Enrollment Numbers

[Southtowner]

4 minutes ago, orngnblk said:

Agree.Im just sulking right now.

I understand. 

[Southtowner]

For the most part I've been checking the TSSAA website to see if any changes have been made to the enrollment numbers. 

As I recall in 2020, there were several discrepancies (38, 39 ?) in what was posted first by the TSSAA and what the State Dept of Education had.  So once the Association cross referenced those numbers a revised enrollment list was issued.

Of course 2020 was a peculiar year to say the least.  

As of now, I haven't seen anything different. 

I'm thinking next week the classes will be drawn.  Or the next.  Depending on whether the numbers match at both.

Then schools will be given a week to decide if they're gonna play up.

Then regions will be drawn. 

Then schools can petition to be moved from one region to another.  It happens.

[ChineseFlu]

16 hours ago, crow said:

A hard cut off makes it easy to “manage” enrollment to stay 1A. Honestly what teams are or around 400 do y’all play that you’re not competitive with? 1A is consistently stating they’re competitive with 2A and overall I agree. 

I've posted a couple of other times that not only should enrollment numbers be looked at, but varsity roster numbers over a period of 8-10 years of schools should be looked at as well.  This especially for 1A and 2A schools.  A good example of this is your region Crow.  Wartburg shows 383 and never dress more than 30 or so players.  Everyone else in that region dress 40-50 plus.  Coalfield enrollment numbers are always 160 (check it, every single year) and dress 45 plus.  Those two schools should be swapped.   

[crow]

17 minutes ago, ChineseFlu said:

I've posted a couple of other times that not only should enrollment numbers be looked at, but varsity roster numbers over a period of 8-10 years of schools should be looked at as well.  This especially for 1A and 2A schools.  A good example of this is your region Crow.  Wartburg shows 383 and never dress more than 30 or so players.  Everyone else in that region dress 40-50 plus.  Coalfield enrollment numbers are always 160 (check it, every single year) and dress 45 plus.  Those two schools should be swapped.   

Interesting perspective on the subject and I mostly agree. The only true issue I could see is not with the honest programs but with the few that aren’t. Just like a hard cutoff for a given classification could be “managed” if it is a known constant cutoff then the same could be said for roster numbers. I’ll take us as an example. We typically have 50-60 on the team. Usually dress 50ish any given night. Well if the varsity roster cutoff for 1A was 27 then we could easily put half on the “JV” roster. We don’t utilize that many different players in quality minutes anyway. I believe that would lead to a system of very good teams playing down essentially and then take away their ability to sub when the games did get out of hand as the 2nd and 3rd teamers aren’t available to play because they’ve been placed in JV to manage varsity numbers. I honestly feel like a varying cutoff number based on equal numbers of teams per classification is the best system overall. Unfortunately any cutoff that’s constant from year to year will be manipulated by some. As for the smaller schools it’s unfortunate but as time goes on the middle and upper 1A schools will grow out and the smallest schools will become increasingly scarce I believe. As population grows the 1A cutoff will continue to climb and the true small schools will have difficult decisions to make regarding football. All just my opinion. 

Edited October 8, 2022 by crow

[crow]

19 minutes ago, ChineseFlu said:

I've posted a couple of other times that not only should enrollment numbers be looked at, but varsity roster numbers over a period of 8-10 years of schools should be looked at as well.  This especially for 1A and 2A schools.  A good example of this is your region Crow.  Wartburg shows 383 and never dress more than 30 or so players.  Everyone else in that region dress 40-50 plus.  Coalfield enrollment numbers are always 160 (check it, every single year) and dress 45 plus.  Those two schools should be swapped.   

Look at Scott. Over 800 enrollment but dress the same or less as wartburg most years. Maybe they should be 1A?

[Indian]

I don't think you could do roster size, potentially some would limit the number playing in order to drop. Without going into a bunch of wording, wouldn't mind a drop of the 5 lowest performing over the previous four years, from 2A to 1A up to 6A to 5A. 6A would have 5 fewer than the rest. Or you could make it 8. Ten might be too much. If they have at least 1 winning season in their lower class over the next 2, they move back up. 

[HevyReturns]

Roster size just wouldn’t work. Someone posted somewhere about the smallest of the small er schools might ought consider going to 8 man football (or is it 7 man?). Those teams are more numerous than many realize, still good competition & incentives to participate, with local community support. Could TSSAA make a ruling that all schools below such amount must play short-roster ball, then teams between this & this amount have an option, then team’s above that amount of students go 11 man? IDK, just jabbering my jaws & thinking out loud. Is this a possibility?? 

