Hey-Ref

That's good that Trinity will play anyone. Elder has already played almost everyone. The GCL has been playing top competition form around the country since Gerry Faust began playing teams from Texas, Hawaii, New York and more back in the '70's. They all came here though as the OHSAA had a 300 mile out of state travel restriction. Not sure if that still exists or not. By the way. Bring your seat cushion since the stadium seats are concrete steps. The Pit officially holds 10,000 fans. But Elder people claim to have had over 15,000 there for some games back in the day.

Elder's "PIT"

So, based on the play on the films some were chosen and some were not. To call this an all-american team then is misleading. Any all-american team I've read about is a team chosen from all eligible players in the class and sport from across the country. This is not what that was then. Some chose to apply by sending game films, and fewer were chosen. I have no problem with that, but don't call it all-american. Here's why. Kentucky is not exactly known for it's football on any level, compared to several other states. To think Kentucky would have 13 players chosen for any all-american football team I think is not statistically possible given teh level of football played in many otehr states.

In order... 1. excellent coaching 2. devoted and talented players 3. supportive boosters/fans The rest all comes in due time as you build on success after success. As a team builds it's winning tradition, more people come on board, because people want to be part of a winning tradition. As more people come on board, more money comes into the program, which can buy facilities and equipment and pay better coaches more money. This all atracts young athletes who want to be part of the program, and work long and hard to maintain the winning ways.

Trampler, I am not proposing "disregarding the younger levels of play". The younger levels of play are for teaching, learning, practicing and perfecting the skills requried in sports. Each level you climb the standard gets raised a little higher. But until an athlete is in high school, they should be devoted to learning to play the sport, developing skills and playing for fun. To think anyone, or group of people, could ever select an all-american football, or any other sport, junior high team is ludicrous (not to be confused with the rapper who spells it differently). Bear hit the nail on the head with comments about dealing with the accolades, both child and parent. The degree of emphasis on sports in society is definitely excessive in my opinion, and I love to play and watch sports. But as a coach and official, I've seen far too many families that have no idea how good their child is at any sport. They make demands on coaches, officials and other parents and their own children that are out of wack. Ranking young athletes nationally or otherwise and slecting national all-american teams contributes to that mentality.

Ram, the fact that some players were chosen to be in the All-American game means that some ranking had to take place. It implies these players are, at least, among the very best. I strongly disagree that selecting all-american football players aged 11-13 is possible. I think it is pointless.

Don't you think that trying to rank individual players in youth team sports is just a little over the top? I coached youth baseball for many years. From one year to the next I would see a player be at the top, and the next season at the bottom of the talent pool. And this just comparing him to 10-15 players on a single roster. There is no way you can tell me which 7th grade offensive lineman is the best at his position in the country, much less the best QB or RB. This is a ridiculous effort on any scale, national, state or otherwise. My wife coached youth girls basketball for several years. Once, her U-11 team played in a tournament. They played a game against a team from a neighboring state with a pretty good player who we were told was the 11th ranked 10 year old girl in the nation. I was speechless. I cannot even imagine how that ranking came to be or who ranked her, or why it is important to rank players that young. A survey I saw several years ago said that 60% of youths playing sports quit all or all but one sport by age 13. If someone had seen Corey Blount play point guard in junior high they would not have been very impressed, as he was an average player. He was not recruited to any college out of high school. In one year after high school he grew from 6-1 to 6-10, went the JUCO route before ending up at Cincinnati. He played in a final four and then played 11 years in the NBA. The body of a young athlete changes so rapidly, and skill levels develop slowly or quickly at different ages. Rankings are intended to be a prediction of what is to come, but with young athletes it is impossible to predict. Even for prep athletes it is mostly guess work.

Not exactly. What I am against is the notion you could ever pick a national all-star team of 6,7 and 8 graders. Even the USAToday Prep polls can't possibly be that accurate since very few teams ever play one another, or even have common opponents. Last year the NFHS said there were over 1 million high school football players nationwide. That means there are many more junior leaguers, Jr. high, and elementary football players. And we argue over who is supposed to be on the all-state or all-region teams. PLaying against teams or individuals from other states is okay if you shoose to do so. Just don't think you could ever determine which 7th grade RG from Oklahoma is better than any RG from New Jersey, or anywhere else.

