SCPrepTalk

I have heard this talked about a lot recently, and it seems that we are getting more and more of these schools every year and this may be the future of education in South Carolina.

Leave them where they are and everyone has to learn to deal with it.
Doesn't seem fair. They are openly recruiting players from all the local schools, and it won't be long until they are doing like IMG and recruiting from outside their area, way outside of their area.... maybe even out of state.

Make them play up one classification
Drawback to this one, schools that are like Academic Magnet, have all they can handle in the lower levels, moving them up would make it even worse on those schools.

Make them play in their own classification
All 5 or 6 of them? Not a realistic option since they do not have enough teams to make a good Region, let alone a classification.

Just like realignment brings about some tough decisions and some heartburn for teams, this question also has a lot of discussion items but no clear cut answer. Honestly, I do not have an answer beyond the options listed above with one exception:

Base their realignment position on recent history. Have a committee that knows in advance that their job is to watch those schools play a few times, study their results on a weekly basis, and determine if they should be in the classification based on their population or does their recruiting move them up to a different classification.

. If you are able to recruit top tier talent statewide you play top tier talent statewide . 5a automatically. After teobyears if they cant compete drop 1 classification.

First off I believe in school choice so I’m not going to say make them compete in their own classification. At that point they will cease to exist (which I know would make some happy) but it’s still kids and the promotion of athletics.

The one big problem I have more so than the recruiting is the use of tax aided stadiums that help benefit their teams.
It’s like they fake it til they make it kind of thing.

If you can’t start out on your own two feet it shouldn’t be up to the people your stealing talent from to subsidize you.
That’s the biggest rub.

Maybe a sliding probationary period or periods is what’s necessary
But even then if they keep throwing them down into lower classes that only hurts the little schools.

Dorman Gaffney and big schools like that are not really going to feel the effect.

Look at this year where IMG took two kids out of this state
One from DF and one from Greer

Who did those effect more
Df has a bigger school with more depth
Greer was probably building their entire offense around that one kid.

The only answer is really to allow transfers and recruitment across the board

I know this would be chaos and then all the big schools would cherry pick the smaller schools but it’s either that or just get better so that you beat these schools and never let them get off the deck.
Unfortunately

100% agree with you on school choice, children should attend wherever their parents want them to attend as long as I am not paying for it... When it comes to education, I always say go as far as your brain and your wallet allows.

I don't know much about the stadium issue, do they rent the Citadel's stadium? Do they get it at a rate that fully pays for the use or does the Citadel give them a rate that doesn't cover the costs?

"If you can’t start out on your own two feet it shouldn’t be up to the people your stealing talent from to subsidize you."
That would be the ultimate slap in the face wouldn't it?

I guess "recruiting one player" from Dorman or Gaffney wouldn't hurt as much as recruiting one from Chapman or Daniel; but still losing one player like Greer lost (the TOP RANKED tight end in the class of 2022) that hurts any team and if you should end up playing the team that poached him!! It could get real nasty!

Yeah, to allow "recruitment across the board" would likely be the end of High School Football and the beginning of pure madness as there would be no way to keep anything that would resemble order and fairness.

Fortfor5 wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:39 pm

. If you are able to recruit top tier talent statewide you play top tier talent statewide . 5a automatically. After teobyears if they cant compete drop 1 classification.

So just because they have the option to recruit, you say they are 5A? So that would mean a school like, Academic Magnet would have to play 5A if they wanted to continue to field a team. I would bet that the day this rule was implemented, Academic Magnet would announce that they would no longer be fielding a team. I'm not real familiar with AM, could they play SCISA?

It doesn’t matter if they rent the stadium from the Citadel or not . Their getting the benefit of playing at a school that gets tax dollars from us. We’re basically subsidizing them a place to play. So they find some defunct school or industrial building . Refurbish it and slap some paint on the wall call it a school and voila their in business. Well they should be reimbursing the taxpayers if their going to do that.

Rebel-Fan-74 wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:12 pm

Make them play up one classification
Drawback to this one, schools that are like Academic Magnet, have all they can handle in the lower levels, moving them up would make it even worse on those schools.

But they are different than the magnet schools that focus on academics and offer athletics as an extra-curricular activity. These schools are Athletic Magnet schools. I am sure that some parents have enrolled their children at Christ Church or Bishop England due to their athletic programs, but I think those are exceptions. I do not think that is true at Oceanside, Gray and Legion.

Most schools like St Joe’s
Christ church and southside Christian in Greenville are really like private schools where parents pay big tuition for kids to go there.
All three of those schools are maxed out right now because of the lockdowns two years ago. I know personally dozens of families that chose to send their kids there just last year because they weren’t locking down. Those kids at those schools are there for completely different reasons than the schools were talking about. Many not all of those students receive grants and schools to go to these academy’s or schools or what have you. They are openly recruited.
Big difference

SF Band dad wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 19, 2021 4:31 pm

Rebel-Fan-74 wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:12 pm

Make them play up one classification
Drawback to this one, schools that are like Academic Magnet, have all they can handle in the lower levels, moving them up would make it even worse on those schools.

But they are different than the magnet schools that focus on academics and offer athletics as an extra-curricular activity. These schools are Athletic Magnet schools. I am sure that some parents have enrolled their children at Christ Church or Bishop England due to their athletic programs, but I think those are exceptions. I do not think that is true at Oceanside, Gray and Legion.

But, as a HARD AND FAST RULE, they would have to be linked together. You can't have a rule that says if you go to a private school just to play football....

How do you enforce that rule? All I would have to say is that I wanted my son to get a better quality of education at the smaller private school.

Christ Church is not only private, it is also a school with emphasis on Religion. I could say, I'm Catholic so I wanted my son to go to a Catholic School, or Episcopal, or Presbyterian, or what ever.

That's why this is such a difficult topic. IMG is open about their reasons, some of these other schools are not.