The OHSAA should be worried

Should schools finally stand up and leave the OHSAA?

  • Yes

    Votes: 61 51.7%

  • No

    Votes: 57 48.3%
  • Total voters
    118
hammer89 said:
Yes, the current CB plan was voted on by schools, and there have been three votes in the history of the OHSAA to separate, all of which obviously failed.
Should the schools want to vote on that again, they can put it on the ballot at any time.
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There have been 2, and not since 1993. It's not as simple as that hammer let's be real ok?

https://www.cleveland.com/hssports/blog/2013/03/ohsaa_private-public_separatio.html

Separation would have to happen basically over OHSAA's dead body - regardless of member school sentiment.
 
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I am suspicious of anything that begins with the phrase "there is a local congressman who is leading the effort..." Whoever thinks an organization spearheaded by a local congressman is going to result in something being operated more efficiently or more cost effectively likely hasn't had much experience with a lot of local congressmen!!! Let me guess, is this local congressman from Wayne County...
 
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Who is going to fund this new breakaway organization ? Are the administrators going to work for free ? Like Dana White said - if you don't like the way we do things, start your own. The teams that usually do all the complaining are the teams that are not competitive. If this yearplays out there will be two privates win and 5 public.
 
This is no longer a competition between private and public

it’s now urban/diverse vs all white schools.

d1-4 are all urban and diverse
D5-7 champs are all white schools.

Dissect that however you want, but the facts are there. This isn’t a big city vs small town thing either. Kirtland and Perry are suburban Cleveland schools. Yet they are almost all white.
And the same teams are winning year after year and has nothing to do with public and private.
Competitive balance created an incredible socioeconomic split among schools.
 
Oil Filter said:
I just read an article that NC went to 8 divisions. They have some weird requirement that a division can only have 64 teams, and they could have accommodated that with 7 divisions. However, they have a bunch of schools that aren't members, they wanted to leave room for expansion, and 7 divisions would put 62-3 teams in each division with little room to add more.

Or maybe that was an old article?
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Had to be old. They went from 4 to 8 when they split, and then just this year or last year went back down to 4. But the classifications never changed. It's like Texas 6A, they split after the fact into big and small tournaments in the same class.

2023 playoffs:

Friday, December 8

7:00 p.m. – 3A Championship | Hickory vs. Seventy-First at UNC
Saturday, December 9

Noon – 1A State Championship | Mount Airy vs. Tarboro at UNC
3:00 p.m. – 2A State Championship | Reidsville vs. Clinton at NCSU
7:00 p.m. – 4A State Championship | Weddington vs. Hoggard at NCSU
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Thing that sucks is for only having 4 games, the NCHSAA has to split between UNC and NC State or else too many feelings get hurt. When they had 8 classes, they usually had games at Duke as well. Except years they'd play at Wake Forest as well.

In 2019, they played two games at Duke, UNC, NC State, and Wake Forest. All games on Saturday. Two sites hosted at 11am and 3pm, while the other two hosted at 3pm and 7pm. A complete clusterfudge.

The year I went, in 2018, they had this fun schedule:

NC State University

11:00 AM (SAT) – Northeastern High School vs Reidsville High School (2A)
2:30 PM (SAT) – North Davidson High School vs Shelby High School (2AA)
6:00 PM (SAT) – Tarboro High School vs East Surry High School (1AA)

UNC-Chapel Hill

7:30 PM (FRI) – Southeast Guilford High School vs Weddington High School (3AA)
11:00 AM (SAT)– Jacksonville High School vs Charlotte Catholic High School (3A)

Duke University

7:30 PM (FRI) – Wake Forest High School vs Vance High School (4AA)
3:00 PM (SAT) – Pamlico County High School vs Murphy High School (1A)
7:00 PM (SAT) – Scotland County High School vs East Forsyth High School (4A)
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I went to three of the 8. Friday at UNC, and the two earliest games at NC State. It's one of the messiest championship rounds in the country. Save for maybe Kansas, Connecticut, or Montana/New Mexico. And those last two only because highest seed hosts.
 
