OT Question for Mark Miller

[Goose85]

Take football for an example. Somerset won the D4 title with 473 students. Do we really need to divide schools with enrollment of less than 500 into 4 divisions?

[MU88]

What difference does the number of divisions or the number of state champions make? So extra kids win state titles. Is that bad? The system is not fair by any stretch. There is a suburban high school in Milwaukee, in a fast growing community, that expanded its high school instead of building a second school on the other side of town. Why? It was sold to the public that one super sized school would have a better chance of winning titles, over two smaller D1 school. (you would think the added costs associated with 2 high schools would be a bigger selling point). You have a number of school buildings in the state housing 2 high schools (some with common classes). Why? Athletics is reason one. All this complaining about private schools recruiting is a bunch of poo. The public schools recruit and their recruiting is much more targeted. Open enrollment has opened the doors to all sorts of hanky panky.

In short, I don't really care if there is 1, 4, 8 or 20 state champions. There are four divisions in college football and three in basketball. Many more if you add in the other sanctioning bodies such as the NAIA. Does anyone care? No. To me this is a little different than giving all kids, even the losers, a ribbon. This is simply giving kids the opportunity to play, against other kids in similar situations, kind of like having multiple classes in wrestling. For almost all, this is the end of the line. Let them have fun.

[TedBaxter]

I was looking at the brackets and sometimes you just ask yourself, how fair is it?

I'm partial to the northwestern part of the state and the travel concerns the schools have. Superior is the #1 seed on the upper half of the Stevens Point Sectional, so they received home games in their first two games. They now have to travel to Marshfield for the sectional semi-final and that is a 440 mile round trip. If they win that, they have to turn around a day later and drive down to Stevens Point for the sectional final and that is close to a 470-480 mile round trip.

Superior'sr opponent in the sectional semi-final is the #2 seed D.C. Everest. Like Superior, D.C. Everest garnered home games for the first two games and now have to travel to Marshfield, a 80 mile round trip. If they win, they go to Stevens Point, a 60 mile round trip.

I would have to look it up, but I'm pretty sue the same thing happened last year and Superior lost in either the semi-final or sectional final.