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Cinderella is a myth


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16 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

Irregardless, if teams mail it in early because they are no longer “entitled” to a postseason game that’s a “culture/program” problem not a postseason format problem. 

Adding a tenth regular season game solves that issue rather quickly.

You missed the point, your beef is with the football coaches, not the IHSAA. I would start with them, contact your local coach, I’m sure you can get on the agenda at the next regional meeting. OR write up your proposal and take it to the IIAAA, again contact your local AD you should have no problem getting in the agenda at the next regional meeting. 
As someone who participates in this process, I can tell you you will need to start by polling the coaches. IIAAA will want to see a high participation rate in the polling, at least 75%, and they’ll want to see overwhelming support for your proposal. You will need to have your i’s dotted and t’s crossed by early November next year to get on the agenda at the IIAAA annual meeting. You give your presentation and if they approve your proposal then you need to get in the agenda for the IHSAA’s annual meeting in early May, give your presentation and let the chips fall where they may. 
I will caution you, in my travels and conversations around the southern two thirds of the state, there is virtually zero interest among coaches and administrators to change the all in format. 

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12 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

You missed the point, your beef is with the football coaches, not the IHSAA. I would start with them, contact your local coach, I’m sure you can get on the agenda at the next regional meeting. OR write up your proposal and take it to the IIAAA, again contact your local AD you should have no problem getting in the agenda at the next regional meeting. 
As someone who participates in this process, I can tell you you will need to start by polling the coaches. IIAAA will want to see a high participation rate in the polling, at least 75%, and they’ll want to see overwhelming support for your proposal. You will need to have your i’s dotted and t’s crossed by early November next year to get on the agenda at the IIAAA annual meeting. You give your presentation and if they approve your proposal then you need to get in the agenda for the IHSAA’s annual meeting in early May, give your presentation and let the chips fall where they may. 
I will caution you, in my travels and conversations around the southern two thirds of the state, there is virtually zero interest among coaches and administrators to change the all in format. 

Pin on The Far Side Gary Larsen

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12 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

You missed the point, your beef is with the football coaches, not the IHSAA. I would start with them, contact your local coach, I’m sure you can get on the agenda at the next regional meeting. OR write up your proposal and take it to the IIAAA, again contact your local AD you should have no problem getting in the agenda at the next regional meeting. 
As someone who participates in this process, I can tell you you will need to start by polling the coaches. IIAAA will want to see a high participation rate in the polling, at least 75%, and they’ll want to see overwhelming support for your proposal. You will need to have your i’s dotted and t’s crossed by early November next year to get on the agenda at the IIAAA annual meeting. You give your presentation and if they approve your proposal then you need to get in the agenda for the IHSAA’s annual meeting in early May, give your presentation and let the chips fall where they may. 
I will caution you, in my travels and conversations around the southern two thirds of the state, there is virtually zero interest among coaches and administrators to change the all in format. 

But it would be so much easier if they would change it from a football forum on the internet. Can we at least attend these annual meetings via Zoom?

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1 minute ago, gonzoron said:

But it would be so much easier if they would change it from a football forum on the internet. Can we at least attend these annual meetings via Zoom?

Can you imagine the Zoom-bombing that would happen if they posted the link on GID? :classic_laugh:

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8 hours ago, Bobref said:

According to my calculations, a seeded qualifying format would increase regular season in-game attendance by 24%, media coverage by 36%, and concession stand revenue by a whopping 42%! 

An excellent post! Clever, thought provoking!! I think this might just be the straw that broke the camel’s back! I anticipate that this post and the numbers you articulated will end this debate once and for all on the GID!!

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13 minutes ago, Bullhorn99 said:

An excellent post! Clever, thought provoking!! I think this might just be the straw that broke the camel’s back! I anticipate that this post and the numbers you articulated will end this debate once and for all on the GID!!

Nah!😉

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Perhaps the thread title should be ‘David is a myth.’ Because I agree that the David’s of the world (bottom 32) rarely if ever beat the Goliaths. 

