PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC

[PHargis]

It appears to me any solutions have been started from the wrong end of the stick and would require compromise from all parties to even be a part of the solution. Solutions need to be agreed to be temporary for some time. After all if some Agency can make a mess out of an insignificant football playoff system, why not "try" some creative situations with the education part of the program.

The last post was an informative and good post and explains a lot. Separation of parts of society and antagnostic dividing up sides is not an answer to anything, in fact, will in time develop. IMO something which will degrade a society, "the inability to understand and to some degree accept other peoples viewpoints."(that takes some practice), and why does it seem reasonable to start all of that at a young age.

[itzme]

I found this article in the wrestling forum thought it fit better here.

http://chattanoogan.com/articles/article_164921.asp

I didn't think so much of Mr. Exum's opinion piece. He has been a bit sloppy with the facts in order to support his opinion. Some facts he missed: (1) there is one voting member of the TSSAA Legislative Council who is from a private school, Steve Harris of FRA; (2) there are several "ex officio" members of the Legislative Council and Board of Control who sit at the table and have equal input at meetings, although they do not have a vote, and one of those is a representative chosen by the independent schools; (3) there is a separate Division II Committee that meets regularly and provides input and recommendations to the Board of Control and the Legislative Council; (4) there are no independent school heads on the Board of Control in part because they do not seek a position -- these are elected positions, and the only way to get elected is to run; (5) there have been four occasions when independent school heads have run for positions on the Board of Control, and they won two of the four times; (6) there have been women who served on the Legislative Council or Board of Control, but again to do so one must run for election -- TSSAA does not appoint the members of these bodies, they are member school administrators who run for election within the nine geographic districts from which they are chosen; (7) there have been any number of African-American members of the Board of Control.

 

He also is a little bit unfair with his criticism of TSSAA related to the creation of Division II. Before Division II was created, TSSAA had a "quota rule" that limited the number of student-athletes receiving need-based financial aid who would be eligible in the various sports. The quota rule actually originated with independent schools to deal with concerns that the larger and better financed independent schools would use financial aid to lure students away from the independent schools that were not as well financed. Over the years, the financial aid and quota rule issues became problematic for public and independent schools alike. The dominance of a couple of private schools in football (and to a lesser degree wrestling) led some public school principals to complain that financial aid was being used to lure talented athletes away from the public schools. At the same time, a number of private schools were complaining that the limitation of the quota rule was unfair because it forced students and their families to choose between aid and participation in a school activity, and it also was contrary to the missions of those schools to have broad participation among their students in interscholastic athletics. There were a number of "committee" meetings to address these issues in the early 1990s, but they made little progress. Eventually the loudest proponents of the various positions on these issues became more and more vocal, finding whatever ammunition they could to support their positions -- the position of some public school heads that there should be complete separation between public and private schools for athletics, and the position of some independent school heads that there should be no restrictions on the number of students who could receive need-based aid and participate in athletics. Ultimately, the creation of the Division II classification was a compromise of sorts, designed to avoid the extreme consequences of either position. There would be separation of sorts (although the schools still could compete in the regular season by choice) between schools that give need-based aid to students who participate in athletics and those that do not, and there would be no more quotas for those schools that went to Division II. This is not the best of results, not fully satisfactory to anyone, but that is in essence the definition of a compromise. It is something that no one fully likes but everyone can manage to live with. And it seems better than either of the more extreme alternatives would have been for the mass of member schools, both public and independent, that comprise the TSSAA.

 

Personally, I would like to see the exploration of other more creative alternatives to facilitate bringing and keeping the various types of schools together rather than splitting them up. But in the meantime, I just don't think Mr. Exum's criticism of TSSAA, while offered with some journalistic flair, is justified or based in fact.

 

Wow. I guess one could term the creation of DII a "compromise" in the same sense that it's a compromise when an armed robber draws a gun, walks up to someone and demands "your money or your life", then the victim gives them their money. Hey...they didn't choose to give them their life, so it was a compromise.

 

Nice try Rick. Your rebuttal was rendered with some nice flair, reminiscent of what might be heard in a courtroom, but gives a truly inaccurate picture of what actually happened. The aid granting schools were forced into DII, against their will.

[big red big blue]

Wow. I guess one could term the creation of DII a "compromise" in the same sense that it's a compromise when an armed robber draws a gun, walks up to someone and demands "your money or your life", then the victim gives them their money. Hey...they didn't choose to give them their life, so it was a compromise.

 

Nice try Rick. Your rebuttal was rendered with some nice flair, reminiscent of what might be heard in a courtroom, but gives a truly inaccurate picture of what actually happened. The aid granting schools were forced into DII, against their will.

