Interesting Article From An Iowa Newspaper

[bonemeal]

https://www.corydontimes.com/news/should-iowa-be-forced-to-level-the-playing-field-for/article_4a039162-3e95-11e9-824a-67f95b4e47af.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share

 

[clktwr]

Same debate we have been having for many years...but I will say that this is a very well written article!

I personally believe that the modification to the basketball system in terms of seeding District Finals is a step in the direction of making this better. (Note that I said making it better, not fixing it.)

With a little more slight modification, we can minimize this further. We need to somehow seed Sub Districts as well. I know, the travel! There are ways that we can seed the Sub Districts as well, or seed them to a certain degree anyway. We can seed the top 16 teams into different sub districts, and then fill out the remainder of the sub by geography. Then re-seed going into District Finals as we have done this year.

My point is, at least doing this would give a team like the Mormon Trail school in the article a legitimate chance to get to the State Tournament. What happens when they get there...probably more of what they have battled for generations.

 

[TC53]

I've said before that Nebraska could have a more sophisticated and fairer system by incorporating poverty level (thru federal free/reduced lunch statistics) and past success in the classification system. Both low poverty and high recent success correlate well to future success. The best part of a system like this is that you don't have to get into the public/private arguments. Those two factors also correlate to future success at a higher rate than community size (on which the Iowa article fixates).