Here's a thought?

[BDURHAM]

Don Haney:

 

Welcome to Green Acres and the forum where any thread is hijacked by the VolGen and...wait a minute, you actually brought up the VolGen's favorite topic. He must have felt as though Ann Margaret got his phone number and called him for a date when he saw your post on the MAGNETS!!!!!!

 

I think Indian and some others may have covered this in this particulat thread, but I am punch drunk from the VolGens magnate left jab, so my memory is shaky. Tyner is a different type of animal -- it is both a zoned and magnate school.

 

Chattanooga has other pure magnet schools, but they don't play football. None of the Chattanooga magnets have dominated in any sport -- to my knowledge.

 

I would assume that the TSSAA will deal with magnets on a reactive basis. Some action or proposal will have to bring it to their attention.

 

When it is discussed by the TSSAA, maybe they can call it the VolGen proposal.

 

Tyner is becoming a contender in basketball, so they might get on the TSSAA radar. One thing that makes Tyner unique is that it has been a school for decades, before it opened its zoning as a magneet school.

 

The other magnet schools in Chattanooga have been "new" entities that have a focus on arts, dance, science, etc. Howard may be another magnet/zone school, but I don't think anyone is driving across town to go there.

[Edited by StanTrott on 11-16-02 11:58P]

 

[hoop04]

I dont think that wether a magnet school is dominate or has a team in football should matter. The split will effect all sports so it would seem that you have to use a common denominator. the Idea that I hear behind the split is access to student outside a standerd zone... ok if we split teams by enrollment and then put a qulifer in saying if you are a school that gets students from outside your zone thats fine but you must play in D2. ok now we have a criteria that is based on something other than public-private which seems to be a VERY touchy subject. now once a school is in D2 than it will have to be broken out into classes this is where the problem of how good a schools is at certain sports ... Hume Fogg-Lighthouse christian. I find this an intersting idea because like you mention some schools are hurt athleticly by the fact that they recive students from out of their zone, or the focus of their school and these problems could be faced in a situation like this. of course you have to add in the problem of distance of travel whcih brings you back to the conclusion ... life is not fair never has been never will be all we can do is our best.

[lazarus]

a somewhat better tone, but rather than picking out specific teams to bump up, think about the entire tssaa membership. what criteria should be used to determine where a team should play. should it be predicated on past successes, population of the drawing area for the student body, or just of the members of the athletic teams? what about athletic budget, or the number of professional coaches? how about the school's particular rules regarding practice calendar/time? there are differences in all of these things (and more) among the members of the tssaa, and they have a significant impact on the capability of each school to compete. a totally level field isnt possible, but how fair is it possible to make things? it isnt so easy as naming a few schools whose administrations have made the choice to make athletics a priority, call them evil, and bump them up. nor will most of those considerations be changed if we kick out all the privates. has anyone thought about looking at how the ncaa does its classifications?

 

what about a class system based on:

 

1) student population

 

2)scholarships (or out of zone)

 

3)athletic budget

 

4) # of paid coaches

 

much closer to ncaa (and theirs does work a lot better than ours)

[BDURHAM]

Lazrus,

 

Are you sure the NCAA looks at student population?

[lazarus]

no, they dont, at least the scholarship level. i couldnt say for sure in the smaller classes.

 

i was really trying to hit on the things that i felt affected a schools ability to compete (excepting hard work & good coaching). i just think the old student pop method is makes about as much sense as using a ruler and cutting the state into 5 sections and giving each one a state championship. the pop method was probably enough when we all lived on gravel roads and it was tough enough just to get your kids to the local school. in todays paved over state (new license plate motto "the next new jersey") it doesnt seem to be working so well.

 

what do you think about those factors as a basis for classifications?

[VolunteerGeneral]

Laz..I don`t think budget should be a consideration. It`s true that a larger budget could be an advantage, but I don`t feel its an unfair advantage. Most money comes from Booster clubs. Even amongst public schools there are those who have really good booster clubs who do work harder and are more organized than at other schools. If a school A doesn`t have as good a booster club as school B, I don`t think you should single out school B if school A could do the same thing if they tried harder.If you went by what the school system actually allowed JCM money wise then they would probably be playing some real small schools. They harly get a dime to spend from the school system. Our Booster club though has raised over 30,000 dollars for the team.

[lazarus]

t-g, drive to wartburg. drive there from any direction.

