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The Indiana High School Athletic Association is reportedly studying additional competitive balance measures for football, borrowing ideas that look a lot like what our neighbors in Ohio have already implemented.
On the surface, this sounds reasonable.
When fans see 49-7 scores, running clocks before halftime and the same schools appearing in state championship games year after year, the natural reaction is to believe the system needs adjustment.
Considerations include:
The IHSAA is well-intentioned in its efforts to level the playing field, but they only need to look eastward to their Buckeye State neighbors to see how some of the considerations the IHSAA will make for a while are working in the real world.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association adopted competitive balance measures considering factors beyond simple enrollment, including students who attend a school from outside the district boundaries. Those adjustments were designed to address concerns that certain schools enjoyed advantages not reflected in raw enrollment figures.
Anyone who follows high school football in Ohio, though, knows the results have been mixed at best.
The same dominant programs still dominate, make deep playoff runs, and the regular season is still chock-full of lopsided scores because disparity in high school football is rarely created by classification systems. More often, it is created by culture.
A formula can count students but it cannot measure commitment, measure how many third-graders are already participating in a youth tackle league, nor can it measure offseason weight room attendance.
Add essential ingredients such as coaching stability, parent involvement, and community expectations because those things matter.
The IHSAA has a big row to hoe weighing in all these factors to produce a system that – mere days after The Indianapolis Star reported – is already filling social media with hot takes.
Let’s take a look at Indiana to see how much the factors to football success matter, rather than sharing my takes on the realignment with you.
Are there any mysteries to the ingredients among the current group of programs resulting in consistent success I already mentioned?
This infrastructure exists long before playoff pairings are released in October (tune in, by the way, to IHSAATV or go to IHSAA.org Sunday from 7 p.m. – 9 p.m. to see the 2026 sectional draw).
The uncomfortable truth is competitive balance rules often attack the symptoms rather than the cause. Moving a successful school from one class to another does not suddenly make that school less successful.
Additionally, regardless of classification, conference play is still a geography thing. You’re still going to see Pioneer and North Judson-San Pierre, for example, continually beating up its Hoosier North Athletic Conference brethren in football.
A powerhouse moved up a class is still a powerhouse (Adams Central).
What enrollment class changes would affect the program unfavorably? Culture and expectations don’t change. Their weight rooms aren’t getting stronger. Some of them even invite seventh graders to post-season early morning weight sessions.
The dominant programs – especially Catholic football powerhouses - often view those changes, specifically a mandate to remain in higher enrollment classes - as badges of honor. It might even be a solid recruiting tool.
Dare I say the “R” word? Maybe… hmmm… attract?
Meanwhile, the schools the rule is supposed to help frequently remain in the same position. They may avoid one powerhouse only to run into another in the playoffs.
In regular season conference play, you can run but you cannot hide. These reforms produce less change than their naive supporters hope to experience.
Football is not basketball. One transcendent player cannot carry an entire roster.
Successful football programs require dozens of contributors, years of development, and a large organizational commitment. Can a committee soften those advantages with an adjusting formula?
It seems to me preseason sectional assignments will be like disassembling my LEGOs and trying different parts in different places (that cowboy hat does NOT belong on T-Rex).
It looks like tedious work to me, and I serve my company in the type of overhead role who craves “what ifs.”
Let’s be clear. Classification, and enrollment still matter, and sprinkling some competitive balance factors might improve fairness around the edges, but the IHSAA’s consideration of factors Ohio is currently functioning with is not the panacea.
The biggest gaps in Indiana football today are not among the top three enrollment classes. The biggest gaps are between programs with established systems and programs still trying to build them, or in cases like Plymouth and Goshen, rebuild them.
I moved here in August 30 years ago, and the aforementioned Northern Lakes Conference schools were dominant football programs in the late 1990s.
Fans understandably want a solution that fits neatly into the IHSAA handbook, but it requires action from the schools continuously struggling to maintain the makings of the aforementioned consistently successful football program.
If a community is looking toward any valiant effort the IHSAA puts forth to engineer those schools’ current collective lot’s success, those communities aren’t managing their expectations very well.
If Ohio will teach us anything in this “soul searching” it's this: competitive-balance formulas can rearrange the chessboard without changing who has the strongest pieces.
The pursuit of competitive balance is admirable, but the necessary regular season schedule among most athletic conferences (state-wide) will neither alleviate nor eliminate 42-point margins.
The playoffs, at best, might slightly improve until a team reaches the regional and semistate buzzsaws.
In high school football, the greatest competitive advantage has ever been enrollment. It's culture.
And even an accountant by day understands culture doesn't fit neatly into a spreadsheet.
