This is a good listen.

 

Kentucky.com sports reporter Josh Moore interviewed Julian Tackett, the commissioner of the Kentucky High School Athletics Association, about classification and other issues facing high school athletics. Tackett spoke about the KHSAA's goal being one rooted in participation, not competition (3:20); current discussions occurring about postseason formats (9:58); why school size isn't always the biggest factor in success (16:55); the state of classification in football (25:30); how schools and the KHSAA can build interest in prep sports (33:00); and looked ahead to the state football finals moving to Lexington (41:45).

 

High school sports classification and other playoff issues with KHSAA Commissioner Julian Tackett by Herald-Leader | Herald Leader | Free Listening on SoundCloud

The podcast is long but worth it. The KHSAA Commish gives a good glimpse into the thinking behind several association decisions on various issues.

 

Whether you you agree or disagree with him, here you can get it straight from the horse's mouth.

Great listen. I particularly found this bit of the conversation really telling about the state of things in sports, and the likelihood for change as far as classifications go:

 

 

Commissioner Tackett:

"We've got a couple of championships that routinely - especially on the individual sport side - routinely have the same schools being successful. You know, we've looked at different ways, 'How do you grow participation in those sports when at the end of the day, the same school or schools are going to win the state championship?' Well in reality, we're trying to get that balance. We're trying to get that - So I think that's why, as anybody has talked about in classification - the proposal that was brought up a couple of years ago: I know it was...lots of analysis, lots of discussion about it, lots of background from a coaching perspective. Where it got shot down was from the administrators' perspective. Because every time you classify, you increase travel costs. And right now...because schools [that] aren't the same size aren't generally built around each other. You're going to have to go further to play post-season.

 

Take a look at what's *actually* in the stands - not the attendance numbers that are published. But take a look at what's *actually* in the stands at some of the small school events. It, you know, that's what the fear is...whether it's basketball or anything. Because unfortunately it is, it is a situation where they have to be financially stable to take care of everything else, and without that you'd lose other opportunities.

 

We've expanded just in the last few years, our schools have pushed and we've expanded up to I think 17 championships now, if you don't count multiples in the classified sports. You know, that's something that a state our size - that's a lot. And we've got a big push to add lacrosse. And probably when it's surveyed this year, we might have enough schools to start lacrosse - well you can't keep expanding it. The school boards can't afford to pay for athletics anymore. You get very minimal support from your local school board financially.

 

So, when people start talking about adding classes, it's more than changing who gets trophies. The baseball proposal, some of the discussion came down to the fact that 'Was this just a proposal to give more people trophies?' ...because it was going to increase travel in some cases. That's what it generally comes down to when people start talking about classes. I've always said, to be honest with you Josh, if the Board of Control comes to us and says, 'You know what, we're going to set up our tennis tournament to where everybody has to play left-handed,' we'll come up with tournament structure and we can run events - special events is what we do. We can handle that part of it. But it's got to be something that the membership from Paducah to Ashland, and from Newport to Williamsburg wants, and in general, that's not been the case. There's pockets, but then they start looking at how it's going to impact them. Are they going to lose - for example - are we going to change a state event format to where suddenly the financial support [the KHSAA] gets declines, so the services [the KHSAA] provides have to be cut. Well they don't necessarily want to to that, so then [the KHSAA] can do that, [the KHSAA] will take part of the regional tournament proceeds. 'Oh no, you can't do that, because that's going to impact our stuff!'

 

So you see, it's so much bigger than just looking at a boring game, or somebody's success rate.

 

I look, I was just playing around after I saw some of the conversation going on yesterday. I was just playing around looking at the last 3 years in a couple of our sports. You've got one sport, one of the team sports, where the four - the 13-16th region is 1 and 11 the last three years, and that 1 was when they played each other. Is that, are we suddenly going to say that, even in basketball for example, we're not going to bring them because they haven't had success? Uhh-uhh. We're not going to to that. Nobody *wants* to to that. So, that's what I say, this is much more than just, 'Do we like the way the World Cup is played? Or do we think because soccer has 10 people, that you should divide them in classes?' Some of our largest schools don't necessarily play very good soccer.

 

Josh Moore:

Haha, yeah, that's the truth.

 

Commissioner Tackett:

So it's not a matter, always, of school size. And do you, for the purpose of the last round, mess up the other rounds? That's what you always have to ask.

 

Josh Moore:

I like that you brought that up about the size not always being a factor. Because I think when people talk about classes, that's, you know, size is what's on top of people's minds. I think, though, I think money, the booster clubs at the school, the local school board support, all that stuff kind of comes into it too. And you can be a big school, and like you said, you might stink at soccer.