Cinderella still attended the ball and had a blast, but the clock eventually struck midnight. 

So IMO absolutely a school like Pike Central is a Cinderella story… even if the clock runs out and their season is done. They don’t have to be David on Friday night vs Owen Valley

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4 hours ago, Footballking16 said:

Under my proposal, the field is cut in half AFTER the conclusion of the regular season. In a system that uses a computer ranking formulating W-L record, opp W-L record, SOS, and opponent SOS, no team is mathematically eliminated until the conclusion of the regular season. 
 

This kills the argument so many use about teams mailing it in after they start the year 0-3 or 0-4.

 

Based on regional location, not every team has the chance for the same SOS. It is a bias toward large metro area teams with easier scheduling opportunities. I showed you teams, some in large areas with 4 losses this season were eliminated using Sagarin. In less populated areas, teams with 2 losses were eliminated. Your answer…get a tougher schedule. That’s not is easy as it sounds for teams not located in larger metro areas. 
 

So yes, certain teams starting off seasons 0-4 can certainly mail it in. 

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6 minutes ago, Bash Riprock said:

Based on regional location, not every team has the chance for the same SOS. It is a bias toward large metro area teams with easier scheduling opportunities. I showed you teams, some in large areas with 4 losses this season were eliminated using Sagarin. In less populated areas, teams with 2 losses were eliminated. Your answer…get a tougher schedule. That’s not is easy as it sounds for teams not located in larger metro areas. 

An added tenth regular season game gives teams more flexibility. Again, if all but 2 states in the Union can figure it out so can Indiana. 

 

7 minutes ago, Bash Riprock said:

So yes, certain teams starting off seasons 0-4 can certainly mail it in. 

Mailing it in is a choice. That’s a program/culture issue, not a postseason format issue. If you need an “entitled” postseason game to bring yourself to strap it up every Friday night you need to be taking a long hard look in the mirror.

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12 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

An added tenth regular season game gives teams more flexibility. Again, if all but 2 states in the Union can figure it out so can Indiana. 

 

Mailing it in is a choice. That’s a program/culture issue, not a postseason format issue. If you need an “entitled” postseason game to bring yourself to strap it up every Friday night you need to be taking a long hard look in the mirror.

I just challenged your comment about 0-4 teams making it in the tournament. It’s nowhere close to being a given they will always have a shot. 
 

I played in a qualifier system, my son did not. There is no way I can claim my experience was better than his. I’m curious, what is your experience playing in a qualifier system? Did it deepen your overall high school experience?  If so, why? 

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45 minutes ago, oldtimeqb said:

Perhaps the thread title should be ‘David is a myth.’ Because I agree that the David’s of the world (bottom 32) rarely if ever beat the Goliaths. 

Cinderella still attended the ball and had a blast, but the clock eventually struck midnight. 

So IMO absolutely a school like Pike Central is a Cinderella story… even if the clock runs out and their season is done. They don’t have to be David on Friday night vs Owen Valley

Call it whatever you like. Pike Central’s “run”,along with inclusion, to the sectional championship only exists due to a fundamentally flawed and broken system.

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11 minutes ago, Bash Riprock said:

I just challenged your comment about 0-4 teams making it in the tournament. It’s nowhere close to being a given they will always have a shot. 

Never said it was a given that if a team starts 0-4 they will make it, but it doesn’t it doesn’t automatically end their season right there. 

 

11 minutes ago, Bash Riprock said:

played in a qualifier system, my son did not. There is no way I can claim my experience was better than his. I’m curious, what is your experience playing in a qualifier system? Did it deepen your overall high school experience?  If so, why?

Just because you played in a terrible qualifying format decades ago doesn’t mean a functioning and competitive format can’t exist today. Nobody is advocating for the old points or cluster system to return. Eliminating half the field at the conclusion of the regular isn’t a stretch by any means.

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If you were interested in the Kentucky version of this thread, here it is. They start their playoffs this week. 

