Some Educators Talk 'Poppycock!'

Aside from my sport consultant responsibilities with the 43rd Annual Decatur Thanksgiving (week long) Basketball Tournament, I have parallel consultant duties for the Decatur School District, which places me in the midst of conference affiliation membership. Currently, the Decatur high schools, MacArthur & Eisenhower are both members of the Big12 that includes the Champaigm, Danville, Bloomington and Normal schools.

The dynamics of dropping enrollments and inconsistent competitiveness causes Decatur's administration to request re-evaluation of conference association. A brief 'look' at the Apollo and Corn Belt Conferences did not strike a cord but a recent invitation from the Springfield based Central State 8 Conference does merit consideration. I shared some thoughts last evening at a Decatur School board meeting on the subject; the administration is still gathering 'comparative' information. A casual investigation made into the recent history of conference breakups and re-alignments around the State of Illinois, we soon uncover what I believe is a less than higher plane of secondary-educational philosophy. Bare with me please. There are approximately 850 Illinois high schools competing in sport under the auspices of the Illinois High School Association. Most of those schools offer about 15-to-17 sports' programs and again, most of those schools offer both male and female programs; lots of sports! Every sport is guaranteed a post-season berth in some IHSA playoff structure except the sport of football. Football MUST qualify for a year-end playoff spot by winning a certain percentage of games. The strength of schedule along with total wins and losses of your team and your opponents is crunched into a mathematical blender and we 'announce' football playoff teams on the Saturday of the last week of the season. We mimic the college and pros. The only difference, we 'educators' pontificate that sport is an extracurricular offering, which offers young children the opportunity to develop more completely through the sport disciplines! We are soooo full of crap! Why would we not have automatic football first-round playoff pairing for ALL schools and thus not place the ridiculous onus upon high school football coaches and their teenage players to 'validate' a degree of 'winning-worth!'

As long as this system exists, we will have conferences breaking up and schools 'looking' for that easier pathway to playoffs.