 

i have spent a lot of time there. i like wartburg and have friends there. but tell me how their booster club can work harder and match the budget of the urban schools. i dont like the term unfair, since it sounds like one school is doing something wrong. and nobody is doing anything wrong. but having a larger budget is a huge advantage in sports.

[VolunteerGeneral]

Laz...Like I said, If you go strictly by what the local school system spends on the team, then JCM would be playing with some very small schools. And there is no way you could monitor booster clubs. For example...instead of taking checks and depositing them in an account, booster clubs could just as easily deal in cash and have no record of monies spent. All Im saying is that it`s just not a good way to split classes by. I think the best way is to come up with a system that rates teams on how good they are. That would most likely take some type of computer rating system. It could eliminate regions altogether and allow schools to pick who they want to play against. At the end of the season, the top 32 ranked teams would enter into their class playoff. This would also eliminate some of the weaker teams that seem to make the playoffs each year because they happen to be in a weak region.

The simplest system is the one we have now. I agree though that it is probably not the best.

[BDURHAM]

Lazarus,

 

I have tried to understand the determining factors for the NCAA's three divisions. This link to the NCAA site reviews the differences in the three divisions: http://www.ncaa.org/about/div_criteria.html

 

I have tried to compare your criteria with the NCAA's, and I don't see a strong comparision.

what about a class system based on:

 

1) student population

 

2)scholarships (or out of zone)

 

3)athletic budget

 

4) # of paid coaches

 

 

Although I think #1 (student population) should be a high school factor, it is not a factor with the NCAA. #2 (scholarships) is certainly a factor (Div 1&2 vs. Div. 3).

 

#3 Athletic budgets are probably tied to the NCAA's attendance requirements for football games. I really don't understand the attendance requirements if it is not related to budgets.

 

#4 is probably more of a rules issues than a classification issue for the NCAA. Should a smaller school be penalized if they have more coaches than another small school?

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

There are only four distinctive factors that I can think of for determining classifications:

 

1 Zoning

2 Student population

3 Scholarships

4 Recruiting

[lazarus]

yes, i understand that the criteria differ greatly from the ncaa. i reckon the comparison i was looking at was how much more closely the ncaa teams within a division resemble one another than what we have in the tssaa. in my thinking i am also thinking of the naia as if it were another ncaa division. maybe i should have said "collegiate" divisions instead of ncaa.

 

true-student population doesnt mean much at the colleges. smaller schools have more athletes per capita. i found it very interesting that the higher academic institutions tended to have more athletes and value that part of a student's profile during admissions. however, every school gets to select its students.

 

zoning and scholarships i combined. i could see several different ways to look at zoning. how do we determine what is a "zone" for open zoning schools? is their student population counted based on the total number of students eligible to go to the school, or do we draw a zone based on where their students actually come from and count that student population? do we draw a zone based on the number of students the school actually has, and count athletes from outside that area as out-of-zone or "scholarship"?

 

budget & coaches might should be combined as well. either way, i think it is a very significant factor in hs because there is such a drastic difference. look at the variance between schools who can make annual "big" trips, sometimes even out of state, in a tour bus, and schools who only have enough money to play the minimum number of games (in non-football sports) against teams in their immediate area. likewise, there is quite a difference between a football team with a head coach and one assistant (who must maintain the facilities in addition to coaching), and a school with a head coach, offensive & defensive co-ordinators, and 4 or 5 position coaches, with a groundskeeper on the payroll.

 

i don't like the term "punish" any more than i like "unfair". these are good things, and it is good to see them available to anyone. i believe that anything beneficial to the student-athletes should be legal. but the variances should be reflected in the classifications.

 

anyway, my ideas arent that important. i just think this sort of discussion is better than calling people names (maybe not always as much fun). i hope it will continue. i wont be able to add much for a few months. the team is going and we need to do a lot of "hard work", since "good coaching" is not our strength.

[BDURHAM]

Lazarus,

 

What would you do about small 1A teams who have a full coaching staff, volunteer ground crew, good crowds -- but have only 350 kids in their school? I can think of 4-5 small town public teams with this type of profile.

 

If we make a small 1A team move up because of their staff and budget, would that be fair? And who will really know what a football's team "real" budget is? You don't want the TSSAA going over Booster Club books do you?

[cdt]

I understand you questions and agree that it is unfair for some schools to have standards like Milan, but they do have to abide by the county lines. What are the zoning restrictions on any of the private schools, if there are any?