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IHSA has submitted a new proposal that will be voted on soon.
It affects football and the post-season playoffs....but it will result in a drastic change to the current landscape and some of those changes will definitely affect basketball and other sports.
Basically, the IHSA will divide the state into districts and schools in each district will be required to play each other with the results determining post-season eligibility and seeding.
Effectively, this proposal will destroy any and all conferences and conference-affiliation because it will be the IHSA who actually determines who you MUST PLAY...
And of course if there are no football conferences, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it won't be long until IHSA does the same to basketball and wipes out conferences there, too.
But the real worry is that this gives IHSA way, way too much power......they can and WILL essentially GERRYMANDER to their hearts delight to be sure the results and the outcome is to their liking.
Traditional conference rivalries and other LONG TERM rivalries can and will be lost forever as teams are told who to play and IHSA may not put teams into districts the way the teams want.
Personally, I think this will be a disaster.
Pekin, for example, is one of the only Class 7A schools in a 100 mile radius - so likely they would be put into a district that forces them to travel to Moline, Chicago and St. Louis regularly all season long.
Pekin would effectively be unable to continue to play games against most of their local rivals or be in a conference with schools like Morton, Metamora, Richwooods, etc...
It affects football and the post-season playoffs....but it will result in a drastic change to the current landscape and some of those changes will definitely affect basketball and other sports.
Basically, the IHSA will divide the state into districts and schools in each district will be required to play each other with the results determining post-season eligibility and seeding.
Effectively, this proposal will destroy any and all conferences and conference-affiliation because it will be the IHSA who actually determines who you MUST PLAY...
And of course if there are no football conferences, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it won't be long until IHSA does the same to basketball and wipes out conferences there, too.
But the real worry is that this gives IHSA way, way too much power......they can and WILL essentially GERRYMANDER to their hearts delight to be sure the results and the outcome is to their liking.
Traditional conference rivalries and other LONG TERM rivalries can and will be lost forever as teams are told who to play and IHSA may not put teams into districts the way the teams want.
Personally, I think this will be a disaster.
Pekin, for example, is one of the only Class 7A schools in a 100 mile radius - so likely they would be put into a district that forces them to travel to Moline, Chicago and St. Louis regularly all season long.
Pekin would effectively be unable to continue to play games against most of their local rivals or be in a conference with schools like Morton, Metamora, Richwooods, etc...
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