Y-Town Steelhound;572681 wrote:I'm still waiting for the separatists to explain how to tell their son he doesn't deserve the right to compete for a true state championship because mommy and daddy stepped in. You don't see the kids complaining, they just want to compete.
Tell that to Maple Heights fans that they can't compete for a 'true state championship' because they don't get to play Hilliard Davidson. By what metric do we determine Maple Heights is incapable of playing bigger schools just because they may be a few students away from an arbitrary cutoff point?
We already split up schools based on size, right? If we didn't have divisions and let's say year after year big school after big school wins the title. But once every decade or so a little school may have a tremendous earth-shattering season and compete for the title, maybe even win it. But the vast majority of time the little guy gets the snot kicked out of them. Wouldn't, over time, you see a disparity and understand there is a discrepancy in the ability of the teams and feel the need to either separate them or at least adjust the teams to be more competitive amongst themselves?
Everyone arguing against a potential public/private split (or at the very least a multiplier) should be in favor of eliminating all divisions and having one big pool for all the teams to enter into. After all, it's fair. The big schools didn't do anything unfair to get their advantage. They just are what they are? Right?
When a small percentage of teams, any teams, win an overwhelming number of titles disparate from their percentage of the total pool, you have to see it and figure out what advantage do they have, why, and how do you level it? Otherwise, the divisions in Ohio are nothing more than bumpkis. The whole point of the smaller divisions was to give smaller schools a chance. A D5 in a big city, either OE or parochial, has a big POTENTIAL advantage compared to a rural public D5 that may have or may not have OE.
Now, the issue about Open Enrollment and the Great Satan that some see Big Red as...
Open-Enrollment or not, there's some kids that Steubenville MUST take in. Whether they want to or not. Those piss-poor students must be counted as part of the population when determining division. A pothead with a 0.1 GPA that misses a third of his classes still counts at any public school out there. If that were a parochial school, I'm sure they wouldn't waste money trying to teach him unless his parents were loaded. Neither would an OE school if he wasn't their default high school. They have to take the delinquents. They have to take special needs. They have to take ALL of the poorest of the poor. They have to take the unteachable. The ne'er-do-wells. The future prison inmates. They have no choice. The state requires them to try. There's no law that a parochial school must take a student. Any student. For any reason they can choose to no longer teach a student and punt them back to the public school in their home district.
The POTENTIALITY of students for any school is the size of the school and the ability of the faculty to teach/administer them. The REALITY of it is the public school must take the students they're required to take. Whether the school is crowded or not. Whether the student is good or not. Whether the student is wealthy or dirt poor. Whether they're good at anything or horrible at everything. They must. There is no choice to the school. A private school CAN take a student, or they cannot. Sure, they wouldn't want to pass up the money if the parents are paying. But there's a limit to the ability to draw students. Even if they can take vouchers from the public school, a bad student is a bad student is a bad student. They don't HAVE to take them if they realize they're a problem child.
My proposal has always been the same and it covers OE and non-OE schools. Parochials and publics.
If you get a student from your district, they count 1x1. If you get a student from outside your district, they count 1x2. If you're a public school in a district with multiple high schools, the district must be divvied up for all the high schools and the 'sub district' would be used (the boundary lines would be used for all sports, not sport-specific). If you're a private/parochial, your 'base' is attached to the public district or subdistrict that your physical high school building resides in and, as with the publics, every student from that district (or subdistrict) would count 1x1. If they're from outside that district or subdistrict, they count 1x2.
Example, if you have 252 male students, 9-11. 219 are from your district (or subdistrict), they count as 219. The 33 non-district students count twice, or 66. 219+66=285. That is your enrollment number for the rankings. If another school has 255 male students, 9-11 and has 55 from their district (or subdistrict) and 200 from outside their district (or subdistrict), their enrollment total would be 455.
Draw from outside your geographic base, you're only adjustment is for students you actually bring in from outside your base. OE or Parochial, if all your students are local, they all count 1x1.
Although, because the numbers fluctuate year-to-year, they would need to adjust the numbers every year (or at least the # of non-local students). It could fluctuate far more wildly than the influx of incoming or outgoing population.
Two other things that could fix this is what Pennsylvania allows, and that is you to play up to any division above you that you want. There'd be no excuse for really great lower schools from playing up (and thereby taking a spot from the lowest teams in the division, if they themselves choose not to play up).
For instance, after the divisions are set preliminarily, they're given to the schools and asked "Which division do you want to play in?" The caveat being they can't be lower than the division initially assigned. A D5 wants to play in D2, they're in D2. They can't drop. A D3 says D1, they're D1. They're playing up. They count as D1, their playing participation is D1.
Many prime examples in Pennsylvania. Harrisburg Bishop McDevitt is a Class A (smallest) school, but play up to AAAA, because they're a private school that does very well and wants to compete with the teams that actually challenge them. They could run roughshod over Class A every year, but they choose to play in a class that they haven't won a title yet, despite making deep playoff runs. Why? Because that's their competition level. They're that good. Pittsburgh City League teams generally play up from AA to AAA and AAA to AAAA to even out their league and make the whole league half AAA and half AAAAA (in years past, recently they've decided the smaller schools will just play as AA instead).
Ohio's hardline on enrollment creates midget behemoths, that are great schools but can never prove it on the field. Meanwhile, the truly little guys in the state are thwarted at the prospect of playing schools they shouldn't have any business playing.
Sykotyk