Frozen Tundra

Did some research on student population growth and ranking among HHC schools. As you can see in the charts below, East and Jeff have pretty much stayed the same over the past decade. Floyd Central is growing and Seymour is booming. On the flip side, New Albany and BNL are shrinking while Jennings County is really shrinking. On the table below, the ‘11/‘12-‘12/‘13 classification cycle doesn’t have a population number with it because I couldn’t go back that far on the IHSAA website. It only shows the rankings for that cycle. Each cycle after that contains the student population and rank, as well as the percent change from the previous cycle. The final column shows the percent change from ‘13/‘14-‘14/‘15 to now.

Week 4 Games For the record, that’s 3A Mount Vernon (Posey)

HHC Pick ‘Em Standings (after week 3) @LC_Bears_04 16/16 @boilerfan87 15/16 @Frozen Tundra 15/16 @Olympian06 14/16 @mamasa 12/16 @Owls2005 12/16 @swcgillespie 12/16 @Uncle Bubba 4/4 @Fkfootball 2/4

Wrong topic. This is a 5A thread buddy.

Wow! Sounds like Jeff choked it away. Unfortunately, these are the two worst teams in the HHC. Baby steps though. Hopefully Jennings County will continue to improve.

Floyd Central 27, Silver Creek 13. Final

East wins 34-12. Scored the last 27 points of the game.

New Albany up 21-7 after three

Thank God they figured it out. The first 1 1/3 quarters was scary. Floyd Central still leads 20-7 after three

Floyd Central leads Silver Creek at the half 20-7 East leads 21-12 at the half

61 yard touchdown pass by Seymour. Had two defenders on him but neither could get to it. Seymour is sacked on the two point conversion. 12-7 with 11:04 left in the half.

After trading punts, Seymour drives down the field and gets an 11 yard TD pass. Offsides on East on the PAT so Seymour went for two but was stuffed on the run up the middle. 6-0 with 6:17 left in the first

Eddie Vogel has been at East since 2002. He was an assistant for Gaddis at East every season except Gaddis’ first (2001). David Miller has been at East since 2006. Even before Gaddis retired, everyone expected one of these two guys to become the next head coach. I don’t know if Miller interviewed for the head coaching position and, if so, what his plans were as head coach. All I can say is that Vogel came in with the idea of changing nothing. He wanted to run the program the exact same way as Gaddis because of how successful Gaddis was with it. I can’t speak as to whether Vogel is actually doing it. I can only speak for what I see on Friday nights and what I’ve seen hasn’t been good. The biggest thing is that the talent pool at East has dried up. We all began noticing this in the mid-2010s when the JV and freshmen games were becoming dominated by Columbus North. In 2019 and 2020, we were a 6A school due to the success factor. While we couldn’t get past Center Grove in sectionals, it should be noted that those teams would’ve made semi-state in 5A had we not been moved up. Wouldn’t have made it to state because New Palestine and Cathedral would’ve beaten us, but those were 5A final four-caliber teams. Many of us knew that, after the 2020 season, we no longer would even be 5A final four-caliber team. The talent pool just dropped off that much. Having said all of that, the coaching hasn’t been great. Vogel continues to run the offense Gaddis ran since 2012 when he no longer had a Kiel to sit in the pocket and pick secondaries apart. Problem is, I don’t think there are enough athletes on this offense to continue running it. It has to change but I’m not even sure how. Like I said, the talent pool is pretty low. I need to mention that I love Coach Vogel and Coach Miller. They were great teachers when I was at East and both are great men. However, they kind of seem lost without Gaddis. The personnel mistakes and mismanagement we’ve seen from them the last couple weeks resulting in delays of game, illegal substitutions, and the burning of timeouts because they’re not paying attention has been abysmal. I’m not saying East needs to make a coaching change or a coaching staff change…yet. However, unless any of the other HHC teams start actually becoming legitimate contenders in the state, East should win the HHC every year. That’s not a knock on the other teams. It’s just the reality of where this conference is in football. Nobody in the conference has a better system than East. Nobody is from a bigger football community than East. Nobody has a more successful coaching staff than East. And it’s not like our success was a long time ago. It was recent. That should give us an advantage. I’ll excuse last year because of the circumstances surrounding it. However, I’m not excusing it going forward.

Still need week 3 picks from: @boilerfan87 @mamasa @swcgillespie As for @Fkfootball and @Uncle Bubba, you guys aren’t in the main competition since you missed the first two weeks. However, if you want to put your picks in each week then I can keep track of it and have you compete against each other. Up to you.

