Maureen Hayden, writing for CNHI, has an article on the IHSAA conducting hearings on a return to the unified high school basketball tournament instead of the multiple class abomination it adopted in 1998. Attendance is in the toilet, but that’s not why the IHSAA is holding hearings. Rather, it got enough static from Indiana legislators that it’s holding hearings — probably just hoping to show enough effort to get the folks at the State House to leave them alone.
Small schools appear to like the class system – especially small schools that have been winning under the system. My guess is that, taken on a one-school, one-vote basis (as opposed to a one-student, one-vote basis), the preference is for class basketball. It’s easier for small schools to win when they only play each other.
And, possibly it’s easier for me to win cases if I only had to compete against other three-lawyer firms. But, as it turns out, the real world doesn’t work that way. I guess we could just give everyone a trophy and skip the basketball.
(This is just a preview of my greatest hits when, one day, I reach my aspiration of becoming Grumpy Old Man Masson; sitting on the front porch holding forth on the Good Old Days, drinking from a jug with a thumb hook and scaring the neighborhood kids.)
My experience is that attorneys at small law firms are every bit as good as those in the large law firms. I’m with you on opposing class basketball, but I don’t think your analogy works.
I have always thought a hybrid system would work. Have small and large school sectionals and regionals. Then bring the 16 teams together for the semi-state and state finals. If they still have the two games in one day playoffs (shows how out of touch I am that I don’t know this) eliminate them or if they don’t have them anymore, don’t go back to that format. The problem with small schools competing with the large schools is that while they might match up with the first 5 players, they don’t match up players 6-10. They’re not as deep and therefore they’re exposed in the two games a day format.
So, you’re saying that states that have class basketball (Illinois for example), and have had it for years, produce morally inferior student-athletes? Kids that expect to get a trophy for everything?
How do we inspire the next generation of leaders by telling them that “life sucks and then you die”? Education doesn’t educate if it’s all stick and no carrot.