 1990s in the consolidation era)

Mater Dei faired pretty well in 3A pre success factor. If Mater Dei is coming to 3A, SW Indiana is absolutely loaded in 3A... I don't think the IHSAA publicly said the success factor was directed at P/P schools... Whether they were just being PC or ignoring the elephant in the room...who knows. Believe me, I feel the struggle at Southridge. I would've likely been playing in 4A if the success factor were implemented when I was in school -- that being said there were debates that 3A was better than 4A in the early 2000s, as for example in 2001, Jasper was the 4A state champion and their only loss was to Heritage Hills, which was only beaten by Chatard from 2000-2003... I haven't been able to follow baseball as closely as I once did in SW Indiana, but with Jasper and Southridge's state championships... what is the forecast for Class 2A and 3A with regular powers like South Spencer, Mater Dei, and Southridge (I think Jasper has proven they can play in any class in Indiana, competitively. There are some great baseball coach bios to be written in SW Indiana, Gobert's in particular.) I've always kind of jokingly referred to Jasper as a semi-P/P. Much like Castle, Carmel, and Center Grove, they as you know, have such dedicated boosters and are able to have nearly 100% autonomy from their youth leagues to the HS ... in addition to "generational success" which I attribute to jobs. Many of my former teammates are putting roots down in Jasper. I'm sure it's the same for some Raiders, Rangers, Jeeps, and other surrounding schools. Maybe those who are able to work remotely will be able to come back to Spencer County, but if you have a degree or two, often your occupation isn't available in rural SW Indiana. That being said, a number parents of current HH student-athletes make the drive to Evansville, Owensboro, Louisville, or Jasper (or even Crane) -- these are often the legacy families with deep land and familial ties to the rural community.

Agree on all but GS playing a 5A+ SOS. What was their SOS Sagarin ranking?

Did he play any varsity his sophomore year at MV? It could affect the willingness of MV to sign off.

Mater Dei wrestling breeds linemen! They'll figure it out.