1 minute ago, Unrivaled97 said:

I have no doubt you're correct about that, but parents already lose their minds nowadays about silly, sports related "issues" so it wouldn't be much different.  If a school didn't have a team, some parents would lose their minds.  If you have 8-man football, some parents would lose their minds b/c it's not traditional football.  Pretty much any way you go these days, there are some parent(s) who will lose their minds and cause turmoil.  Best advice I was ever given was if you try to make everyone happy, you'll end up making nobody happy, so run your program the way you see fit.  Not everything is fair but be consistent.

This!

9 minutes ago, Unrivaled97 said:

I have no doubt you're correct about that, but parents already lose their minds nowadays about silly, sports related "issues" so it wouldn't be much different.  If a school didn't have a team, some parents would lose their minds.  If you have 8-man football, some parents would lose their minds b/c it's not traditional football.  Pretty much any way you go these days, there are some parent(s) who will lose their minds and cause turmoil.  Best advice I was ever given was if you try to make everyone happy, you'll end up making nobody happy, so run your program the way you see fit.  Not everything is fair but be consistent.

I can’t argue with you there I feel like some people wake up looking for a fight.

13 minutes ago, Tigerpride94 said:

Ohio has 713 teams in 6 classes. KY has 222 teams in 6 classes. Shows how ridiculous it is that KY has 6 classes. If Ohio had roughly same teams per class as KY, they would have 19 classes. I would be fine with 5 classes since would probably have a good Top 10 in each class. Often after the Top 5 in 6 classes it's big drop off.

By those numbers we wouldn’t have but maybe 2 classes.

8 hours ago, MBKT said:

With Julian getting closer and closer to retirement, I doubt he has much appetite for significant changes, but a new KHSAA leadership group should consider some number of these potential improvements:

1. install a promotion and relegation system. The Beechwoods and CALs move up, the Western Hills and Shawnees move down. 

2. Drop down to either 4 or 5 classifications. Don’t fret so much about “geography”. We have 4 lane highways and interstate highways all over the Commonwealth. 

3. Expand Districts from 4 to 6 schools. See #2 above related to geography.

4. Shorten the season by one week by eliminating one round of the playoffs. 0-10 and 1-9 teams DO NOT earn a trip to the post season. 
 

5. Enable some sort of option for 2 schools to come together to form 1 football program. Way TOO MANY high school football programs in Kentucky have only 25 to 35 players in the entire program INCLUDING freshman. 

So you are suggesting we go back to doing many of the things we did years ago? The promotion/relegation concept has never been done, but many schools played "up" supposedly because of travel. You probably need to address what to do with "home school" students too. I don't know how that 2 schools forming one team would work. As I understand the football coaches were the ones pushing 6 classes. Might be wrong.

4 hours ago, AppalachianTactician said:

I don't see them changing the 6 class system either. I understand the not wanting to play the 1 seed vs the 4 seed and not every team getting into the playoffs, but the financial side of things make me wonder about a larger question: I think a 1 seed's administration would rather have them play a 4 seed team than have a bye because they would receive more gate money from those who attend the game, than having a bye week... One could also argue that if the clock gets running early it is basically a bye week anyway. 

 

I was presented an idea a few years ago where the 1 seeds get a bye and the cross districts 2 and 3 seeds play each other round 1. The 4 seeds would play each other as a bowl game. 1s get a bye, small schools get extra revenue and a level of competition they should be more apt to compete with. The same problem though, the district winners would lose a game of gate money and that could be upwards of $15-20k of ticket and concession money.   

Good stuff to consider, but as you intimate, money (and travel to a lesser extent) are difficult issues to navigate.  And RPI is probably not the ideal tiebreaker. 

26 minutes ago, 9068 said:

So you are suggesting we go back to doing many of the things we did years ago? The promotion/relegation concept has never been done, but many schools played "up" supposedly because of travel. You probably need to address what to do with "home school" students too. I don't know how that 2 schools forming one team would work. As I understand the football coaches were the ones pushing 6 classes. Might be wrong.

I honestly can’t remember if it was the coaches or the ADs.  Both groups obviously would have a vested interest. 

I've posted on the promotion/relegation concept before, so here it is again:

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I keep saying it - Promotion and Relegation system, that is what they should do.  They never will do it, but I think that would revolutionize how well this stuff works.  Let teams find their levels, make it performance based, not exclusively based on factors that aren't necessarily the only ones that matter.  We've seen plenty of large schools that fail (how long has it been since Henry Clay was good?), and plenty of smaller schools that can really compete with the big boys (Mayfield for example).  Large schools with 30 players on their team.  Small schools with 70.  Clearly, factors other than populace come into being.

