Separate Public/Private Playoffs?

We have the same private vs public problem here. My answer to the problem of what to do with the largest enrollment schools without a larger division to go into would be to expel them from the state association completely and place them with the prep school league (who may recruit openly and can have post-grads).

I'd like a 200% or 300% modifier personally.

At the Division I state finals our commissioner was interviewed and he said that he would like to see a "Super Division" which would address the concern of the Upper enrollment schools like Mentor, St. Xavier, Fairfield and St. Ignatius, which all have over 1000 boys competing in the same division with schools like Twinsburg, Massillon, and Valley Forge which have half that number.

He's REALLY into this idea. However, purists here complain that schools like Massillon, Canton McKinley, Colerain and other traditional DI "powers" will no longer be in that upper echelon as they have been in the past and would be considered second rate.

In Texas, our private and public schools also have seperate playoff systems as well as seperate associations (there are actually two Prive associations in the state). In preseason, private and public schools do play each other. Here recently, there has been some integration talks but it seems to have calmed lately. There are two private schools in the public system (guinea pigs) but I highly doubt others will ever be let in. In private, they can recruit - in public you cannot. Unfair advatage in copetition.

norcaldiaz is right no seperate division in CA

but i whole heartedly believe their needs to be. The private schools here have such huge advantages, they really need seperate divisions.
Maybe keep the open division, for overall best regardless of public/private, but for the other divisions I feel that seperate divisions would be best.

Norcaldiaz, where do you coach at in NCS?

In North Carolina we have seperate public and private school championships. There are 4 (I think) private schools that play in the public school leagues. Only 1 has won a title (Charlotte Catholic and they have won a few) and Cardinal Gibbons has had a couple solid years but nothing earth shattering.

I think that do away with multipliers and all that stuff and just make them play up a classification. If they are a 3A enrollment, bump them to 4A if they want to play in Public School League...pretty easy

SC is seperate but there are a few private schools that play with the public schools. We have the SCHSL, which is the public school association (with 3 or 4 private schools that pay), and SCISA, for private schools (do their own state games and season) One is a baseball powerhouse that makes the state final almost every year. The other 3 are small schools that are decent all around.

None of them make it far in football, so public school fans don't say much about it, but baseball is a big debate.

In TN, the privates that allow students who recieve financial aid to play sports compete in a different playoff system, those that don't play with the publics but with a multiplier if I am not mistaken.

I grew up and played at a public in Ohio and the 2 years we made the playoffs we got bounced by St. Ignatius. I will say that from a players perspective we wanted to play the best teams, it wasn't that big of a deal to us. As a coach I am kind of split, privates down here are very blatant about recruiting kids and I know that privates in Ohio recruit as well but I don't think it is as big of a problem. I would be ok coaching their with a multiplier.

From experience, I know that St. Eds, Ignatius, Lake Catholic, etc. do recruit/offer some financial aid but I also know that, atleast around Cleveland, a decent amount of kids stay in their home schools and play. It is not that much different then families moving to tradition rich public schools during their kids high school years (massilon, stuebenville) or getting an apartment to play for a school (glenville).

I see the arguement for separate playoffs, especially in the lower classifications, but I prefer for all to compete in the same playoffs possibly with multipliers. Just my preference.

It happens some but it's not the norm in football. In 32 years of coaching I've never coaches against a private school. The rules are set up to keep it that way. For example, for a game against a private school to count for playoff power points the private school has to schedule a majority of its games against public schools.

The open division only comes in to play for the state game

Maybe im misunderstanding you...

but for all of the section playoffs those are completely controlled by each teams individual division, there is no avoiding teams, you are either in their division or you are not. You can petition up to a higher division, so maybe those other teams petitioned up to D-1 while your uncle's team stayed in a lower division??

All I know is, we played some private schools this year, and I think they had more money than god, or maybe he was a booster of theirs. They built two half-size practice fields side-by-side next to the game field, where the obvious thing would have been to make two fields. No biggie, they have two spare game fields, behind the (private) hockey rink.

Mississippi is separate. Not sure how it came to be.

PMEISEL---are you sure? I know there IS a private association...but not all the privates play in the league. Didnt st. Stanislaus compete in the MHSAA playoffs?

Recruiting in TN is pretty blatant for some schools both public and private, but after the lawsuit I don't see the TSSAA doing anything about it.

Privates do get a 1.8 multiplier but some 1As could play 6A playoff teams and be successful. The issue has been hotly debated in years past but most of the public/private split supporters have been told to shut-up, quit whining, and work harder. The reality of the situation in TN is that small rural schools cannot compete with their urban counter parts of equal size on a consistent basis.

Washington State has been going through massive reform of division splits et al for a few years and the private vs. public debate has always been in the background. Most of the powerhouse private schools opt-up at least one division as a concession to keep the wolves at bay on the situation.

There are only a few private schools in the upper divisions that cause any noise (Gonzaga Prep, Bellarmine Prep, O'Dea, Eastside Catholic, Kennedy Catholic, Archbishop Murphy). All of them have opted up at least one division, Bellarmine opts up two divisons. The lower three divisions are populated by a pretty even split of privates and publics. Mostly rural publics playing against small urban and suburban private schools.

Divisions get re-allocated every two years, and the someone brings up a public/private split nearly every time that happens.