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I'm currently interviewing for that new show on TV called Yo MTV RAPS!

I've been attempting to mathematically show which areas of the country are best at football. As Floridians, we fundamentally believe the best college ball is played in the South. And obviously with the likes of Clemson, Alabama and LSU, it's very hard for others to dispute. But while attempting to validate this, I ran into a bit of a snag. As you can see above, the distribution of football playing colleges throughout the US is completely unbalanced. There are over 200 more colleges playing football east of the Mississippi River than there are to the west of it. If we dig into it further, there are "holes" found all over the map showing major imbalances depending on the level of football being discussed. For example, in New England, there are 58 colleges playing football but only one (Boston College) plays at the P5 level. In NY, NJ, Pennsylvania, Delaware there are another 96 football schools, 4 of which play P5 football. So out of the 154 colleges in the Northeastern US, only 5 play big time P5 football. This leaves 60 P5 schools for the rest of the country, 22 of which can be found in the traditional south. So I found the map to be geographically biased towards selected areas of the country. To compound matters, the more regions I used, the worse the situation became. So I decided to categorize each region and distribute the teams as fairly as possible trying to keep the number of teams and areas "balanced." The comparisons will be divided as follows: P5 (North/South), G5 (North/South), FCS (North/South), D2 (East/West), D3 (East/West), NAIA (East/West). To do this, I was required to completely disregard Conferences. So please keep that in mind because it will mess you up. The data will be shown on my next post.

Cyril Brockmeier has indeed been announced as the new head coach at Plant. Coach Brock was not the current JV coach. He held the job for for a nice stretch a few years ago, leading the team to several undefeated seasons. Coach Weiner often referred to him as "the most overqualified JV coach in the country." Hyperbole aside, it may have been true. At that time, the former college player (O-line) already had two college coaching positions on his resume. Coach Brock had to step down from coaching a few years ago when his brother died suddenly (as I recall, a cut from a boat motor led to an infection that killed him within a week), leaving behind a wife and a couple of young boys. Brock stepped up and helped raise the kids (his nephews). As I understand, the kids are a little older and their mom has a new man in her life. As a result, over the last couple of years, Coach Brock has been able to return to his passion of coaching. I believe Coach Brock is on good terms with most all of the coaches, so Plant won't have to completely rebuild their coaching staff (although a couple of the assistants already had made the decision to retire even before Coach Weiner announced his move to Toledo). The administration was fortunate to have several good options available, including at least one other off the current staff and at least one from a nearby school. The principal at Plant made the announcement Friday night at the football banquet, much to the delight and approval of players and parents. Coach Brock spoke briefly and talked about building on Coach Weiner's legacy, while giving it his own signature. It's never easy to follow a coaching legend. Only time will tell whether this turns out to be the right man for the job. But it's hard to argue with the choice they made.

Not a fan. The possible benefits do not outweigh, what to me might be the worst situation. It seems like a knee-jerk reaction, that appears to satisfy an issue, but really can make no guarantees. I wonder how many years of data they researched, past seasons at ALL levels? Did they truly see that there were numerous years where reseeding might have prevented blowouts? Is this true in over half of the classifications, or just the ones with a louder fan base? Did they look at how many times a reseed would generate the type of travel that diminishes the overall experience for both teams? Do we believe that the point system really does the best job of seeding teams? It's supposed to be objective, but we've all seen the discrepancies. I looked at 2019 3A #'s as a for instance. Here some concerns with the RPI's determining a rank. 1. Of the top 10 RPI's the four semi-finalists were ranked # 4, 6, 7 & 10. In other words, the top 3 teams DID not even make it into the State Semi's. Does that validate this system's ability to predict the best teams? Or is it proof that the RPI #'s are still just an educated guess. Do we restructure travel based on a guess? 2. The overwhelmingly best team (Cham.-Mad) was a 4 seed. So the system we are relying on to determine who these good teams are, proved it's worth by giving them a 4 seed? Allow a "for instance" - the #1 seed, based on RPI, was Pensacola Catholic. Let's say that the RPI #'s were on target, and that the top 4 teams all made the state semi's. Then the team, we all know was the best in 3A (and maybe 4A, 5A, etc?), would have to travel 9.5 hours/659 miles to play the "1 seed." 3. My biggest concern is that when these extra long travel times are generated, it will cause some real issues with the visiting team. Money is tight for many families. So IF they travel their expenditures will increase exponentially. Gas, meals, hotels; plus a day off of work? Will Auntie or Uncle Ted make the trip? Will the student body travel - 17 year-old kids driving home 9.5 hours on a Friday? The elderly community that supports these kids all season? The current system isn't perfect, but it does allow for the games to be relatively close. I'm sorry, but I'd pump the brakes here. I also like to remind myself that this is the FHSAA were talking about. And I am usually skeptical that those folks do things well.