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TBone 22 said:
I truly believe that if you make the final four in football multiple years those teams get bumped up a division.
Akron Hoban, Massillon, Glenville, Marion Local, Kirkland, etc, should all be bumped up a division. Teams that don’t win get bumped down. It would take some major work each year by a committee to accomplish this task. Determining what teams belong where. But with time it could be worked out. Sure there’s challenges to this. With change there always is. But simply saying bump up by enrollment or private vs public is not the answer. It’s the easy answer. But not the correct answer. Appeasing the masses is all the OHSAA is concerned with. Not putting in the work to get it right. One example that really shows the OHSAA could care less is the Glenville loophole. Most boys in Glenville’s roster attend the Ginn Academy. That allows Glenville to use waters down boys enrollment numbers moving Glenville to
D-4. How is this possible. Things need to change. Loopholes need to be closed. A committee needs to be formed to make the proper adjustments to determine who plays in what division.
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I have a Biden-voting friend that agrees with you.

"It's not fair that the best teams win all the time."
 
Sykotyk said:
One of the biggest reasons there won't be a split or a new association, etc... Indifference. It's not that the schools really don't have issues with OHSAA here or there. It's a matter of them not caring enough to follow through with solving those problems. The status quo works well enough as is, so it just continues.
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Precisely. Great call. Zero chance of some big movement to "defend the OHSAA."
 
AHM said:
This is no longer a competition between private and public

it’s now urban/diverse vs all white schools.

d1-4 are all urban and diverse
D5-7 champs are all white schools.

Dissect that however you want, but the facts are there. This isn’t a big city vs small town thing either. Kirtland and Perry are suburban Cleveland schools. Yet they are almost all white.
And the same teams are winning year after year and has nothing to do with public and private.
Competitive balance created an incredible socioeconomic split among schools.
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That's a great post. Never thought of it like that.
 
TheBigRed1 said:
Over the years I've had quite a few close friends involved in athletics. I am very close with 2 ADs in the Dayton area. Rumors are that local ADs have been meeting the last several weeks to set out a plan to leave the OHSAA and start an independent organization. Supposedly there is a local congressman who is leading the effort and wants to establish a new, state led, athletic association. It's all a little fuzzy and I don't know how much is factual but it sounds like this has been an culminating event over the last few years based on the following:

1. The OHSAA has been charging outrageous gate prices for all playoff games (but especially football). Schools are very upset because this money NEVER finds its way back to the schools. Where is it all going? The OHSAA is making tens of thousands of dollars PER playoff football game while. For those of you that don't know, Ohio has 7 divisions with 64 teams making the playoffs per division....Start doing the math there. Host schools get a few thousand to host and then get to keep the concession money. The rest goes directly to the OHSAA.

2. With all that funding, the OHSAA has still not fully addressed the officiating situation. I am not one to blame officials for games, but man the officiating can be absolutely BRUTAL at times. Their is a shortage, i understand, but provide higher training and incentive for these refs to get better!

3. Going off the above, the OHSAA has done nothing to address the unruly fans. ADs are tired of having to escort people out of games which often times gets physical. They don't want the liability of that and they're sick of the OHSAA not doing anything. The "Respect the Game Program" that was recently relaunched is nothing but a way for the OHSAA to put the responsibility back into the hands of the...you guessed it...athletic directors.

4. The disparity between public and parochial schools is becoming out of control. Just take a look at the state finals for football. Division I, II, and III all dominated by private schools. Toledo Central Catholic, a school that won Division II last year, was bumped down to Division III this year and wins the finals in dominant fashion. ADs are tired of seeing their public school kids get robbed of a real chance. They want parochial and public schools separated come state tournament time.

These are the biggest reasons I was told but I know they are working on drafting an entire letter to send to the OHSAA with their demands. They want the OHSAA to provide a real plan and address these issues immediately or they are going to pull out and start a new state ran athletic association. Rumors are they have atleast 65 schools who are willing to sign onto this letter and the numbers will grow by the weeks.

Before anyone comes at me, I just want to clarify that the above words are not mine-- this is all information I have been verbally told by 2 very reliable sources. Take how you want.
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One could only hope
 
First people were crying because privates won to much. Now the publics are winning a majority of the divisions - but it's the wrong publics. Nothing will make these people happy. You can split public and privates and they will cry about the open enrollment schools or the urban publics playing their rural schools. You can have 20 divisions and these people still will not be happy.
 