 

Commissioner Tackett:

Well and the number one that - if you sit back and I would say this anecdotally and I think you could prove it if you did research - the number one thing that breeds success at our level is past success. That's why it's been so hard, despite a lot of the changes that have been pushed among our coaches and athletic directors who form our advisory committees...they've proposed changes, we've looked at bracketing in football etc., and in general we have opened up opportunities for a couple more schools to be added to "successful", but in general the ones that are successful now were successful before.

 

So much of it is about: 'Do you have that community?' You just said it. Do we have the communities bought in, the school boards bought in, the people that are fundraising that have bought in? Do we have that? We've got a couple of really big schools in the 13-16th region that still don't have much athletic success - because they don't have that resource, etc. And it's going to be very tough to build that success, in particular in a new sport. Imagine what lacrosse will be like. We probably, if we adopt it, we're probably going to have six of the sixteen geographic regions that really have people with a lot of experience in lacrosse to start out with. It will look a lot like soccer did in the eighties when I first came here. It'll, it'll be really really good, and not so really really good. And that's part of growing and developing, you know.

 

So, I, you know, I...it's a good conversation piece, it gives everybody a lot to talk about. I'm not necessarily sure that there is a crystallized answer that "Okay, this is the magic fix."

Josh Moore:

Is there a, well, especially in like eastern Kentucky because that comes up a lot with the decreasing numbers and the school populations, and just the geographic hurdles that they have, especially in sports like volleyball and soccer... I think club, you know, the rise of club is really, is tied to the success of the teams that are successful in those sports as well. How do you think that, you know, those teams that are kind of geographically isolated can help help themselves become more successful?

 

 

Commissioner Tackett:

Well, you know, let me tell you what goes on, and I'm gonna...this may take a second, I'm glad you're not trying to type all this. All the time I hear of people in basketball and football, and I've got my ear to the ground with them closer, but I've, you know, I ran 6 different championships at different times, so I've kind of got a feel for a lot of them.

 

You'll hear of coaches that are trying to get better. They'll go spend 2 or 3 days with the ones that have been around. You know, Belfry gets visitors every year from other schools in the state who come up: 'Just talk about how you prepare. Talk about it.' The first thing they've got to do is find out why the teams are successful. And that may mean, what they do X & 0's but you know a lot of it, as they used to say, and I used to hear this in northern Kentucky about football: "It's as much about Jimmies and Joes as X's & O's." But you've still got to go in and figure out why they - what are some of the factors that have lead to their success.

 

Alright, so you go in and you study a successful program and you find out 'Wait a minute, they've got a youth league that - in the neighborhood surrounding the school that play{sic}.' So there's a culture of playing. And that's where you talk about the club, the club stuff is a relatively new phenomenon. It's not been around forever - but off season play has been. It used to be the successful parks & rec programs. You might see Southeastern Baseball here in town, Dixie Baseball here in town, the Valley Sports in Louisville and those that had real strong leagues and those kids naturally fed into the high schools. Well now that has kind of, in some sports in some areas, been supplanted a little bit by pick-up teams or travel teams. But a lot of those teams, if you watch them, a lot of those teams that formed together are formed by parents whose kids didn't get enough playing time with the other travel team, so we're going to pool our money and create our own team so Little Johnnie or Little Janie gets more participation. That probably is not going to help the high school development. But where it helps is when they look at it, can they, can they try to organize it? Can they find, you know, better competition?

 

I used to talk to different coaches a lot of times in different geographic parts of the state that would - in football they might be 10-0 every year, then get beat 30 points in the first round of the playoffs. And, you know, and you keep saying 'Unless you venture out and take a chance on getting your hat handed to you, you're not going to get any better.' So another piece of it is competition.

 

And then the last piece, though, another piece you've got - obviously - you've got to decide that you're going to commit some resources. But right now, parents don't seem to be a bit bashful about committing resources.

 

You know, Bill Miller said something in an interview a couple years ago or a few years ago that I thought was so telling. And he said when he first started coaching at Pleasure Ridge, the parents came in and said, "Coach Miller, here's my kid. I think he's got a little talent. I want you to work with him and try to develop him." Now a lot of those same parents have spent, you know, thousands of dollars on lessons somewhere, where they sent them away and they come in and say, "Coach Miller, this is my son, he's a pitcher, and don't screw him up." And so, you know, the whole balance has shifted to where, you know, to where maybe the coach isn't as powerful as they once were. Maybe the coach isn't as influential, and I think the next thing that's got to happen is they've got to, if they're going to come from an area that doesn't have a history of that, they've got to agree that, 'You know what, these first couple of years are not gonna be pretty, but we're going to work together to where the people that come after this current group will have success.'

