Rankings/ talk

[david9h]

Four or five years ago, I'd have argued every point you made just as a knee jerk response and feeling the need to defend private schools. After watching a lot of six man over that same period, public and private, I have to say you are 100% accurate.

Still makes for good banter!

 

[Shane]

If you take out the top 5 UIL D1 schools every year (whoever they happen to be in any given year), then everything evens out pretty well up and down the power rankings. There are more schools at each level of power ranking in UIL compared to any of the private school leagues, but there are more schools in UIL than in any of the private leagues. The ratios are fairly similar. The power rankings at the middle of the pack are very similar, etc....

But the top 5 or so UIL schools every year are usually (not always) better than anybody else. There are occasional exceptions where private schools can rise to that same level, like 2011 ACHS, 2012/13 Covenant, but it's rare. Most of the time, in bigger cities where the private schools are, the really great athletes stick to the bigger public schools in hopes of more exposure and better college scholarship opportunities and all of that. The lure of "bigtime" sports is tough to compete with when you're a tiny private school playing 6man. When a public 6man school has a really great athlete or two, there are no other schools in town to compete with. The schools that are winning that genetic lottery each year end up at a level above all the others, as long as they have good coaching. Great coaches can always take a decent crop of athletes and end up with a very competitive team, but the greatest coaches in the world still need great athletes to end up with a truly great team.

 

[Little Doc]

Just observing and Shane both make good points and I think are accurate in their assessments. There are always exceptions and we need to be mindful of that.

 

[justobserving]

If you take out the top 5 UIL D1 schools every year (whoever they happen to be in any given year), then everything evens out pretty well up and down the power rankings. .....

Not knowing the math in the way the Power Rankings are derived I do not think Power Ranks would be a really good comparison either. I would surmise Power Rankings partially derived from strength of schedule would be skewed by the overall majority weaker schedules of the Privates.

I would really like to know the difference the strength of schedule would make when applied within the context of a majority Public School Schedule vs a majority Private School Schedule or if the weighting and formula for the power rankings balances this.

By this I wonder if a 250 power rating for a Private is an exact parallel to a 250 power rating in the Public. I know the number is the same but in a head to head game would this be a true spread if the private school Power Rank was based on a Private School Opponent Schedule vs the Public Schools Public School Schedule ?

Maybe the Guru could chime in on this ....

 

[granger]

Oh no, I am enjoying the scene as it is...

 

[Shad Kline]

Oh no, I am enjoying the scene as it is...

My sentiment as well, lol.

 

[justobserving]

Oh no, I am enjoying the scene as it is...

You need to play NICE !! Sir ...

 

[football jersey]

Last few years the privates were getting as good or better than the UIL's....... but most of those private school power teams had several public transfer players.
With this fake economy Obummer has setup, the numbers at private schools is falling off and it will hurt the competitiveness they may have had. Your major UIL schools will dominate all but maybe a few private schools.

 

[football jersey]

Richland springs 68 Feast 6

 

[justobserving]

Last few years the privates were getting as good or better than the UIL's....... but ...

Ah Ah Ah Ah ... Oh !! Never mind ....

Ima Skeered jumping into an reality vacuum ...

 

[Shane]

Having watched ACHS play mostly public schools during pre-district and then TAPPS schools during district and playoffs for the last several years, I am pretty impressed with granger's power rating system. Early in the season, the ratings are still drawing off of the previous season's ratings so they aren't always accurate for the first month or so. But once you get 4 or 5 games into the season, they get more and more accurate each week. By the end of the year, the power ratings are about as accurate as anything could be in comparing teams. Anything can happen on the field in a given game, but the power ratings in the late part of the season are pretty doggone accurate.

There is always someone who is a fan of a school that played a weak schedule all year and had lots of wins who will come along and complain about why some other team who has fewer wins is ranked so much higher than their school. But strength of schedule matters. Lots of teams could go undefeated by playing only weak opponents. We played a team last year who scored well over 100 points in a big win a week or two before our game. We 45ed them at halftime and held them to no score. I don't even think they had more than 1 or maybe 2 first downs. That's no disrespect to that team, but it is just an illustration of strength of schedule and how big wins don't necessarily mean anything.

