81rock

Guru, Well, I think your statement implied that all OH schools intentionally program a "soft" OOS schedule. I think the two schools mentioned above (Moe and X) are not properly susceptible to that criticism. They have scheduled some tough OOS competition. But, I acknowledge that if the standard for a non-soft OOS schedule is calendaring games with teams that are likely to beat you, X especially would have a hard time meeting that standard, because there are not many teams in a given year that are likely to beat them. And if you judge the intentional "softness" at the time the games are scheduled (usually a year or two in advance), it would be nigh impossible for Cincy X (and a handful of other national "powers") to meet the standard, because they would need a very reliable crystal ball to identify the (maybe) half dozen teams in the country likely to beat them two years hence.

Guru, I disagree about OH teams only scheduling sure wins out of state. Moeller and (especially) X have been pretty aggressive with their scheduling. Of course, they are usually very strong, so I suppose you could say that scheduling even the top teams in the country is often likely to produce a win.

The game seems to be getting ready to start on iHigh

I wonder how often any 8th grade kid actually makes this choice. For most, school choice is about a lot of things. But football is probably not near the top of the list. Academic opportunities, transportation, matters of faith or philosophy, cost, reputation, college admissions record, family affinity, friends all would seem to come higher on most people's list of considerations. (Not all people, but I would think most people.) Even if one were considering the choice as a young man, it would be very hard to make the choice. Nobody is faced with any certainty. You may be a small kid in 8th grade, but you think you might get bigger, stronger, and faster -- enough to compete anywhere. And none of the schools is a lock to win a ring either. So, even for those who are thinking mostly of football, you would have to consider your chances of playing four years later at at least two different schools (and we are all optimists, especially at that age). And you would also have to consider the chances of winning a ring. In my opinion, even if you are thinking about football, it becomes pretty complicated. But, as another poster said, it doesn't typically come down to that. Like most, I found myself being urged by my parents to attend a certain school. I went. A year later, I had to decide only one thing: go out for the team or not.

IMO, numbers do help. They are not, however, the only factor differentiating T and X from others. T has a smaller enrollment than Cinci St. X and Louisville St. X and beat both. The difference though is modest. I do think double the enrollment has to be a positive factor. But . . . while the numbers can help keep a larger school competitive year to year -- look at soccer or baseball -- they don't explain the "dominance."

I think you may be right about the margins, when considering the playoffs. But I can think of a couple of factors that would tend to enhance modern margins, other than a change in the way Trinity and St. X do things. First, there are now more classes, more from each district in the platoffs, and more rounds of playoffs. I think -- just by intuition -- this would tend to create more blowouts in the playoffs, particularly in the early rounds. Second, offense at the high school level is more refined than it was in the old days. Trinity was running a modified version of Nebraska's old veer offense. St. X was running ever more then than now. Aside from the absence of the explosive, quick-strike passing game we now see, the old way tended to chew clock and "shorten" games. So, forty or fifty point margins in the playoffs? Maybe not as many. But the aforementioned state final was 31-0 in the 3rd, and could have been much worse, had the first team played the whole game. Perhaps the threshhold for taking the foot off the gas has evolved to a higher point margin than it was long ago as well.

Good question. I'm not sure, however, I agree with the premise. When I was at T ('77-'80), I remember a lot of forty and fifty point games, with 4 TD margins being expected. In fact, I think one of the biggest advantages Trinity had (and has) was the ability to get PT for younger players during the tail-end of games with large margins. I remember one game - Waggener, 1980 -- when the first team retired in the second quarter. Back then, there was the occasional non-T, non-X team that had a run of good years. Butler comes to mind -- they won state in 1979. But we've had Male do the same pretty recently. All in all, it just doesn't seem all that different to me from when T and X really got rolling in the early 70s. Incidentally, Bsihop David and DeSales, also private boys schools at the time, had very strong programs. But, they never achieved the way T and X did. I don't know why, but I've always thought it demonstrated that there is more to it than being an all-male private school "fed" by the Catholic grade school league. Finally, one correction. Southern did not beat T in 1980 to go to the state final. (Maybe at some point; but not in 1980). Trinity lost one game that year -- to St. X -- and went on to win the state AAAA title over Paducah Tilghman, 31-8. The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same . . .

Thanks for the kind words, Jim. Off topic, but I thought the guy on the (Internet) radio broadcast last night nearly blew out a vocal cord on TP's long TD to end the half. On re-reviewing my earlier comments (excerpted in your post), it dawned on me -- and I swear I did not do this intentionally -- that the four concepts align with some that may be familiar to the THS crowd: Pride - Commitment, Loyalty - Team, Discipline - Detail, Achievement - Tradition.

