privates have no advantage

[pujo]

Ela waaasss ttaallkkiinnggg ttooo pppaaannnffaaannn. DDooo yyoouu uunnddeerrssttaanndd?? Hhheee kknnoowwss aaallll aabboouutt tthheeiirr ssppeeeedd.

[Edited by pujo on 7/1/02 11:41P]

[VolunteerGeneral]

We`ve seen a lot of problems mentioned here about our public schools. What can we do as public school parents to make public schools a viable solution to private schools???

[VolunteerGeneral]

pujo...annnnddddddddd IIIIII waaaaaasssssssss taaaaaalkkking to ELA. Whhhhhhaaaaat`s yooouuuuuur pooooooooint?????????????

[pujo]

We have no private schools, no problems. This is due to the lack of good jobs in the area, but we like it like that because we don't have all the bad aspects of the city. Thanks goodness. If I had a house in Nashville (or any city) and a home in hades I'd sell my house and go home.

[VolunteerGeneral]

pujo...One question

 

If you have no problems on Roan Mountain, why do you complain so much???

[rollredroll]

Speed is overrated in my opinion! Sure, I'll take a guy with speed any day, but he better listen, know the fundamentals of the game, and have good technique first and foremost.

 

I remember playing against a certain high school in Nashville back in my days. These guys had speed to burn! However, on offense, their linemen had poor fundamentals, their skill players didn't run the right routes, and they committed a lot of stupid mistakes/penalties. All of this added up to a team that could never get the ball to their "speed" guys because the QB was getting sacked by the D knifing its way through a porous line, or the QB was pitching the ball to phantom running backs who were running the wrong play, either because the backs didn't listen to the play call or didn't know how to run the play in the first place!

 

And as for this team's defense, sure, they got to the ball real fast (our having a bunch of slow guys helped the cause, too), but they couldn't tackle worth a darn, and that led to a lot of broken tackles.

 

42-0, Turtles.

 

Sorry for drifting from the p-p debate.

[TheEgoHasLanded]

As I stated earlier...

 

My school has one of the best records against public schools in the state...In the four years that I played football we only lost to one public school..and that was a 5A school that went toe to toe with Germantown!

 

Speed is overrated ELA...I gotta disagree with you on that one. I am going to use ECS, Harding, and Briarcrest as Examples...

 

Harding has beaten Tredwell, Overton, Westside, White Station, Catholic, Bishop Byrne, and a host of other inner city schools that are predominately black.

 

ECS has beaten EAST in the past...thats right EAST! They have also beaten Bishop Byrne (35-6), Catholic, and a few other really good teams like MUS and CBHS.

 

Briarcreset has had success over Bishop Byrne, Catholic, Tredwell, Ridgeway-Rueben Mayes and Willie Henderson, Kingsbury (2 or 3 UT recruits), and a few other really good teams...

 

ELA...speed is great, it really is, but you have to have size and speed...you can't have a bunch of 5'6 160 pound string beans out there trying to cover guys and make tackles...not in 1A, or even in privates (except for D2-A). It's not about athletes...its about intelligence as RollRed said...

 

When you combine...tenacity, intelligence, dedication, and then athleticism/ strength...you got one heck of a football player.

 

I have said if for years and I will say it again...I was never afraid of the 6'4 250 pound lineman, I was afraid of the 5'10 195 pound lineman, cus if hes playing then he must bring some heat, and I know even at your school you must have some guys that fit that criteria.

[ie3]

I wanted to throw one in on the speed debate. Being one of those teams on the bottom of 1A. In fact, last time I looked, 2nd from last. We had more than 6 players with timed 40's under 4.85. We won 1 game in regular season. The speedsters... all under 5'8" and 150 lbs. Size matters too! That's a problem with a small area to pull players from.

 

VG, Sorry, must have misread your post. Got the feeling you were coming down on the other side of the debate. As far as fixing problems... what can we do. I work in a factory that during the peak times employs 2500 people at an avg of $11 an hour. During slow times, less than 500. Unfortunately, in the rural areas we see more and more of this seasonal labor in the manufacturing sector. This leads to the lack of disposable income we see. The other very big factor I see is our greed as a society. We want all the goodies the TV says the city folks have. So, we spend all our money to get them. This is merely an aberration of the advertising agencies.

I have lived in a half dozen states growing up, before coming back home to Tennessee. In all of them, the private schools competed in completely separate divisions, never playing against the publics. That is in areas as diverse as New Orleans and Baltimore. Until my son started playing, I never realized that the privates competed against the publics here. So it all seems a little strange to me.

I think it all comes down to talent pools. Private schools need to be evaluated on the area they pull students from. It is not fair to lump them all together. A small private school in Jellico does not have the same advantage as a same sized school in say, Memphis. So where do you draw the line? I still say a committee should decided on a case by case basis. Whether it be by coaches, athletic directors, principals, whatever.

I am having a wonderful time on this board because I have seldom seen such thoughtful debate on football. With most of us it is a very emotional topic. If I could figure out how to pass out good marks, I'd like to give one to most of the people posting on this thread.

