With the exception of schools electing to play up, the 2015-2017 reclassification is complete.
Although much of the discussion was on the cutoff for the new Class AAAAAAA, perhaps even more significant was the cutoff for Class A.
But while most of us thought the significance was in the number of schools left to place in the other classifications and the resulting impact on travel distances, a follower over at the Vent suggested to me a more subtle yet substantial impact of the Class A cutoff that caused me to question if the GHSA shouldn’t have split Class A up instead of enlarging it.
To see what the Vent member was referring to, let’s build a simple model by make the following assumptions:
- Every school is 50% male
- Of the school's male population, 15% go out for football
- Of those going out for football, 15% are “Very Good”, 25% are “Good”, 50% are “Average”, and 10% are “Below Average” athletes
- Very Good athletes are worth 4 points, Good are worth 3, Average 2, and Below Average 1
- Every football team consists of 22 first team players and 22 second team players (up to the ability of the school to support it)
- Any players utilized above one position on one team are rated Below Average for their additional utilization (i.e., a player on both first and second team uses his actual rating for the first team but is Below Average on the second team)
- Coaches fill their first team with their best 22 players and their second team with their next best 22 players
- First team plays 75% of the time while the second team plays 25%
Now we could have gone deeper and built third teams and special teams, created feeder systems, looked at a one-high school district versus a multiple-high school district, made different assumptions for city and private schools, or whatever, but the above is sufficient to make the point.
Here is a spreadsheet that demonstrates the Football team value model outlined above. The above assumptions can be changed around to see their impact.
This model gives a school with 4,000 students, such as Mill Creek, 45 Very Good, 75 Good, 150 Average, and 30 Below Average players. Their program has 735 points in total to build a football team.
A school with 2,000 students, similar to Valdosta, has a breakdown of 23/38/75/15 and a total of 371 points to build a team.
At first glance, this seems to be a large disparity, and in essence is the basis of splitting off a higher classification. After all, the larger school could literally split in half and field two teams identical to the one the 2.000 student school can field.
But now comes the brilliant observation of the Vent member, just a small pearl revealed to me by the Collective Wisdom of the Vent :
“There are only 11 players on the field for each team at one time whether you have 250 in your school or 2,000”.
So, let’s compare the football teams of our example schools with that in mind.
The 4,000 student school has 45 Very Good players, actually more than enough to put 22 Very Good players on both its first and second team. So the actual football team itself is worth 88.00 total points.
The 2,000 student school has a first team of 22 Very Good players and a second team with one Very Good player and 22 Good players. That team is worth 82.75 (remember, that first team with 22 Very Good players will be playing 75% of the time anyway).
Now although the 4,000 student school has twice the number of points to build a team, because only 11 players are on the field at one time, the final product is only 88.00 / 82.75 = 1.063, or 6.3% better than a school half its size.
The point difference between the two schools is 5.25. Using the attached spreadsheet, we can see where the enrollment cutoffs would be if we used every 5.25 points as the mark:
Note that at 560 and below players are utilized on first and second team; at 280 and below two-way players are utilized; below 140 a complete team is not possible (again, using the assumptions above)
The chart above suggests the difference between a school with 2,000 students and one with 4,000 students is equivalent to the difference between a school with 140 students and 220 students.
The above cutoffs gives us ten classifications, but let's look at the cutoffs when dividing the schools into seven classifications like the GHSA currently has:
The chart here suggests that a school with an enrollment of 200 playing a school with an enrollment of 500 is the equivalent to playing three classifications up, although currently they are in the same class.
Granted the model is somewhat incomplete since it does not take into account the differences in city schools, private schools, out-of-district enrollment, etc., etc., etc., but it demonstrates more classifications at the lower end is a fairer distribution of schools than the classifications recently adopted.
Of course, nothing can be done for at least two if not four more years, but this subject has been a sore point for many of the schools on the lower end of Class A, especially now that the cutoff was raised by a significant amount, and it made sense to me to highlight it in an objective manner.
Perhaps at the next opportunity, more attention can be paid to Class A schools and we can ask whether it is reasonable and equitable to expect Warren County (138 students) to compete year-in and year-out with Telfair County (493 students).