 

that's priceless....

 

well said....sort of like what my friend once told me about getting laid off.

"I had a disagreement with management..."

"really? over what?"

"I wanted to keep working there, and management disagreed with me."

 

So, I'd say, we had a disagreement with the people in D1, in that we wanted to keep a coherent league together where publics and privates played together as they had for decades, and the public schools disagreed with us.

[Grunt]

Wow. I guess one could term the creation of DII a "compromise" in the same sense that it's a compromise when an armed robber draws a gun, walks up to someone and demands "your money or your life", then the victim gives them their money. Hey...they didn't choose to give them their life, so it was a compromise.

 

Nice try Rick. Your rebuttal was rendered with some nice flair, reminiscent of what might be heard in a courtroom, but gives a truly inaccurate picture of what actually happened. The aid granting schools were forced into DII, against their will.

 

that's priceless....

 

well said....sort of like what my friend once told me about getting laid off.

"I had a disagreement with management..."

"really? over what?"

"I wanted to keep working there, and management disagreed with me."

 

So, I'd say, we had a disagreement with the people in D1, in that we wanted to keep a coherent league together where publics and privates played together as they had for decades, and the public schools disagreed with us.

 

And for very good reason, which has been explained over & over & over........

[big red big blue]

Wow. I guess one could term the creation of DII a "compromise" in the same sense that it's a compromise when an armed robber draws a gun, walks up to someone and demands "your money or your life", then the victim gives them their money. Hey...they didn't choose to give them their life, so it was a compromise.

 

Nice try Rick. Your rebuttal was rendered with some nice flair, reminiscent of what might be heard in a courtroom, but gives a truly inaccurate picture of what actually happened. The aid granting schools were forced into DII, against their will.

 

that's priceless....

 

well said....sort of like what my friend once told me about getting laid off.

"I had a disagreement with management..."

"really? over what?"

"I wanted to keep working there, and management disagreed with me."

 

So, I'd say, we had a disagreement with the people in D1, in that we wanted to keep a coherent league together where publics and privates played together as they had for decades, and the public schools disagreed with us.

 

And for very good reason, which has been explained over & over & over........

 

if by good reason you mean, "we were angry at BA for winning that 5A title in 1995" then you are right, it was a good reason.

 

How many titles in football did MBA, CBHS, FRHS, Baylor, and McCallie combine for during the pre-split play-off era? Those are the financial-aid giving teams that competed in the highest classification for the duration of its availability. What about basketball? Baseball? Track and Field? I've always been curious about the excessive winning that the D2 teams were responsible for that necessitated the formation of their own division, but never been able to find it. Thanks in advance.

[big red big blue]

if the creation of d2 was a "compromise" I'd be curious to know what exactly the membership of d1 was forced to "give up." that's what compromise entails. Certain people clamored loudly for private schools to go away to their own division. Those "clamorers" now refuse to play private schools in any regular season endeavor. So the fact that they "can" play us in the regular season isn't giving something up. A compromise would have been something like "okay you won't compete with those schools in the post season for championships, but you are required to play them in the regular season like you have for decades, lest those schools be forced to schedule all over the state and southeast just to fill out a regular season schedule." Obviously no such requirement was asked of the public schools. Thankfully many have agreed to play those games, but of course we are completely at their mercy, as evidenced recently by Hillsboro's decision to drop MBA from its schedule, despite record attendance at either place and nail-biting games. At the same time, they still get local games, a normal play-off, a regular state championship game on the 1st Saturday in December...all with a cherry on top, no private schools to challenge their supremacy. One thing you will hear from certain dumb people in this state is, "we'll never play those schools that recruit."

 

On the other hand, we in D2 have been shoe-horned into a league and play-off system that is dramatically different from the one we left, playing our state title game on whatever weeknight works best for the D1 schedule, abandonment of local rivalry games, far flung travel all over the state and beyond, etc.

 

And don't kid yourselves...had we made the decision, back in '96, to abandon financial aid, those whiny complainers would have found some other reason to dispatch us to our own division the minute we won something without it. They knew there was no way we could operate our schools without financial aid so that's what they latched onto.

[PHargis]

Very good post and a side I had not heard. How could you say though privates could not operate with out aid? Haven't heard that side. What made anyone think that?

[Indian]

The compromise was that many private schools remained in Division I.

 

McCallie cheated to such a degree their wrestling program was temporarily halted. Let's not forget that as a factor in the partial split.

[rick7425]

Wow. I guess one could term the creation of DII a "compromise" in the same sense that it's a compromise when an armed robber draws a gun, walks up to someone and demands "your money or your life", then the victim gives them their money. Hey...they didn't choose to give them their life, so it was a compromise.

