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Nebraska had considered this kind of idea for the past couple of years or so. It keeps dying off because there's no evidence that the number of championships will swing towards the public schools will increase. Another reason is that many of the schools value their rivalries. Plus, there was some pressure from the state legislature to leave things alone.

I'm not so sure that championships will swing towards the public schools either by reclassifying, but in Nebraska in 2004, seven of the eight football championships were won by Catholic schools and a Catholic school making it to the semi final round of the eighth class. I think you'd have to admit that it wouldn't hurt the public schools.

[Edited by kdf5 on Feb 14th, 2005 at 05:04 PM]

Ralph C. Wilson Stadium in Buffalo has the home crowd as the 12th man.

Catholic schools have God as their 12th man.

I mean, did you expect anything less? :D :D :D

I believe in NY they double the enrollment for all-boys parochial schools to determine classification. CBA won the AA this year and they don't have the enrollment that New Rochelle had.

Eight championships???? We only have 6 classes! Now, I'll be the first to admit that this private school dominance happens often in football here in Nebraska, but it's hard to argue that in the other sports. Volleyball might be one, but still....it's a tough sell in this state.

You're right. I must have had eight man football on the brain to come up with eight classes. 5 of 6 championships were Catholic schools with the 6th class having a Catholic school lose in the semi final. There I got it right.

Frankly, I think that the 11 man Catholic schools will be competitive no matter what when they are in the larger cities and towns and the only difference this multiplier will make is in the smaller 11 man communities or if an eight man team gets bumped up to 11 man.

I actually believe that the multiplier would hurt the Lutheran schools and the Christian academies more than hurt the Catholic schools. I think that's where the brunt of the opposition came during the NSAA's process of thinking about inserting the rule. The Catholic schools didn't care, but the Lutheran and other private schools went ballistic. I think of Omaha Christian, Nebraska Lutheran, and College View Academy (some of the schools I've had in games I've worked) and can almost guarantee from my observations that the multiplier would put them right back where they were the first year they tried to do varsity athletics-right in the dark ages of the blowouts.

It's not just all-boys private schools - all private schools in NY get hit with an enrollment multiplier for classification purposes.

Alabama Private Schools
 

Back in the late 90's, Alabama applied a multiplier of 1.6 to private school enrollment for classification purposes.

You must be talking about the other New York.

Downstate Long Island where we don't participate in the "state" championship, catholic schools do not belong to the athletic association and have there own league and championship.

in georgia, if private schools elect to play in the same system as public schools (quite a few of them play in their own association) they are bumped up one classification based on enrollment.
it seems to work well. most of the private schools are competitive.

the use of multipliers is up for vote in georgia right now. they are making efforts to move more private schools into the ghsa. i hope it works. this will make contracts and rule differences easier.

One problem Nebraska faced when considering the multiplier are the boys only or girls only schools. I believe we have about 4 or 5 of those types of schools. The problem is that the multiplier would become a double multiplier for those schools, since their enrollments are already doubled for classification purposes, due to the missing gender. The administration at those schools felt that they would be unjustly hurt by another multiplier being added to their formula.

I offer Creighton Prep, the all-boys Jesuit school here in Omaha as an example. Their true enrollment (the one reported to the state department of education) is 790. The NSAA doubles that to 1580 to classify them in Class A (the biggest class we have). Now, take that 1580 times 1.35 (what was proposed as the multiplier a couple of years ago), and Prep would have an enrollment of 2133, which would make them the biggest school in the state. Now, do the math, how big is this multiplier in the end for Prep? It turns out to be a multiplier of 2.7 in the end. Some argue this doesn't matter since Prep is already a Class A school, but it does make a difference in which district they are placed because Class A is not only set up according to geographic location but by enrollment as well when assigning districts.

The one school that this type of multiplier would affect would be Omaha Mercy, an all-girls Catholic school. They are small enough (just on raw enrollment) to be a Class C-1 school (3rd largest class). The doubling for missing gender puts them in Class B (the second largest class). If the multiplier would have passed, Mercy would actually have been bumped all the way up to Class A.

So, if any state argues that the multiplier doesn't affect anything, they're joking themselves. They need to look at how they classify schools and the effect multipliers have on classifications, etc., before voting for it. I hope Georgia did a thorough study before putting this to a vote.

Isn't that a 15-yard penalty for illegal participation? And what happens when Catholic schools play each other? Does God take sides? I guess God overrules Jesus when Boston College beats Notre Dame (Touchdown Jesus statue).

In the areas where I've lived, Catholic schools have the edge for one reason. They are allowed to recruit, and public schools may not.

Bob