They basically have an all-in that is seeded. A handful of teams don't make it but they are 0-10 type teams for the most part and it's just in districts that are designed around enrollment and location.  

Also, Marshall County to Simon Kenton High School is 300 miles and likely 5 hours by bus for a first round playoff game. 

I am with the OP here on seeding, but this thread shows you what happens when everyone makes it with an all-in format with seeding. 

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13 hours ago, Footballking16 said:

Never said it was a given that if a team starts 0-4 they will make it, but it doesn’t it doesn’t automatically end their season right there. 

 

Just because you played in a terrible qualifying format decades ago doesn’t mean a functioning and competitive format can’t exist today. Nobody is advocating for the old points or cluster system to return. Eliminating half the field at the conclusion of the regular isn’t a stretch by any means.

I understand it doesn't automatically end it for all schools, but going 0-4 will absolutely end it with SOME schools given their inability to have the same strength of schedule as teams in large metro areas.  I just showed you that with some teams this season and your response was for those teams to go play a tougher schedule.  As if its that easy for teams outside of large metro areas tp find more challenging opponents.  Your proposal absolutely  is a bias in the favor of schools in large metro areas that have an easier time scheduling more difficult opponents.  

You are ignoring the question I have asked you over and over.  How does your proposal make it a better experience for kids?  Tell me about your experience because I assume that if you played, your days had to fall under all-in.  How did that experience make it such a bad experience that you would want it changed.  Did you play?  Or is this solely from a "fan in the stands" perspective?

If you played under current system, and it was a less than desirable experience, sharing that view provides some additional credibility.

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27 minutes ago, Bash Riprock said:

You are ignoring the question I have asked you over and over.  How does your proposal make it a better experience for kids?  Tell me about your experience because I assume that if you played, your days had to fall under all-in.  How did that experience make it such a bad experience that you would want it changed.  Did you play?  Or is this solely from a "fan in the stands" perspective?

It makes the regular season actually mean something. I've said this from the onset. Can't tell me that an historically weak program actually qualifying for the postseason wouldn't bring great joy and achievement to that school, community, its players, fans, and coaches. Much more than being entitled to a postseason game under the current format. 

I played under the all-in. I was indifferent to it, I didn't know any better. But as a competitive person who for years has watched different sports at different levels for nearly my entire life, it's asinine to think a playoff format can exist without taking a single ounce of consideration from the regular season. It doesn't make any sense. I grew up playing travel baseball. Played 10-15 tournaments a summer. You were put in a pool with 3 other teams. You played a round robin schedule Thursday and Friday and the top two teams advanced to the championship bracket and the other two either went to the consolation bracket or in some cases didn't play over the weekend at all. Never once did I get the feeling we were being cheated in the event our team didn't advance. Winners get rewarded, losers don't. I think most kids realize that at an early age. I played CYO football and back in the day you had to win your division to make the playoffs. It wasn't a novel idea back then just like it isn't today. 

I'm guessing if you polled 100 Indiana high school football athletes from all over the state in different classes, very little, if any, would tell you they play high school football because the all-in exists. I'm guessing the same percent would tell you they'd still play football even if their team was forced to qualify. 

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41 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

It makes the regular season actually mean something. I've said this from the onset. Can't tell me that an historically weak program actually qualifying for the postseason wouldn't bring great joy and achievement to that school, community, its players, fans, and coaches. Much more than being entitled to a postseason game under the current format. 

For a significant number of schools in Indiana, winning a conference or sectional championship is a once-in-a-generation pipe dream. A top 50% qualification format gives many of these kids a chance at an achievement that they can rightly point to with pride. It is all about the kids, remember.

What would a comparable level of achievement be now? I’m envisioning t-shirts in the school colors and the legend “Won a game in sectionals because the ping-pong balls matched us up with the Little Sisters of the Poor.”

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6 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

It makes the regular season actually mean something. I've said this from the onset. Can't tell me that an historically weak program actually qualifying for the postseason wouldn't bring great joy and achievement to that school, community, its players, fans, and coaches. Much more than being entitled to a postseason game under the current format. 

