Sycamore athletic director Chauncey Carrick is tired of hopping from one conference to another trying to find the right fit for his school’s football team.
So once again, he’s one of the point people for an IHSA proposal that would eliminate conferences for the sport.
“Obviously, I’ve felt this was the right moment [for districts] for a while,” Carrick said. “I put up the proposal about 10 years ago. This stemmed from some conference upheaval Sycamore had gone through. In the past five years, there have been two other conference realignments. Sycamore’s spot is, we’re trying to take football out of the equation.”
Hence the proposal that has generated plenty of strong feelings on both sides as IHSA schools hold their annual vote on by-law additions or changes. The balloting is underway now and ends at midnight on Dec. 18, with results expected to be announced the next day. A simple majority of schools voting is needed to enact changes, which would go into effect for the 2024-25 school year in most cases.
Most of the changes are uncontroversial, but Proposal 18 — which would move Illinois to a district scheduling format for football — is the exception.
It would divide the state’s football-playing schools into 64 eight-team districts, eight per class. Schools would play seven district games in Weeks 3-9 and would be able to schedule anyone they wanted for non-district games in Weeks 1-2.
IHSA administrators would be in charge of drawing up the district alignments, which would be based on geography.
A similar plan was approved in 2018 but was rescinded the next year before going into effect after intense blowback. Carrick also put forth a district plan a decade ago that wasn’t approved. This year’s proposal was submitted by Mahomet-Seymour athletic director Matt Hensley on behalf of the Apollo, Big 12, DuPage Valley and Interstate Eight conferences.
Hensley declined to comment and referred questions to Carrick, a longtime proponent of districts who knows the idea raises a variety of issues — some easier to address than others.
Among them: excessive travel and added costs for some schools in larger classes, the potential for widely varying competitive levels in districts and what to do if there are either too few or too many teams to fit the 512-school model.
Though the proposal doesn’t specifically address the latter issue, Carrick said the IHSA could deal with a shortfall of teams by creating seven-team districts in the same class next to each other and scheduling crossover games.
Another option would be to pull teams from the pool of non-playoff eligible Public League schools to fill the 512-team bracket. That’s the solution used by Friday Night Drive’s Steve Soucie, the state’s leading expert on IHSA football playoff brackets, when he drew up a potential district plan. His mock-up gave concrete examples of some of the proposal’s potential problems.
Class 8A’s District 8 stretches from Lockport to the Metro East region, with three St. Louis-area teams (Belleville East, Edwardsville and O’Fallon) joining five from the southwest suburbs (Joliet Central, Joliet West, Lockport, Minooka and Plainfield South).
“There’s going to be some travel in the 8A groups,” Carrick said. “We know that. What are you going to do? We did not have an answer for that. I’m not sure what the answer is.”
Edwardsville athletic director Amy Boscolo and football coach Kelsey Pickering have shared an open letter pushing back against districts, citing travel — and the likelihood of moving some games from Friday night to Saturday to lessen its impact — as a deal-breaker.
“Such extensive travel requirements would impose a significant financial burden on all our school districts, draining valuable resources that could be better allocated to educational and other athletic initiatives,” Boscolo and Pickering wrote. “Moreover, it’s not just the schools that will feel the strain; families and community supporters associated with our programs will also be affected by the added travel.”
Moving games to Saturday could lead to difficulty in scheduling officials and could prevent college prospects from making campus visits, Boscolo and Pickering pointed out.
Travel would be less of an issue, though, for other teams under the district proposal. Taft, projected to be in Class 8A District 3 by Soucie, would go from playing Public League games as far away as Gately Stadium on the Far Southeast Side to facing nearby suburban opponents Evanston, Glenbrook South, Leyden, Loyola, Maine South, New Trier and Niles West.
Taft coach Zach Elder acknowledges the step up in competition would be challenging. Loyola is the two-time defending 8A champ, Maine South owns multiple state titles and every school in the proposed district but Leyden is a perennial playoff contender.
“The first year or two, it may be rough,” Elder said. “[But] we’re here to get better. That doesn’t scare us.”
What does concern him is the lack of specifics in the proposal. And he’s sympathetic to those worried about increased travel.
“My biggest issue with it is there’s so many unknowns,” Elder said. “You’re being asked to vote on something, no one knows what it looks like. ... I get the idea, but when you actually put pen to paper, there are some trips that are just nonsensical.”
Rather than eliminating conferences and implementing districts, Public League sports chief David Rosengard would have preferred more discussion about what he acknowledges are legitimate concerns regarding football scheduling.
“I just wish people would instead of putting forth what is in their best interests, would look at the big picture,” Rosengard said. “I think there are ways to discuss how to solve some of these issues of scheduling. There are scheduling alliances that can be put together.”
If districts do happen, Rosengard foresees more problems popping up with Public League teams having to play more opponents from outside the city.
Stadium availability is a big concern. While some Public League schools have on-campus stadiums, many don’t — and most of the ones who do don’t have lighted fields. As it is, Public League games are played anytime from Thursday afternoons to Saturday nights.
Increased costs are another big concern under a district format.
“I’ve had principals of high-profile teams say, ‘We can’t afford that,’” Rosengard said. “‘I don’t care where they put us. We can’t budget for it.’”
One of the more vocal opponents to districts is West Aurora coach Nate Eimer, who sees the proposal as an existential threat to the future of prep football in Illinois. His concern is that if schools aren’t able to move between conferences to find the right competitive fit, many will simply drop football.
“One of my jobs as a football coach is to grow the game,” Eimer said. “If districts happen, he added, “I guarantee in five years [the number of football-playing schools] will go down to 450. In 10 years, it’ll be 400.”
He’s also worried about how lower-level games would be scheduled outside of a conference framework and about the increased travel burden for some teams. Plus, there’s the issue of implementing such a huge change in such a short timeframe.
“To ask the IHSA to put this together in three months, it’s insanity,” Eimer said. “It’s not a plan. It’s an idea that hasn’t been well thought out.
“It’s an attack on the growth of the game of football.”