 

[Shane]

Last few years the privates were getting as good or better than the UIL's....... but most of those private school power teams had several public transfer players.
With this fake economy Obummer has setup, the numbers at private schools is falling off and it will hurt the competitiveness they may have had. Your major UIL schools will dominate all but maybe a few private schools.

Your major UIL schools will dominate all but maybe a few UIL schools too though.

Our school's enrollment is as high as it's ever been this year, but we don't have as many top tier athletes this year as we have had in some years past. We lose as many or more athletes transferring out of our school to the big public schools in town as we see coming to us from public schools. Most really great athletes (and their parents) love private Christian school during elementary, but if they are pursuing a college athletic scholarship most of them transfer out of our school and go to public school. A 4A, 5A or 6A public school has MUCH better facilities, more coaches, more than just a varsity team in high school to develop athletes along the way, and larger 11-man programs get the attention of college programs. We won state in football AND basketball in 2011. You would think that kind of success would attract kids to the school and athletic programs. It didn't. We didn't gain any new athletes from public schools after that. We lost a couple from last year that would have made a HUGE difference in our team this year as well.

None of that has anything to do with the economy. Our school is full and has a waiting list. We attract good quality kids to the school. Great academics, good families, kids that will go on to college and beyond and do well in life. But competing with the big public schools' athletic programs for the top athletes is a losing proposition for a little private school playing 6man. LOL

 

[Longhorn85]

We won state in football AND basketball in 2011. You would think that kind of success would attract kids to the school and athletic programs. It didn't. We didn't gain any new athletes from public schools after that.

We attract good quality kids to the school. Great academics, good families, kids that will go on to college and beyond and do well in life. But competing with the big public schools' athletic programs for the top athletes is a losing proposition for a little private school playing 6man. LOL

Just to highlight a point of why UIL schools often do not like to schedule Private Schools... listen to yourself and how you speak about bringing in athletic kids from public schools, IF you can convince them to come play for you. This goes directly against everything the UIL believes falls under fair athletic play. SChedules are most often laid out in the previous spring school session, and UIL schools have NO IDEA what team they will be facing year in and year out with private schools. This also goes along with the issue of the rankings. We usually have a pretty good idea in pre-season as to what starters are returning for UIL schools, and in some cases, who was inelligible the prior year because of having to wait a year after transferring. We can see the same kids play in PeeWee programs at the 3rd and 4th grade level playing against each other as seniors. Being able to recruit, or even give scholarships for athletes, along with the fact that standard grading systems and pass/fail ineligibility does not apply, will tend to run off many coaches from even considering playing a private school.

Just my take on it. but like I said, you pretty much pointed it out to begin with in your discussion of "how hard it is to get real athletes to come play for you"

 

[Shane]

Just to highlight a point of why UIL schools often do not like to schedule Private Schools... listen to yourself and how you speak about bringing in athletic kids from public schools, IF you can convince them to come play for you. This goes directly against everything the UIL believes falls under fair athletic play. SChedules are most often laid out in the previous spring school session, and UIL schools have NO IDEA what team they will be facing year in and year out with private schools. This also goes along with the issue of the rankings. We usually have a pretty good idea in pre-season as to what starters are returning for UIL schools, and in some cases, who was inelligible the prior year because of having to wait a year after transferring. We can see the same kids play in PeeWee programs at the 3rd and 4th grade level playing against each other as seniors. Being able to recruit, or even give scholarships for athletes, along with the fact that standard grading systems and pass/fail ineligibility does not apply, will tend to run off many coaches from even considering playing a private school.

Just my take on it. but like I said, you pretty much pointed it out to begin with in your discussion of "how hard it is to get real athletes to come play for you"

I didn't say anything about recruiting. I was responding to the comment before mine mentioning public school transfer players - implying that all that recruiting was going on. The fact is, most of the transfers of good athletes between public and private school go away from private and to public. That was the point I was making. Even if we tried to actively recruit, we'd be fighting a losing battle. If you were a great athlete and you could choose between playing on a successful 6A team or a successful TAPPS 6man team, which one would you pick? LOL

Our academic program is tough. Most public school transfer kids that come in are behind when they get to our school. Our athletes are ineligible to play if they don't keep their grades up too. There is no advantage for our school based on grades or academics. The kids have to work hard to keep good grades, or they don't play.