It's been a long time since I've posted anything, but I thought I might add a few thoughts on this topic. In my view, the public/private issues that simmer every time this topic comes up are not trivial, but the differences in public and private schools obviously do not hold all the answers. If they did, other privates would be more dominant than they are. Publics would not beat privates as much as they do. I think -- and I know others will disagree -- there is probably something to be learned from T and X specifically, rather than just looking at them as all-male private schools that are successful largely (if not only) based on those two attributes. I am long removed from my playing days at Trinity nearly 30 years ago. But, although things may have changed somewhat, I am pretty confident that the core things that contributed to success in the 70s and 80s continue to foment success today. And before I mention a few "difference makers," let me say that I do not intend to suggest that the following are absent from other programs and schools. It's just that football is a game of inches, split-seconds and near misses. Small distinctions and tiny margins can accumulate over the course of time to create positive results. So, these are not things missing at other schools, but instead are things (I think) Trinity and ( I will grudgingly admit -- especially grudgingly this week) St. X do a little better than most of their competition. 1. Commitment. This is a pretty broad statement, I know. But I think the two schools and their respective communities are committed to being successful in football (not to the exclusion of other things). Both institutions have decided that, though it is just a game, winning at football is --and is going to be -- important. This commitment manifests itself in many ways. Nearly 40,000 people go to a particular high school ball game every year. People like me return to Louisville from far away just to renew ties and re-connect. Why? Because we think the game is, in some sense, important. You could pick anything, but these schools have decided that, among other things, they are going to make the achievement of excellence in football an important goal. The non-playing students and alumni care -- a lot. They turn out for the games. They are dedicated to being trainers, equipment managers, videographers and film editors -- anything they can do. Same goes for the parents, alumni, faculty, friends, etc. Thanksgiving morning? No problem -- everyone will be there. And the result of this level of commitment is that each player finds perhaps just a little bit more motivation to do what it takes to give his team the best chance to win. Our slogan was (and I know it's not original): "Everyone has the 'will to win.' Champions have the will to prepare to win." Team Above All. This goes without saying. But, in my experience, it was critical. No stars. No special treatment for anyone. If a player's contribution was to be an All-American, fine. If his contribution was to be on the scout team and get pounded day after day by the first team, also fine. I knew guys who knocked themselves out every day in practice -- as seniors -- on the scout team. Why? Because success is shared by all. It's easy to say; harder to live by. But, in my view, Trinity's football culture took team-driven motivation to a level I have not encountered since. The evidence suggests St. X does the same. And I think the benefits to be gained from this type of approach are perhaps most readily available in football. Because of the intricacy of the interaction among all 11 players on the field, teamwork carries a higher reward on the gridiron than in most (all?) other sports. A phenomenal player can make a huge difference in football. But he can't win it alone. In soccer, hoop or lacrosse, individuals can take over a game more than they can in football. In my view, football teams gain an edge if they can operate within a culture that fosters the sublimation of individual aspirations to the goals of the team. These two schools share this culture. (Others do too, but perhaps not as much or not in conjunction with other factors.) Attention to Detail You might also call this discipline. How many times do we read in these boards how neither Trinity nor St. X makes many huge mistakes? They don't beat themselves. That doesn't happen by accident. It grows out of a culture that includes an obsessive attention to the details. Most of the time, the details don't matter. But sometimes they do. Where does the off hand go when in a three-point stance? What words are shouted EVERY TIME the ball is in the air or on the ground? No detail is too small to ignore. Everything happens the same way every time in practice -- or the practice will continue until it does. I think we used to practice defending against 7 or 8 different types of fake PAT. No matter that we never saw even one of them; we were ready to react automatically and precisely if we did. Again, I don't mean to suggest that others are slack in their attention to detail, but I do think Trinity and St. X put perhaps a higher premium on it than others do. And what it does for you is confer an advantage that can go a long way toward making up for any deficit in athletic talent. If you are attentive enough to detail, you can make the right read a split-second sooner and fill the gap a step earlier. In other words, detail and discipline make good (but typically not great) athletes into great high school football players. Tradition Tradition does matter. There are a number of ways. But in my view, tradition perpetuates winning because it instills a sense of accountability in the players. When you have a tradition of winning, you don't want to face the alumni (least of all, the recent alumni) after having lost a game. You feel accountable to those who came before you, as well as those who will follow. That sense of accountability to the tradition feeds into and is reinforced by the institutional commitment each school has made to being truly excellent at at least this one thing. This list is obviously impressionistic and certainly not exhaustive. But I do find the question interesting. What makes teams dominant in football? I don't know the answer, but the things I mention above seemed to make a difference.