I understand. This year, according to Drew Pasteur, Padua has the #6 most difficult schedule in D3. They're 4-5 and likely to move to 4-6 since they play D2 Walsh on Friday. Still, Drew Pasteur has Padua ranked #8 in D3/R10. Similar to last year when Padua had a tough schedule, squeaked into the playoffs as the #12 seed at 5-5, and put a running clock on Buckeye in the first round and Norton in the 3rd round of the playoffs.
Records and Harbin points aren't perfect rating systems. Harbins do a poor job of picking the top 8 since the data shows that 9-12 seeds have a 50/50 split with 5-8 seeds. But the data also shows that the Region winners are almost always from among the Top 8, usually the Top 4, so arguing about #12 - #20 is a fool's errand. I'm sure Cardinal Mooney was a fine team. Same for SVSM, same for Padua this season. In the end, Harbins get the Top 4 pretty damn accurate.
Note the common thread here. Parochial schools have a hard time getting public school teams in their Region, let alone Division, to play them in OOC games. That's increasing the chances for public schools in weak conferences (like Westlake, for example, in D2/R6) to get playoff berths and it hurts parochial schools with better programs because they beat each other up.
I've seen it from the public-school side as 3 of my kids attended public school. Did well in the regular season only to get slaughtered by St. Ignatius. So, I have limited sympathy for the parochial schools given their advantages despite being a Padua fan today.
Bitter pill, but mid-tier parochial schools will get squeezed out of the playoffs even when they're better than, say, seeds 12-16, due to their schedule difficulties. No complaints though; had Padua held on in the 2nd half in just one of three of its losses, they'd be 5-4 and a virtual lock for a playoff berth. Either way, they're not going to beat Tiffin or TCC, so it's a lot of meaningless speculation.
I'm in general agreement with this post and "liked" it. Had the Harbins done the "right" thing in 1972 and accounted for a teams losses, this whole argument might be a moot point. I think the "better" teams would show up in the top 8 even more often than they do.
I also had the schedule discussion on another thread. You can go 3-7, lose to say 5 "good / better" teams in your season in close games and, yes, you can be "better" than your record makes you look. To me that screams overscheduling, and I know of another good example of it from years ago that cost a "better" team a 1-8 playoff spot. Accounting for losses as well as wins would help this issue. (There are no such thing as "Good losses". EACH LOSS WOULD BE PENALIZED. The worse a team you lost to, the stiffer the penalty.)
If teams have the above trouble because they HAVE to schedule "up", (IOW, they are probably playing in the wrong Division regardless of enrollment if no schools of comparable size will play them) they should form an 8-team league and play each other, regardless of geography (They could make it a "Football Only" league, to save on travel in their non-revenue, Olympic etc. sports. FO leagues were once a fairly common alternative in Ohio, for whatever strange reason they have fallen from favor. Massillon has played in at least 2 of these over their history, and Warren Western Reserve played in back-to-back State Title Games in 1972-73 playing out of such a league. Winning of course, in 1972. There were some basketball only leagues too.)
I figure, if they can't get games against comparable size/enrollment teams, they are better than their present Division and s/b moved up.
There should be something added to the system that automatically moves a team up over say a last 10-years assessment of a teams (read: "program's") playoff success. Which would alleviate poor records because of scheduling above the Division you are in. Or, both components.
No one says that Divisions HAVE to be based by rule on pure enrollment only. Perhaps playoff success over a long period of years, to prevent that one-off great senior class from putting you in over your head, should be addressed or added to the system.
One more thing, it appears that the competitive balance formula isn't doing the job it was supposed to do. I'm sure most here would agree that there are certain teams in certain Divisions that should be, or at least could be, playing higher.