 

You know, it's always great for me at these championships when you see those teams that haven't been there. And they're excited to be there, and they might come in and get beat in a 10 run game, or they may come in and get shut out in a soccer game, but you know what usually happens, is hanging around waiting on them are the kids that played for that school 5 and 10 years ago who laid the groundwork. It's a building process. It's not about push-button success. It takes time. So I think it take the whole, the whole thing - you hit the nail on the head - the whole thing is "community". And I'm not talking about "city", I'm talking about "community". It takes the school working on it and committing to it, the parents committing to it, the kids committing to it, the local citizens obviously committing to it. It takes a lot of people to really say, 'You know what? You know, that field that used to be just a cattle field, we're going to make it a pristine soccer field. Or we're gonna...' You know, we used to get basketball coaches that complained all the time about the volleyball standards. You know what they require? They require you to put a hole in your gym floor to hold them, and we'd have coaches that 'I don't want 'em drilling a hole in my floor to put up permanent standards. Let them the old thing where they've got a tire and concrete holding up the pole, then we'll roll it off.' Then they finally said, 'You know what, we're going to commit the resources to it.' And lo and behold they get better.

 

And what's happening, what I see, 3rd party looking down in those areas that haven't had a lot of success, is, they've got within their own area haves and have-nots developing, because those that have gotten the community together and have decided 'You know, we're going to focus on this.' They're winning now in their area. You're not going to win in the state till you win in your area.

 

It's the building process. And that's what, that's what sometimes I think today's people struggle with. They want instant success. Everything you do, push a button your phone's supposed to make it happen. Push a button, some gizmo's supposed to make it happen. This doesn't work that way. In our set-up, the district set-up, you've got to succeed at the district. Then you can try to succeed at the region. Then you can try - over the course of time - and then you can succeed at the state.

 

If you're, if you're going to gauge it on whether or not - if your sole gauge is whether or not you succeed at the state, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work.

Seems like the commish is all over the place - trying to be all things for everyone.

There is no answer to that, short of visiting each school, analyzing their ability to compete in each sport, and then classifying them accordingly.

 

Obviously, this isn't going to happen. The rich get richer and the poor continue to toil in relative obscurity.

It seems everyone wants to eliminate at least one layer of the football playoffs and maybe two. Hundreds of thousands of dollars would be saved, and the regular season would once again become more meaningful. Participation for the sake of participation is not necessarily a good thing, especially at the bottom of each class's food chain.

 

While he talks a nice "participation" dialogue, it all comes down to dollars, cents, and convenience. Basketball is on the cusp of the greatest upheaval in the history of KHSAA sports. The season is about to be shortened to where the district tournaments will be played starting the first week in February and a much earlier State Tournament.

Why??? Because the KHSAA is paranoid about the NCAA Basketball Tournament detracting from attendance at the Sweet Sixteen State Tournament - the KHSAA cash cow.

 

His is not an easy job. Unfortunately in all of our sports, there is no balance of power. He's right - the same schools win the trophies most of the time, or at least contend for them. The trend is becoming that not only are sports becoming specialized but schools are also. Think of how many schools you know of that are known as a Football School, or a Basketball School, or a Baseball School. Even Soccer or Brainiac Schools. It seems like you better get good at something that will allow you to bolster your enrollment and be prominent, and we seem to be heading in that direction.

Did they reschedule that cancelled track and field event?

He dropped his, "someone has to be the adult in the room", which is so condescending implying that everyone else is a child. What a gem.

I forgot to ask... does Tackett really believe that football really doesn't have a concussion/CTE issue outside of the NFL?

According to Tackett participation numbers were up in football because more kids had an opportunity for success; however, when people desire for more classes in other sports they simply want more trophies or are looking out for their own self interest. Makes perfect sense Commish.

I am a real Tackett fan. :lol:

I am a real Tackett fan. :lol:

 

Evidently so :lol2:

According to Tackett participation numbers were up in football because more kids had an opportunity for success; however, when people desire for more classes in other sports they simply want more trophies or are looking out for their own self interest. Makes perfect sense Commish.

 

You nailed it.

If classification is such a difficult proposal, how do 48 other states manage to pull it off?

 

The KHSAA is systematically killing off sports at a lot of small schools. It's not because those schools can't compete for state championship "trophies," it's because many of them can't even compete on the district level. Classes would at least give them some hope of being able to compete a little bit.

Very good listen.

 

Thanks.

I think the burning question we all want answered is this.

 

Will there be seeding in the 39th?