Bball216 said:
First people were crying because privates won to much. Now the publics are winning a majority of the divisions - but it's the wrong publics. Nothing will make these people happy. You can split public and privates and they will cry about the open enrollment schools or the urban publics playing their rural schools. You can have 20 divisions and these people still will not be happy.
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How bout we just stop having the playoffs since we all can’t agree. Play your ten games and move on to basketball. Haha
 
As a private school supporter, I could still understand the argument for competitive balance. And while I generally opposed CB, it wasn't because I was against it's goal as much as I was against the manner in which they tried to solve the problem. IMO the current iteration of CB never took into account the geography of the general population of a private school's student body. This, plus the large number of exceptions, IMO renders CB largely ineffective. I also oppose just bumping up teams that win a title because that seems a little arbitrary for my tastes. I have always been of the opinion that you could solve most of the issues by creating a metric composed of the size of the school and the size of the schools that team plays. Let's take TCC and Glenwood as examples since those teams seem to be getting the most scrutiny in this round of the CB argument. By enrollment, they are D3 and D4, respectively. But if you look at their football schedules, they play almost exclusively D1 and D2 teams. Which I take no issue with; and which I, in fact, applaud. However, I would suggest that a team should play in the playoffs at the same level they play in the regular season. I would suggest that neither TCC or Glenwood (or any other school similarly situated) would attract the caliber of athletes they do if they played a D3 or D4 regular season schedule. So, I can see the argument that it isn't right for the first D4 school Glenwood, for example, plays is in the playoffs. In my view, if you start with a school's enrollment (because football is a game of attrition and, thus, size does matter!) weighted by that team's regular season schedule, then you should be able to come up with a formula that would more rationally place that team for playoff purposes. IMO CB is ineffective, and separation is unnecessary. A metric like this (which wouldn't be hard to calculate) would seem to me to solve many of the issues being argued.
 
One big problem with CB is that it assumes all kids are equal. If a school has a CB of 110, there is no way that they all contribute meaningfully. And yet, OHSAA sees the third-string long snapper as the same as the starting QB.

Let me build an all-star team from the best in the county (any county). I'll take the kids that I want, have a minimal CB, and run roughshod. Meanwhile, you can have 2x or 3x the CB with kids who might be there because of logistics, girlfriends, family connections, academics, whatever, and OHSAA sees you as the larger transgressor.
 
Supposedly there is a local congressman who is leading the effort and wants to establish a new, state led, athletic association.

Translation: " I want to be re-elected, so I will seize on a convenient ( non-threatening) issue so I can appear as if I care. Why bother about more pressing issues that will affect the entire state?"
 
Bottom line: the OHSAA isn't worried; unnamed politicians advocating a popular [at least in their district] law is an oxymoron.
Politicians advocating a popular law tend to broadcast it far and wide and make sure their name is associated with it.
 
chs1971 said:
I have a Biden-voting friend that agrees with you.

"It's not fair that the best teams win all the time."
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If your best employee was greeting people at the door, wouldn't you want to move them to a more challenging position?

If your son or daughter was getting straight As in remedial classes, wouldn't you want them to move up to something a bit more challenging even if it meant maybe not getting As ever time?

You're too hung up on the prestige of a title and not actually being better. What you're arguing for, whether you realize it or not, is to eliminate divisions and just have one title. Why create a title just so little ol' Marion Local can be champions. Let them play everyone then.
 
commodore20 said:
One thing with CB that needs issued....if you win a state championship in a Division, the next year you should automatically be bumped up a division. If you don't win it the next year, drop back down a division. You can inadvertently play leapfrog that way, but in the long run would help competition.
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Based on this logic, Marion Local would be what division by now?
 
I’d like to see two private school divisions added, large and small. I’d assume Massillon, Mentor, Avon and Glenville would add regular season games against teams like Hoban, Ed’s, TCC ect in the regular season. I think this would make for a more fun regular season and playoff.
 
TIGER27 said:
I’d like to see two private school divisions added, large and small. I’d assume Massillon, Mentor, Avon and Glenville would add regular season games against teams like Hoban, Ed’s, TCC ect in the regular season. I think this would make for a more fun regular season and playoff.
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I don't see why a split would be needed to have those games. It's not like how it used to be where you risk losing and possibly missing the playoffs because you played a tough schedule.

The issue with the split is were going to have situations sort of like we have right now. Is Massillon or Eds the "real" state champ? Yes, Massillon won the regular season game, but what if they didn't play and both went 16-0? We'd all be begging for one more week.
 
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