As I commented on the previous thread, I think this is an absolutely insane development.

As a graduate of North Eugene (which has always been the smallest school in Eugene) I can tell you that not one student or coach in that school would ever give up the chance to beat cross-town rivals Sheldon and South for the opportunity to do what? Travel to Bend?

What this really is is a solution in search of a problem. I suspect that the OSAA has looked at how they do things in California or Texas and thought what's good there will work in Oregon. But the circumstances in big states are entirely different.

My wife and I are currently living in Texas while she does her medical residency and yes, they go up to 5-A here. But the difference between Texas and Oregon is that the big suburban high schools around Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston are mega-schools that have no counterpart in Oregon.

Take Plano for example. It's a city about the size of Eugene that is located in the suburbs north of Dallas. Plano has organized it's school system so that they have five mid-high schools for grades 9-10 and three senior high schools for grades 11-12, each of which has close to 3,000 students. So you are talking about mega-schools that look more like college campuses with graduating classes that exceed the size of the average 4-A school in Oregon.

And, of course, this being Texas, they do it for athletic success as much as anything. This is also the state where high schools build 20 million dollar stadiums with synthetic turf and box seating for 15,000. Southlake High school, another big mega-school in the wealthy suburbs north of DFW actually built an indoor football practice facility complete with synthetic turf just like the Ducks have. The Dallas Cowbows have even borrowed it for practice.

We currently live near Waco and just as an example, here's the web site for the local Waco high school stadium near where we currently live:

http://www.wacoisd.org/sports_geninformation.php#

This is typical of the large high school football stadiums in Texas and in no way unusual. I actually thought it was the Baylor University stadium when I first drove by. How many Oregon high schools have indoor practice facilities for football or stadiums with their own web sites?

In that hyper-competitive environment that is Texas high school football, yes, it does make sense to have a higher classification for the big schools. Because communities are deliberately developing mega-senior high schools just for sports success. And because these giant schools tend to be located in the fast-growing suburbs around big urban areas, travel is not a problem. The metro populations of the Dallas/Fort Worth or Houston areas each exceed that of the entire state of Oregon. However, even Texas with all its excess only sees fit to have five classification levels instead of the six proposed for Oregon.

Here's a question for those who are closer to this issue. Has anyone even done a study of the relationship between school competitiveness to student body population? Anyone with an understanding of statistics and access to the data could easily do it. Because frankly I doubt the relationship is that meaningful. I'm not just talking about which schools win the state championships. But a top-to-bottom look at athletic records of every school in relationship to their student body population. I suspect that one will find two things in such a study:

1. There isn't that much relationship between school size and athletic success. Other factors are more important.

2. There isn't that much consistency from year to year and from sport to sport within each school. Schools tend to specialize in different sports depending on program history, coaching etc. You can't just look at football or basketball. But at every single sport. Because this sort of reallignment would affect every single sport. Back when I was attending North Eugene HS we were great at football, baseball, softball and tennis and sucked at pretty much everything else. Track sucked because all the good spring athletes were playing baseball and softball. That was the school culture. Over at South Eugene it was the opposite. Everything was about track.

John- there is no opting out allowed, because all school districts compete at the state level, which requires the following of OSAA rules. The only power that schools have is to opt to "play up," so that Jefferson can play 5A while remaining a 4A school, etc. It allows schools with top-notch sports programs to avoid being royally screwed. Still, if Jefferson is no longer in the top division, do you think their national ranking might suffer? The whole plan, of course, stinks.

Paulie- your joke is unfair, though entertaining. the athletic directors overwhelmingly approved a completely different plan; 17 of the 32 ADs who did vote for the plan came from IA schools that won't really be affected. In this case, the ADs are the good guys. It is the OSAA realignment committee and executive board, both of which are almost identical in thought, that have the decision-making power. They are the culprits, and ignorant ones at that.

What if ALL the proposed 4A and 5A schools opted to "play up" to 6A? Then voila, we'd have one big league like current 4A, and the brains at OSAA would have to figure out how to let North Eugene play South Eugene instead of Medford :)

Or do the proposed rules only allow playing up one notch? Still, if all the larger PIL schools opted to play up to 6A, that might throw enough of a wrench into the proposal to force rethinking it.

I think you can only opt up one level, though I can't swear to that. And while the PIL could try and throw a wrench in the works, I am getting the feeling that there is more apathy than one would hope--look at the media, beyond Ken Goe's column, no one is talking about this huge change, at least in Portland.

Pat- there are a whole lot of issues that arise when you start discussing the larger picture of high school sports. I could tell you that high school sports participation keeps women sexually inactive longer, or that it leads to better attedance, or that it is strongly supported by Fortune 500 leaders for developing teamwork skills, decision-making, etc. I could tell you it is about the unique American high school and college experience, which seeks to encompass all aspects of life, not just a strict classroom regimen. I could tell you that the money we spend on high school sports pales in comparison on money we spend on expenditures in other areas of government, and that cutting sports would not solve the long-term problems. I could tell you that, unlike younger children, high school students who aren't highly competitive coming into high school have few private chances to compete in sports or try new sports. I could tell you that high school sports is not about developing professional athletes, but about teaching valuable skills, providing physical fitness that our country's children sorely lack at the K-9 level already. There are a lot of things I could tell you that make supporting sports in high school a no-brainer for me.

I competed nationally in the Constitution team program, and also did mock trial, while in high school. We, like high school sports teams, had to often raise money ourselves when we wanted to do extra travel. But none of us, the ones who were forced to "suffer," ever wished ill on the athletic programs, because we realized how crucial they were to many people. I participated in two funded sports: tennis and x-country, and one unfunded sport: dragonboat racing. I would not trade those experiences for anything, and I don't think I would have the ethic to take care of my body today if I wasn't instilled with a competitive spirit in high school that went beyond testing my mind.