Ridiculous I think, to have players this young being selected for national honors and playing all-star games. Next thing you know rivals.com will have rankings for 6 year olds. How many college coaches were there scouting? Jimmy, age 6, playing QB for Pick Your Elementary School has Alabama, Florida and Michigan on his short list. He's also a projected 2 round draft pick. Not sure where he'll go to high school yet though as offers from T and X are too close to call. Height - 4'5" Weight - 57# Bench press - 12# 40 speed - 8.3, on his bike Verticle Jump - 8" Favorite food - Chicken McNuggets Favorite activity - pulling his sister's hair Favorite TV Star - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

KHSAA playoff system is not very good in my opinion. This year 50% of teams making the playoffs were .500 or worse. The idea of going to 6 divisions was to make room for more schools to win championships. Look who won titles in the last 2 years, and tell me if the goal was accomplished or not. Also, look at first round margins of victory. Tell me those first round games are competitive and I'll eat my hat. There needs to be a better way of awarding playoff berths.

Off-hand I would say a big reason, though maybe not the only one, for lower attendance is the watered down playoffs in 6 divisions. What was supposed to happen with 6 divisions insterad of the normal 4 anyway? Five of six champs were repeats, and 3 of the 6 have double digit titles.

Do Beechwood, NCC, Highlands and Simon Kenton all share the same campus or what?

http://sports.espn.go.com/highschool/rise/football/riseMap

1. Program notoriety - success breeds success. People want to be associated with a winner. People are proud to be fans of winning programs. 2. Young kids grow up watching older brothers, cousins and neighbors and want to be part of that same program. They'll work to achieve that goal. 3. Community support, both cash and time and less tangible means 4. Coaching - young players are continually being developed through youth leagues, freshman and JV into good varsity players 5. Numbers - Having big numbers means you'll be more able to find the player to fill a position. More competition for positions pushes players to perform at a higher level. 6. Last but not least, Trinity, St. X, Highlands and others would not have as many titles if there were more parity in the KHSAA. These schools/teams can all compete with the best from Ohio, Tennesseee and other states, but would not win as many titles if they were in Ohio or those other states, becasue there are many more higher caliber teams in other states. What I did not include in this list is facilites and equipment. There are many lesser teams with great facilities and equipment that don't have 1/10th the success. In the case of private schools, the facilites come after the success due to lack of public funding.

From an earlier post on another thread... Before Round 1 here is how the records add up. Class 1A 2A 3A 4A 5A 6A Total # Teams in Division 41 33 40 35 37 36 222 # Bids for Playoff Spots 32 32 32 32 32 32 192 # Teams Missing Bids 9 1 8 3 5 4 30 # Records % Records # Teams with 0 Wins 0 3 1 2 1 0 7 # Teams with 1 Win 2 1 0 1 1 2 7 Teams not in playoffs slots and their records: 1A Fulton Co 1-9 Beth Haven 3-7 Brossart 0-10 Bracken Co 0-10 Nicholas Co 3-7 Cumberland South Floyd 1-9 2A Reidland 1-9 3A Paducah Tilghman 2-8 Hart Co 4-6 Casey Co 2-8 Cawood Jackson Co 2-8 Fleming Co 1-9 Lewis Co 1-9 East Ridge 1-9 4A Logan Co 2-8 Breckinridge Co 1-9 Madison Southern 0-10 5a South Oldham 0-10 Scott 4-6 Montgomery Co 4-6 Lincoln Co 1-9 North Laurel 2-8 6A Apollo 2-8 Marshall Co 3-7 Central Harding 4-6 Campbell Co 5-5

http://www.khsaa.org/football/2006/playoffweekoneschedule.pdf http://www.khsaa.org/football/2005/playoffweekoneschedule.pdf http://www.khsaa.org/football/2004/playoffweekoneschedule.pdf Do the math.

So if you cut the number of playoff berths in half, and eliminate the regular season bye week, you effectively shorten the season by 2 weeks. Good idea. Finals on last weekend of November.

It's not a good system. Too many teams with not enough wins, but not all teams. Too many games in Round 1 decided by wide margins, 53% by more than 30 points. Several 0 and 1 win teams in while 5-5 teams stay home. District play, I think, is the fly in the ointment. By that I mean only district records count. Several teams in the state qualify just by showing up at 10 games. I think if you want 32 teams in each division, then take to top 32 teams. Either take the top 8 in each region, or top 16 in each semi-state. Seed them and playoff.