[mrbigster]

27 minutes ago, HevyReturns said:

Roster size just wouldn’t work. Someone posted somewhere about the smallest of the small er schools might ought consider going to 8 man football (or is it 7 man?). Those teams are more numerous than many realize, still good competition & incentives to participate, with local community support. Could TSSAA make a ruling that all schools below such amount must play short-roster ball, then teams between this & this amount have an option, then team’s above that amount of students go 11 man? IDK, just jabbering my jaws & thinking out loud. Is this a possibility?? 

I'd never hope LC goes to 8 man football.Id rather lose to a Union City,a Trenton.Probably would stop going.

Edited October 9, 2022 by mrbigster

[Classless]

9 hours ago, Indian said:

I don't think you could do roster size, potentially some would limit the number playing in order to drop. Without going into a bunch of wording, wouldn't mind a drop of the 5 lowest performing over the previous four years, from 2A to 1A up to 6A to 5A. 6A would have 5 fewer than the rest. Or you could make it 8. Ten might be too much. If they have at least 1 winning season in their lower class over the next 2, they move back up. 

Without a doubt coaches would manipulate the roster size to stay in a smaller class. York dresses close to 40 to 50 kids I’m sure, but I would guess half the dressed kids see the field on Friday night. Numbers at York seem to vary with the coach we seem to change coaches every 3 years at least and the numbers have gone up and down with with the coach hires.  

[Southtowner]

On 10/6/2022 at 3:00 PM, Southtowner said:

I counted 299 DI football playing schools. I could be off by a couple & that's important as DI classes will be divided equally as possible. 

I posed a couple questions to the one person that should know this above anyone else.  I'm hoping they will respond.

Got a response today.  Said there are 299 football playing schools in DI.

[tradertwo]

On 10/8/2022 at 8:42 AM, crow said:

Interesting perspective on the subject and I mostly agree. The only true issue I could see is not with the honest programs but with the few that aren’t. Just like a hard cutoff for a given classification could be “managed” if it is a known constant cutoff then the same could be said for roster numbers. I’ll take us as an example. We typically have 50-60 on the team. Usually dress 50ish any given night. Well if the varsity roster cutoff for 1A was 27 then we could easily put half on the “JV” roster. We don’t utilize that many different players in quality minutes anyway. I believe that would lead to a system of very good teams playing down essentially and then take away their ability to sub when the games did get out of hand as the 2nd and 3rd teamers aren’t available to play because they’ve been placed in JV to manage varsity numbers. I honestly feel like a varying cutoff number based on equal numbers of teams per classification is the best system overall. Unfortunately any cutoff that’s constant from year to year will be manipulated by some. As for the smaller schools it’s unfortunate but as time goes on the middle and upper 1A schools will grow out and the smallest schools will become increasingly scarce I believe. As population grows the 1A cutoff will continue to climb and the true small schools will have difficult decisions to make regarding football. All just my opinion. 

In my opinion, your opinion is the only one that is feasible. Just as you say, teams have the option of keeping kids associated with the football program, yet not listed on the varsity roster. You stated that y'all typically dress 50'ish players on a given night, and that would place Oneida in the same classification as all the NFL teams, who limit their roster to 53 players. Any hard and fast number determined by any other means than simple division of participating teams into equal (approximate) classifications could and would cause manipulation. Another side effect would be the process of determining the cutoff numbers on the front end...set a hard and fast 1A cutoff at 375 for a four year period, and half the 1A teams would come in at 374, but there would be virtually no teams reporting 376 to over 400. Anyone who casually follows this subject could have guessed the numbers within 25/30 kids anyway. We're in the process of replacing our Director of Schools and just replaced our Principal in July, so nobody "in charge" was focused on our enrollment throughout the summer, and the result is that we're over capacity to the tune of about 12%, which has caused major problems such as teachers "floating", class sizes at legal limits, and students having problems with duplicate courses...long story short, I knew instantly when I heard our enrollment number that we'd be moving up a class, even though we're only over our previous number by 28. 

[Mooreboy3]

On 6/29/2022 at 7:45 AM, SurfingPatriot786 said:

When does TSSAA meet about this? I know it does not go into affect until 2023 - 2024 school year, but when does the meeting actually happen? December? Spring? Just curious when we would actually get an idea of how things are going to be in place for the next enrollment period.

I was just told the meeting will be held in November.