I played under the all-in. I was indifferent to it, I didn't know any better. But as a competitive person who for years has watched different sports at different levels for nearly my entire life, it's asinine to think a playoff format can exist without a taking a single ounce of consideration from the regular season. It doesn't make any sense. I grew up playing travel baseball. Played 10-15 tournaments a summer. You were put in a pool with 3 other teams. You played a round robin schedule Thursday and Friday and the top two teams advanced to the championship bracket and the other two either went to the consolation bracket or in some cases didn't play over the weekend at all. Never once did I get the feeling we were being cheated in the event our team didn't advance. Winners get rewarded, losers don't. I think most kids realize that at an early age. I played CYO football and back in the day you had to win your division to make the playoffs. It wasn't a novel idea back then just like it isn't today. 

I'm guessing if you polled 100 Indiana high school football athletes from all over the state in different classes, very little, if any, would tell you they play high school football because the all-in exists. I'm guessing the same percent would tell you they'd still play football even if their team was forced to qualify. 

That's not every travel situation and, where you are starting to see it, it's a money grab and a resource issue.  Both of my boys play travel baseball.  My youngest boy played AA ball this past season.  USSSA Indiana State Tournament had pool play and then ALL teams in each age group advanced to the Championship Bracket with seeding determining issues like byes, how early you had to play, and how many games you had to gut out.  This was over 300 teams across seven age divisions.  Also, when my oldest boy was younger and played in those tournaments that started on Thursdays, they always advanced because there was enough time to play full tourney on Saturday/Sunday.  Again, pool play results might pit you against the #1 seeded team to start with or make you have to play the 8:00 am game on Sunday an hour and a half away from your house or, if you did better, you got to sleep in on Sunday or got a bye or got to play the worst team in the tournament for your first game and didn't have to play tougher competition until later in the day.

Are there tournaments where there's an A bracket and a single-game consolation bracket or nothing beyond pool play?  Certainly.  The things that I tended to notice in plenty of those kinds of tournaments is early on they had issues with not enough umps, quality of umps, and overbooking for the parks/locations.  They have also moved to two-day or two-and-a-half-day tournaments too where a couple pool games are played Friday night, with the bulk on Saturday, and tourney play actually starting Saturday night and running Sunday or just on Sunday.  There's no way you can honestly tell me that these tournaments are designed this way to promote/increase competitiveness ... they are designed the way they are to maximize profit and minimize resource use and to make sure they meet their contract obligation of guaranteed X number of games.  Incidentally, I've seen teams in that situation decide to leave early and not play that single consolation bracket game that's just for fulfillment of contract.  On the other hand, I've not seen a situation of a tournament that has a consolation bracket that feeds from the championship bracket where someone has abdicated that game. 

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8 minutes ago, foxbat said:

That's not every travel situation and, where you are starting to see it, it's a money grab and a resource issue.  Both of my boys play travel baseball.  My youngest boy played AA ball this past season.  USSSA Indiana State Tournament had pool play and then ALL teams in each age group advanced to the Championship Bracket with seeding determining issues like byes, how early you had to play, and how many games you had to gut out.  This was over 300 teams across seven age divisions.  Also, when my oldest boy was younger and played in those tournaments that started on Thursdays, they always advanced because there was enough time to play full tourney on Saturday/Sunday.  Again, pool play results might pit you against the #1 seeded team to start with or make you have to play the 8:00 am game on Sunday an hour and a half away from your house or, if you did better, you got to sleep in on Sunday or got a bye or got to play the worst team in the tournament for your first game and didn't have to play tougher competition until later in the day.

I was just giving my experiences having played in a sport with an all-in and a sport where you had to qualify. Granted, these experiences were anywhere from 15-20 years ago so I'm sure times have changed in certain instances. But my point remains that kids are going to play when and where you tell them to play. Seems to be this myth floating around that if you "take" away the postseason from everyone then you'll start to see a decline in participation. Is there any evidence that a state like Indiana has a growing participation rate being it's an all-in state bs a state where teams have to qualify? I haven't seen anything that suggests this. 