Now, you'd have to figure out some method of determining who the best and worst in the classes are, but every two years, take the top 4 in classes 1A-5A and promote them, and the bottom 4 in classes 2A-6A and relegate them.  I believe you'd see a world of difference in how some teams would compete, and essentially 6A would become the best of the best (not totally far off how things are viewed now).

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The suggestion is for every other year - mostly for scheduling issues that would arise with single year relegation - which I think would help smooth out what you're saying.  For sure, there are going to be exceptions, but experiencing something negative (or overly positive) for two years sorta pales in comparison to the hellscape a lot of these teams deal with now, where they are stuck indefinitely where they don't belong.

(Henry Clay is 1-14 since that.  Trapped in a no-win situation in perpetuity.)

It's a radical idea that pretty much every time I talk about it I say "it'll never happen" because it certainly will never happen.  But it would fix so much, especially over time.  In England, while the Premier League title is certainly celebrated as the title, I believe the champions of the other leagues celebrate their titles just as much.  Promotion/relegation would let teams naturally find their proper level.  And if factors cause a diminishing of a program over time, certainly they will have some struggles for a while, but eventually, they will reach levels where they are likely to be very competitive.

The current system is atrocious.  If it were four classes, it would be better, but honestly, still quite poor.  

I believe the Guru made this statement years ago “Kentucky football is very top heavy”. The top few teams in each class could compete for state titles in whatever class they’d be in in other states, but not the rest. It’s just the way it is in Kentucky. I do think we have to many classes, but it’s never going back to 4 class system. Promotion/relegation is an awesome idea but it punishes small schools for being good. 

1 minute ago, Breds82 said:

I believe the Guru made this statement years ago “Kentucky football is very top heavy”. The top few teams in each class could compete for state titles in whatever class they’d be in in other states, but not the rest. It’s just the way it is in Kentucky. I do think we have to many classes, but it’s never going back to 4 class system. Promotion/relegation is an awesome idea but it punishes small schools for being good. 

It also doesn't address the largest schools that are good. 

Maybe could split schools based on if they are a resides school meaning only get students from the school geographic area. The other division would be private schools and public schools that accept students from outside their geographical boundary. Then have 2 divisions based on school size for each of those. In JCPS many of their schools are resides schools but schools like Manual and Male aren't because can take kids from anywhere in Jefferson County that meet their requirements. Resides schools are disadvantaged to the non reside ones although that's self inflicted because any school in Kentucky can be open to outside students. 

2 hours ago, 9068 said:

So you are suggesting we go back to doing many of the things we did years ago? The promotion/relegation concept has never been done, but many schools played "up" supposedly because of travel. You probably need to address what to do with "home school" students too. I don't know how that 2 schools forming one team would work. As I understand the football coaches were the ones pushing 6 classes. Might be wrong.

I’m pretty sure it was one AD/Administrator who was THE driving force behind the expansion to 6 classes.

IIRC he was from Somerset?

 

It took me to just now to know what IIRC means. I swear I didn’t look it up.

52 minutes ago, Falcon Pride said:

I’m pretty sure it was one AD/Administrator who was THE driving force behind the expansion to 6 classes.

IIRC he was from Somerset?

 

Curious who this was that swung that kind of power from a small school like Somerset? I for some reason thought it was a Bowling Green person beating the drum on this subject, but I could be wrong.

6 hours ago, Tigerpride94 said:

Ohio has 713 teams in 6 classes. KY has 222 teams in 6 classes. Shows how ridiculous it is that KY has 6 classes. If Ohio had roughly same teams per class as KY, they would have 19 classes. I would be fine with 5 classes since would probably have a good Top 10 in each class. Often after the Top 5 in 6 classes it's big drop off.

Ohio has 7 divisions FYI. 

 

Kentucky has entirely too many divisions.   It should honestly be 3 based on sheer numbers, but 4 would  be best due to vast school size disparities in Kentucky.   I also love the idea of relegation.  

Now, something that would also help would be a version of Ohio's competitive balance.  Essentially, anyone that is on your team that lives outside the geographical boundaries of your school, gets added to your count for classification purposes.  So your school may be 2a based on the actual numbers, but since you have a ton of open enrollment kids on your team, those kids get added based on a formula and you are playing 4a now.

 

The current system is a joke.  No team with a losing record should be in the playoffs.  It's makes the regular season essentially meaningless.  

So, when you look at how ridiculously watered down Kentucky Playoffs are, you will see across all divisions, around a third of the teams have a losing record.  That's a system that is clearly broken.