Week 3 Picks Bedford North Lawrence (0-2, 0-0 HHC) at Jeffersonville (0-1, 0-1 HHC): The Red Devils lead the series 30-16 but the Stars have won four of the last five games. BNL has played a couple of tough opponents the first two weeks while all we have to go on with Jeff is last week’s loss to Seymour. There’s really not enough to go off of here and I feel like it could go either way. Because I came into this season expecting Seymour to challenge for an HHC title, I’ll give Jeff the edge here against BNL. It took a late Seymour TD to come from behind and beat them. Therefore, I say Jeff wins. Floyd Central (0-2) at Silver Creek (1-1): Surprisingly, this will only be the second time these two teams have matched up. The Highlanders were blanked at home last year and are now looking to return the favor. I don’t think the Dragons are as good as last year’s team and I think Floyd is much better than last year. Sounds like Floyd Central played Male and Manual tough early on the last couple weeks. Based on that, they should be able to last longer against Silver Creek. I’ll take the Highlanders to win. New Albany (0-2) at Jennings County (1-1): Five HHC teams are winless two weeks in. Two HHC teams are 1-1. It’s crazy to think Jennings County has more wins than five HHC teams (including Columbus East) but here we are. The Bulldogs lead the series 36-10 over the Panthers and have won the last six. Despite how bad Jennings County beat down Brown County last week, and despite how bad New Albany has looked the last two weeks, I have to think talent wins out in this game. The Bulldogs have much more of it. New Albany gets the W. Seymour (1-1, 1-0 HHC) at Columbus East (0-2, 0-0 HHC): 96 straight HHC wins. 107 straight wins against HHC teams. These unfathomable streaks Columbus East had going for them from the 2006 postseason through the 2020 season came to a rotten end last year at the hands of Seymour. If you remember that game, East completely gave it away late and seemed to try their hardest to give Seymour the win. Ironically, the coach to break those East winning streaks was Tyson Moore, a guy who put four years in on the East football team from 2007-2010 to help build those streaks. The Owls also snapped East’s 18 game winning streak against them. However, the Olympians lead the series 35-21. I’m curious to see how East approaches the game and how they respond to last year’s result. While it’s clear the Olympians are no longer a state title threat, have they fallen so far as to no longer being an HHC title threat? This game will reveal it. After taking some lumps the last two weeks, I’ve got to think East will be ready and and capable. I’m going with East.

The thinking was that retaining Gaddis’ staff would keep a championship-winning system in place that kids were already familiar with. Vogel even came in and said things wouldn’t change. He’d continue implementing the system and ideals Gaddis had. Definitely hasn’t worked out thus far. East had been on par with North in terms of developing collegiate players up until the mid to late 2010s. That’s when the rivalry started shifting to North’s favor. I’ve noticed over the years, though, that the likelihood of a kid in North’s district playing for East is much less than a kid in East’s district playing for North. The richer neighborhoods tend to be in North’s district. Therefore, North is kind of on a pedestal in comparison to East. I’ve always referred to North as the white-collar school and East as the blue-collar school. Conference affiliation kind of backs that up.

Glad to have you in this group. It’s nice to have a pure Jennings County fan in here finally. I’ve had to pick up the slack despite the fact I went to Columbus East. I’ve lived in Jennings County for almost a decade, have deep familial ties here, and have many connections within the county. However, I still bleed orange and brown pretty hardcore so it felt weird covering for Jennings County on here.

When exactly did the growth take off in Seymour and why is the city so attractive to Hispanics?

The old guard (people in their 50s and 60s) don’t want to leave and I get it. I’m a traditionalist too. However, as they get older, they’re getting phased out of their positions of power whether voluntarily or not. Yeah Jennings County has lost quite a few athletes to other schools. Columbus East, Greensburg, and Jennings County North (a.k.a. South Decatur) are three to name a few. I know a study was done a year or two prior to the pandemic to determine where students were transferring out of the district to and why. The purpose of the study was to figure out how to keep the student population from continuing to shrink as that’s seen as a serious problem for the school district.

The issue is that Jennings County is shrinking quickly in student population while five of the other six HHC student populations are growing. While I’m not saying it’s impossible for Jennings County to compete despite that, given how the state of athletics has been there, the likelihood they will is not good. This is why conversations started several years ago as to whether it was time for the school to move on from the HHC. The reason they didn’t is because they wanted a new conference home but couldn’t get invited to one. So instead of going the route of a school similar to their situation (Madison), it was more beneficial just to stay in the HHC and take their lumps. I made a prediction that they’ll be out of the HHC by 2030. Maybe they go to the EIAC. Maybe they go to the Mid-Southern Conference if a spot ever opens up there. Or maybe they join a conference that isn’t in existence yet. Shakeups to the EIAC, MSC, and/or the Hoosier Heritage Conference could facilitate that. We’ll see though.

They can choose. North definitely has a better reputation in regards to academics and athletics. You can walk into that school and just tell that they’re the school with more money. Unfortunately, most kids in Bartholomew County these days would rather go there for football even if it means they won’t make it out of sectionals because of Center Grove.

Here are the games for week 3

The talent pool at Columbus East was in the process of drying up after their 2017 5A state title and it completely dried up after the 2020 season. Gaddis knew what he was doing when he retired. However, it should be noted the coaching staff almost seems lost without him. A lot of the staff returned (with one of them taking over the head coaching gig), but the playcalling and just overall team management have been pretty poor. Lots of miscues early on this year by the coaching staff and it’s very noticeable by all.

I hate when people misspell woofs. I’m like, “Sound it out Randy! Do you even hear an L, V, or E sound in that word? No you don’t.” I guess that’s what happens when you get a Kentucky education.

Yep. One of the worst teams overall year-in and year-out. They’ll have a decent year once a decade or so but that’s it.