In Round 1 there were 96 teams at or below .500. In Round 2 there are 7. Of those 7, 4 played teams also at or below .500 in Round 1. Three played and beat teams with winning records. Six were #2 seeds, while 1 was a #3. There are 12 #3's and 2 #4's left in the playoffs after Round 1. The two #4's are Seneca (6-5) and Simon Kenton (7-4).

Suggested Improvement... Each team must play at least 7 games against opponents of same class or higher and win at least 4 of those games in order to qualify for a berth. Ignore districts altogether. If you have fewer than 16 teams in a division, then either schedule the games according to who qualified, or fill the bracket in with the next best non-qualifiers with 3 wins, or 2 wins or ... Seed teams 1-n if less than 16, or 1-16. Then fill in the bracket and scheduled games.

92% of round 1 games were decided by more than 10 points 74% by more than 20 53% by more than 30 31% by more than 40 14% by more than 50 2% by more than 60 Class 0-9 10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 51+ Sum 1A 2 2 1 3 7 1 0 16 2A 1 2 2 5 3 3 0 16 3A 1 4 5 3 2 1 0 16 4A 1 4 4 1 2 3 1 16 5A 2 1 4 4 3 2 0 16 6A 1 4 4 5 0 1 1 16 8 17 20 21 17 11 2 96 96 88 71 51 30 13 2 96 100% 92% 74% 53% 31% 14% 2%

Class 1A 2A 3A 4A 5A 6A Total # Teams in Division 41 33 40 35 37 36 222 # Bids for Playoff Spots 32 32 32 32 32 32 192 # Teams Missing Bids 9 1 8 3 5 4 30 # Records % Records # Teams with 0 Wins 0 3 1 2 1 0 7 # Teams with 1 Win 2 1 0 1 1 2 7 I posted this breakdown on another thread, but it applies here also. Exactly half of all playoff teams are at or below .500. In 2A only 1 team missed the playoffs, and they were 1-9. What good does leaving them home serve when 3 other 2A teams were 0-10? In 6A Campbell Co is home with a 5-5 record, as good as or better than 13 other 6A schools in the playoffs. The problem with this playoff system is it is too much of one, and not enough of the other. Only 30 team did not make the playoffs out of 222. If you're not going to include every team, then be a little more selective about who gets in. The problem is how to be more selective. Ohio's Harbin System uses a point system. Each team get points for winning games, and additional points for games won by opponents they've beaten. D1 teams are worth more points than D2 and so on. This system accounts for strength of schedule. Ohio has over 700 football playing schools in state, and limits the berths to 8 per region. There are 4 regions, so they have 32 teams in each playoff bracket just like Kentucky does. It works good for Ohio. I personally think that the KHSAA should require playoff eligible teams to have a minimum number of wins within or above your own class to qualify. This would encourage teams to schedule more closely matched opponents, and provide for more competitive football top to bottom. A 1A team that cannot win a game should not be in the playoffs. But, for example, a 2A team that plays 7 games against 2A or higher teams, must win at least 4 of those game to qualify. I suggest that each team win at laast 50% of games against teams in the same or higher class. If we work at it we can find a fair formula.

Mike, the problem as I see it is this. On one hand there are 30 teams with bad records staying home, while 96 teams with equally bad records are in. If you're going to include 96 teams with .500 or worse records, why not include 30 more teams. I personally think there should be fewer teams in. Like the NCAA, you should have a minimum number of wins to qualify.

There are 23 districts with only 4 teams that all qualify before playing a single game. 1A - 1 2A - 7 3A - 2 4A - 5 5A - 3 6A - 5

Teams not in playoffs slots and their records: 1A Fulton Co 1-9 Beth Haven 3-7 Brossart 0-10 Bracken Co 0-10 Nicholas Co 3-7 Cumberland South Floyd 1-9 2A Reidland 1-9 3A Paducah Tilghman 2-8 Hart Co 4-6 Casey Co 2-8 Cawood Jackson Co 2-8 Fleming Co 1-9 Lewis Co 1-9 East Ridge 1-9 4A Logan Co 2-8 Breckinridge Co 1-9 Madison Southern 0-10 5a South Oldham 0-10 Scott 4-6 Montgomery Co 4-6 Lincoln Co 1-9 North Laurel 2-8 6A Apollo 2-8 Marshall Co 3-7 Central Harding 4-6 Campbell Co 5-5 Campbell Co has a better record than 8 other 6A teams, and is tied with 5 others. There is also a 5-4 team adn a 4-4 team in 6A.