greygoose wrote: Sat Oct 03, 2020 10:21 pm
Now, I totally agree with you there and I'm not saying Newark should've stayed at 12 either. Just like the teams you mentioned I think Newark could've easily been justified as a 7-9 seed pretty easily. I don't believe they should've been placed above Caldwell just based on body of work, even placing them above Shadyside who had a tougher schedule is questionable.
I'm glad we're starting to reach some agreement.
Forgive me, but I feel a need to get this said: I'm impassioned toward advocating for NC to be seeded highly because having watched the former region 23 (now region 27), it is clear that the region is the difference of good
programs beating good teams 9/10 and that it has always been that way.
When I look at Region 27, there are four-to-five really good perennial programs: Trimble, Newark Catholic, Shadyside, Waterford and Danville. I'm not including East Knox only because this is their first year of playing in Division 7 (and they had always played in Division 5 I believe in the six-division format.) A case could be made for River, I suppose. But that's it. And even in years where those five might not have the best team in school history, they just plaster the teams they meet in weeks 11 and 12 from programs that frankly don't have much in the way of a consistently good program. It's not necessarily a product of the team getting blasted being "bad" or their entry a result of a "watering down" of 6 divisions to 7 (it happened all the time in the six division set-up as well): it's just the direct result of a successful program fomenting years of experience under good coaching and against strong competition that ultimately is the 'X' factor against a team that happened to string together a good season. That's why I just don't put much stock into the wins accrued against the bottom-feeders of D7 football as being a more impressive body of work than what an NC has -- the schedules are just light years away and there is a great difference in the depth + experience between a Conotton Valley or Frontier compared to an NC. If you think Caldwell is more deserving of a higher seed than NC - OK sure, fine. That's at least halfway sensible, even though I disagree personally.
What gets me though is if we ever find ourselves having to vote teams in and not let the Harbins factor it out, again, then what's even the point of NC playing their schedule if enough coaches just decide to not even take it into any consideration? Or if they get edged out at the 8/9 spot and miss, when Drew Pasteur says they have the #5th toughest schedule in D7 or whatever and the team that inched them out in the computers had the 83rd toughest schedule? Since 2013, the first year of the 7th division, only one school in this region has played Newark Catholic in the regular season. And that school no longer plays them simply because the two programs are going in divergent directions (although I hope they play NC again soon!) Paint Valley also played them a year that they were D7, but PV is now D6 and a different region. Ask NC's athletic director how hard it is to get teams to schedule them. The only school in Region 27 I think that would be willing to schedule Newark Catholic in the regular season is Trimble (since they scheduled Lucas for this year but it got canned.) Maybe also Danville. But that's it. No one wants to schedule games they might lose.