We see kids playing peewee and little league all their lives here too. But when high school rolls around, most of the best athletes leave our school and go to public school. All the stuff about private schools recruiting is way over-blown. I'm sure it happens here or there. But I've heard stories like oil companies transferring employees with good athletes to small towns in need of better football players too. The same kinds of things can occasionally happen anywhere. The vast majority of the time, recruiting isn't having any affect on UIL or private schools' football teams though. Families move in and move out from both places for all kinds of reasons that have nothing at all to do with athletic recruiting. Some kids, like mine, start out in kindergarten and go all the way through 12th grade in the same school. It's really not that much different, even though lots of folks hear all kinds of rumors and believe them.

 

[Shane]

As far as scheduling unpredictability goes, how would you like to be a private school coach and not know for sure if all the kids you have will be back next year or not? Our schedule this year includes Crowell, Ira, Strawn, Covenant, and Boerne Geneva. Those games were scheduled before we had a couple of last year's best players transfer out of our school.

It goes both ways. That's just part of it. We're still playing our schedule. No whining.

 

[Longhorn85]

I will have to concede that ACHS has seemed to be one of the more consistent private school teams over the years, and probably has one of the longest running Histories for taking on real UIL talent each year, win or lose. We see a lot more of the unpredictability out of the Dallas and Waco area. The new batch of Homeschool teams also seems to be adding fuel to the fire, as they seem to have the least oversight rule wise.

 

[Longhorn85]

But in the same respect, do you not concede my point on how hard it is to accurately rank Private school teams prior to the season, and often up until really district play has begun for the UIL schools, so that we can really see a common opponent trend pan out.

 

[Shane]

Yes, homeschool teams are a completely different deal. We've never played any homeschool team in football, but we've had some basketball games. We had our 8th grade team playing against 15-16 year olds that were dunking one time a few years ago while their kids who were the same age as our middle school team sat on the bench. It was supposed to be their "middle school" team. That kind of thing doesn't happen with TAPPS schools, and I suspect the other private leagues are fairly similar in sticking to the rules. But homeschool teams do seem to fly by the seat of their pants sometimes. We don't schedule them much anymore either.

And I definitely agree with you that you don't know for sure how strong or weak a team is going to be early in the season. I don't think that is necessarily unique to private schools. It is just the nature of 6man where there are just a few kids on a team. One or two studs can make all the difference on a team of 6. Any school can have one or two kids come or go from one year to the next.

I don't see that as being unfair in any way. It's just the nature of the game from year to year. I guess if a coach wants to have control over his schedule and make sure that he doesn't schedule any games with teams who might be able to beat his team, then it could be a problem for him. Nobody likes to lose. But it's hard to play at a higher level if you always play weaker teams too. As rough as our schedule is this year, I see it as a great learning and growing opportunity for our kids. It's not always fun learning from a loss, but it can be the best thing for a team in the long run sometimes.

The short version of my thoughts on all this is that I think way too much time is spent worrying and griping about public vs. private differences. I don't think there is another school in 6man, public or private, that gets more exposure to both sides of that than we do at ACHS. I don't see nearly as many differences as there are rumored to be. We're all small schools playing 6man football. We all love our kids and cheer for them like crazy. Sometimes we make fools of ourselves in the stands too. But mostly we're just 6man football fans, and the kids and coaches love the game. Some teams are better than others. Some years a school has a better team than they did last year, and some years their team isn't as good as last year's team. It's the same for everybody.

 

[51eleven]

How bad you gonna feel when Happy not only beats valley... But it's over before regulation ends(45 baby)!!!

Not bad at all. No dog in the hunt.
Just perusing the spreads and never saw Happy favored over Valley before.
I imagine a 45'n by either team would be considered an upset by some.

 

[51eleven]

Oh no, I am enjoying the scene as it is...

My sentiment as well, lol.

But we have not yet discussed the role of Al Gore Rhythm's and Log a Rhythm's in the ranking program.
Guru tweaks (not twerk's) the program every year or two.