[sportsguy1]

Well I know that Boyd-Buchanan and several other private schools in Chattanooga there is no kind of work study job or whatever ya'll are talking about. You have to come up with the money to go there. I have never heard of that in high school. And I can't believe people are saying stuff like the kids are smarter in private schools. When I was in school there were some true idiots at my private schools. And I believe that the main reason is that most private schools don't have special ed students is because of money. Contratry to popular belief on this board 99% of small private schools aren't rich. They don't have the money it would take to run a special ed area. I will say it for the 100th time these schools are constantly raising money. When I was in school you had all kinds of fees just besides tuition for things like sports to band to chorus or whatever.

 

Why do you guys keep talking like these schools are so rich and powerful??? When private school supporters read stuff like that it just makes you guys look silly because it shows you don't know what you are talking about. It makes people disregard your whole argument. Sorry but that is the truth.

[scout]

Pujo,

I think you really do have a misconception of what goes on in private schools. A private school trying to select students by their athletic ability borders on impossible in most private schools. First of all, most private schools have the same "anti-jock" faction as most public schools. If a school like Ezell gave enrollment preference to an athlete, there would likely be an internal uproar.

 

Second, just how good do you think coaches are at picking 8th grade talent. In the two private schools my kids attended, the coaches had the same problem my public h/s coach had; many of the naturally good athletes don't want to work. The kids every one thought would be great as freshmen, fizzled. The kids that made the differecne by their senior year were the kids with limited talent. That's not always the case but does seem to be the norm!

 

Third, if there were a private school in Cloudland, it would probably fail. You can still say the Pledge of Alligence in Cloudland. You don't have kids shooting other kids in elementary school. Your kids don't have to be bused across town when there is a neighborhood school down the street. You don't hand out condems in school against the parents' wishes. And you have a tough, disciplined minded coach who is supported by the school board instead of being under constant attack by the PTA and the ACLU for violating kids rights. Cloudland is not a good market for a private school. Too much competition from a good public school that costs parents much less.

 

Finally, Collinwood was the fastest 1a team in the state last year and probably will be again this year.

[ELA]

When I talk about speed, I'm not talking about an idiot or someone who is uncoachable! I'm also not talking about an Ethiopian Bean pole stereo-type! I'm saying you can't really coach speed and that type of athleticism! You can't CREATE speed when the genetics aren't already in the student! It is an impossibility! Now what you do after that fact is where good coaching comes into play, but if you don't have speed, you WILL NOT GO FAR BEYOND YOUR REGION! IT WILL NOT HAPPEN! PERIOD! Take away the three boys with speed from the 2001 EZELL team? How far would they have went? Take away the speed from any of those final four teams and how many games would they have won? I will go to my grave saying that IF YOU DON'T HAVE ATHLETES ON YOUR TEAM (1-2-3-or 4) you will not win many games and you can't win a championship! It is an improbability and maybe an impossibility!

 

The reason I even bring this up is because it goes to the heart of this on-going debate! Give a coach the ability to "reach out" and add one or two real athletes to his team each year and I will show you a team that has a chance to go deep in the playoffs! Can a team with good athletes lose to a team with lesser athletes... sure, it happens once or twice each year, but that is the exception and not the rule! Don't give me one or two examples from the past 100 years where an underdog has defeated a much superior team, tell me about the 10,000 games where the team with the most athletic kids (speed, agility) always win!

 

IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE ATHLETES, YOU WILL NOT GO FAR! IF YOU CAN REACH OUT AND PICK UP ATHLETES OUTSIDE OF YOUR ZONE, YOU ONLY NEED ONE OR TWO to make a difference.

[panfan]

ELA,

 

As you know, I am no longer a high school coach as I have moved back into graduate school full time, but to answer your question:

I would guess we had maybe 5 to 7 run better than 4.8. What does that have to do with a split or no split? I skipped some posts, so maybe I missed something. All our skilled guys either run track, play communism, or baseball. All three of those coaches teach great form running and include quickness drills in their practices. Plus our voluntary workouts, which go all winter and all summer, include agilities and running drills. You have said in a post that you can't teach speed. That is correct, but you can maximize potential. Our strength coach is a gift from above. He can't take 5.5 and make them 4.8, but he can take 5.0 and make them 4.75 or 4.9ers and make them 4.7. Either way, what does this have to do with a split? Do you think we take a stopwatch to 4th graders and then try to get them in school?

 

Pujo, if you are not losing any kids to private schools, what are you crying about. Cloudland gets no "private rejects" b/c no kids in that area ever try to go to a private school. In fact, no 1A public gets private rejects. 1A publics get the huge benefit of having an entire county mandaded to go to their school. What a great deal that would be. Anyway, you are proving to have no clue, so I will no longer speak with you.

 

ELA, I WAS IN TYPE MODE WHILE YOU WERE POSTING THE LAST ONE. I SEE WHAT YOU were trying to say. I don't agree that coaches "reach out", but I see what you were saying.

[Edited by panfan on 7/2/02 9:27A]