 

Nice try Rick. Your rebuttal was rendered with some nice flair, reminiscent of what might be heard in a courtroom, but gives a truly inaccurate picture of what actually happened. The aid granting schools were forced into DII, against their will.

Actually it is a quite accurate picture of what happened. The compromise was that independent schools could choose whether to go to Division II or stay in Division I, depending on whether they chose to allow recipients of financial aid to participate in interscholastic athletics. Without the compromise, every independent school would have been in a separate division.

 

I didn't say I liked the result. I would have preferred that all the schools remain together somehow. But the people making the most noise on both sides of the equation back then were pretty uncompromising. Some outspoken public school folks wanted total separation. Some outspoken private school folks failed to recognize that the climate was all wrong to be pressing for the elimination of the financial aid quotas.

 

Do you think the Division II schools would be willing to go back to the old quota rule? I doubt it. So as much as they dislike Division II, they did get part of what they wanted also. It was indeed a compromise.

 

Not flair, just the facts.

[big red big blue]

Very good post and a side I had not heard. How could you say though privates could not operate with out aid? Haven't heard that side. What made anyone think that?

 

Because these schools for one don't care about sports half as much as some have worked it out in their heads. It's much more important for these schools that they be inclusive and diverse than it is to say, "we can play sports against Riverdale, Hillwood and Overton, but the catch is, the team has to be made up of only the wealthiest people in the area who are fully capable of paying the full tuition without assistance. If you receive financial aid, enjoy intramurals." It was never an option. Never a consideration. For MBA, BA, etc. The kids who apply aren't screened for "ability to pay." And they don't want some "caste system" within the school where the rich kids get to play sports and the poor kids don't. That's why there was never a multiplier (that came later for the non-financial aid d1 privates), because we were already all playing with de facto multiplier. They latched onto the thing we couldn't do without.

 

 

The only thing Rick is right about is that the quota system was tough to stomach and we all loathed it. Mainly because the coaches had no idea who was on financial aid, and then at some point someone handed them a list and said "choose 4 of these guys to dress out; the rest cannot." Can you imagine how embarassing that was for some kids? How do you pick? Seniority? Talent?

 

So in itzme's metaphor, the fact that we got to abandon that system is the equivalent of, "after the gunman spared your life, you finally dropped 30 pounds you'd been working on for the past few years. So you won in that not only are you not dead, you got the chance to lose weight!"

[itzme]

I think my analogy holds up. Thanks for playing.

[rick7425]

Because these schools for one don't care about sports half as much as some have worked it out in their heads. It's much more important for these schools that they be inclusive and diverse than it is to say, "we can play sports against Riverdale, Hillwood and Overton, but the catch is, the team has to be made up of only the wealthiest people in the area who are fully capable of paying the full tuition without assistance. If you receive financial aid, enjoy intramurals." It was never an option. Never a consideration. For MBA, BA, etc. The kids who apply aren't screened for "ability to pay." And they don't want some "caste system" within the school where the rich kids get to play sports and the poor kids don't. That's why there was never a multiplier (that came later for the non-financial aid d1 privates), because we were already all playing with de facto multiplier. They latched onto the thing we couldn't do without.

 

 

The only thing Rick is right about is that the quota system was tough to stomach and we all loathed it. Mainly because the coaches had no idea who was on financial aid, and then at some point someone handed them a list and said "choose 4 of these guys to dress out; the rest cannot." Can you imagine how embarassing that was for some kids? How do you pick? Seniority? Talent?

 

So in itzme's metaphor, the fact that we got to abandon that system is the equivalent of, "after the gunman spared your life, you finally dropped 30 pounds you'd been working on for the past few years. So you won in that not only are you not dead, you got the chance to lose weight!"

 

The problem with this debate today remains the same as it was fifteen years ago -- too many people on either side of the aisle are unwilling to consider the others' perspective, too many are unwilling to admit that there may be some holes in their own arguments. That leaves the loudest proponents on each side in positions where they simply refuse to compromise. Consequently they don't offer viable solutions, they just complain about the solutions that others are left to try and develop.

 

I am sure that what you say is mostly true for most independent schools. But in the breadth of your statements, applied without exception, you may be ignoring a couple of elephants that were in the room when Division II was created. On the flip side, I personally think it was wrong for some of the most vocal public school leaders to lump all the independent schools together as though they were all the same.

 

It would be nice to see some public and independent school leaders come together and start exploring new ideas for how to improve the situation. It is going to take some creative thinking. Unfortunately, there really wasn't enough of that going on fifteen years ago, and there isn't enough of it now.