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24 minutes ago, Bobref said:

For a significant number of schools in Indiana, winning a conference or sectional championship is a once-in-a-generation pipe dream. A top 50% qualification format gives many of these kids a chance at an achievement that they can rightly point to with pride. It is all about the kids, remember.

What would a comparable level of achievement be now? I’m envisioning t-shirts in the school colors and the legend “Won a game in sectionals because the ping-pong balls matched us up with the Little Sisters of the Poor.”

Close. 

For a school with ONE winning season in its 49 year history, a qualification format would be a once-in-two-generation pipe dream.  Prior to this year, they had a collective 1-37 tournament record.

http://www.almanacsports.com/football/team.php?team=PIKEC

 

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7 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

I was just giving my experiences having played in a sport with an all-in and a sport where you had to qualify. Granted, these experiences were anywhere from 15-20 years ago so I'm sure times have changed in certain instances. But my point remains that kids are going to play when and where you tell them to play. Seems to be this myth floating around that if you "take" away the postseason from everyone then you'll start to see a decline in participation. Is there any evidence that a state like Indiana has a growing participation rate being it's an all-in state bs a state where teams have to qualify? I haven't seen anything that suggests this. 

I haven't seen this argument put forth by anyone ... at least not on GID.

What I have seen is an idea that a qualifier could prematurely dampen enthusiasm and drive there's early indications in a season that post-season isn't in the cards.  I've actually seen that directly on the baseball side in situations where pool play takes you out of a tournament bracket and puts you in a single-game consolation bracket and teams notify the tournament that they won't be coming back the next day to compete in that game and head home early.  Interestingly, and perhaps something to consider, is that most teams that have declined to play, that I've seen, have tended to be teams that were borderline not making the championship bracket ... having missed out on tie-breakers like runs against or runs scored.  Teams that stayed were typically teams that got blown out in pool play.

 

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7 minutes ago, oldtimeqb said:

Close. 

For a school with ONE winning season in its 49 year history, a qualification format would be a once-in-two-generation pipe dream.  Prior to this year, they had a collective 1-37 tournament record.

http://www.almanacsports.com/football/team.php?team=PIKEC

 

T shirt.jpg

Sign me up for the travel mug.

1 minute ago, foxbat said:

I haven't seen this argument put forth by anyone ... at least not on GID.

What I have seen is an idea that a qualifier could prematurely dampen enthusiasm and drive there's early indications in a season that post-season isn't in the cards.  I've actually seen that directly on the baseball side in situations where pool play takes you out of a tournament bracket and puts you in a single-game consolation bracket and teams notify the tournament that they won't be coming back the next day to compete in that game and head home early.  Interestingly, and perhaps something to consider, is that most teams that have declined to play, that I've seen, have tended to be teams that were borderline not making the championship bracket ... having missed out on tie-breakers like runs against or runs scored.  Teams that stayed were typically teams that got blown out in pool play.

 

I don’t find the analogy of a single weekend event to a multi-month long football season particularly apt.

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53 minutes ago, Bobref said:

For a significant number of schools in Indiana, winning a conference or sectional championship is a once-in-a-generation pipe dream. A top 50% qualification format gives many of these kids a chance at an achievement that they can rightly point to with pride. It is all about the kids, remember.

What would a comparable level of achievement be now? I’m envisioning t-shirts in the school colors and the legend “Won a game in sectionals because the ping-pong balls matched us up with the Little Sisters of the Poor.”

My son was fortunate enough to play on a state championship and final four teams.  He competed his butt off in the MIC conference playing against stellar competition.  I assure you he has much pride in his team's accomplishments, and even more pride competing side by side with his teammates, learning critical life lessons that he's taken with him and applied to his life.  Playing in a tournament with a 50% team elimination from the start has ZERO impact on his level of pride.  ZERO. 

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