The MAIS has gone batshit crazy
- Thread starter 615dawg
- Start date
1 in 7 teams. That's a district title.
Edit: I posted before I read the text of the graphic. That's not a district title, it's a consolation bracket.
Edit: I posted before I read the text of the graphic. That's not a district title, it's a consolation bracket.
It is a joke, and the MAIS should be ashamed. They created this monster by allowing recruiting violations that created a Big Four. The leadership at those four schools should be ashamed that this is happening.
This is the last straw. Its time to go to the Arkansas/Alabama model for high school sports. Let the MAIS schools join at their classification and figure out what the competitive advancement factor will be.
Here is an article on the smart, well thought out plan in Arkansas: https://www.magnoliabannernews.com/news/2023/jul/27/aaa-board-approves-proposals-competitive-equity/
This is the last straw. Its time to go to the Arkansas/Alabama model for high school sports. Let the MAIS schools join at their classification and figure out what the competitive advancement factor will be.
Here is an article on the smart, well thought out plan in Arkansas: https://www.magnoliabannernews.com/news/2023/jul/27/aaa-board-approves-proposals-competitive-equity/
MAIS has always been a joke. Now they are just letting everyone know it for sure. As someone that coaches 6A public ball I told a MAIS buddy of mine that no matter what system they came up with they would continue to be a joke. He did not like that. He also hated me saying, "Why not just save time, and give every kid a ring and a banner that shows up to play in MAIS?”
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I understand the problem with the big four’s size and recruiting meaning they don’t really have a way to have a reasonable conference.
I don’t get the problems with everybody else. Seems like they could have just normal divisions and conferences and state championships.
I’d prefer the big 4 get kicked out and told to go join MHSAA or they can opt in to MAIS and ditch the recruiting
Its evident that unchecked recruiting for the past 15 years has created this problem. The last time a non-Big Four MAIS team won the largest classification of MAIS football was 1999 when Pillow beat Prep. Pillow won in '97 and '99 and Parklane won 94-95.
2005 was the last time a non-Big Four even played for the title. JA beat Hillcrest that year. In the same time period, 16 of the 24 7A schools have played for the state title.
2005 was the last time a non-Big Four even played for the title. JA beat Hillcrest that year. In the same time period, 16 of the 24 7A schools have played for the state title.
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Stopping recruiting still wouldn't fix the problem of the big 4 I don't think. They are just a good bit bigger than everybody else (or at least they used to be; not sure if anybody like PCS has closed the gap), and particularly for Hartfield and MRA, having solid public schools nearby means they will have a bigger advantage than their numbers suggest because they will always get a few players that come there for playing time they can't get at the public school. They will occasionally lose a good player that leaves to go to public school to play better competition, but that will be relatively rare.
You take one of the big four that probably already have say 30-50 more students in a class and that's going to give them enough better athletes on average that it's hard for smaller schools to over come it, but then you add say a a fringe player from Madison Central or Germantown's basketball team or maybe two or three fringe football players from those schools and that's going make it almost impossible for those smaller schools to ever compete.
Of course the Big 4 will always dominate MAIS. The difference is I can remember when Prep and MRA used to regularly lose to MHSAA 4A, 3A and even 2A schools. Now they compete virtually evenly, and sometimes even at a higher level than some of the top 6A and 7A schools. Whatever slim chance a Parklane, PCS, or someone else once had is zero now.
FWIW, PCS has had enough and joined the MHSAA.
That was the one great year of Hillcrest football. I've been to well over 200 Mississippi State football games and I've never been so angry as I was at the ****** MAIS refereeing at the Prep game that fall.
It's not that they dominate MAIS. It's that they want to pretend they have a conference with more than 4 members, but there just aren't any other schools that belong in a conference with them. I'm guessing maybe that's the genesis of this absurd consolation bracket system. It let's them pretend that there is more competition for them to get in the playoffs than there really is. And that's not a terrible system, but if you ever do have a team that is better than one of the big 4, instead of them getting to win a championship competing with similarly situated schools, they get bumped to a playoff they can't win and the one of the big four that grossly underachieved gets to compete for a consolation championship.
Even then, I can get that system being ok the vast majority of the time, and making peace with the fact that it would occasionally be atrocious, but why extend it down to a third consolation bracket. Are small schools going to start tanking during the season to avoid getting bumped up into a playoff they won't be competitive in?
Agree. I get the reason for splitting them all up into separate divisions for scheduling purposes. But they need to just create a 4-team classification, and then supplement with a scheduling arrangement where each of the Big 4 will play every team in one of the 4 divisions in the 2nd highest bracket as non-district games. That way, say Parklane gets to compete for a state championship if they happen to upset the Big 4 team they play who may be having a down year instead of get their brains beat in by a team that could compete at 7A in MHSAA.
I generally would like to see a consolidation of public/private school sports. However, one objection I’ve heard from MAIS school folks to joining MHSAA public school sports is the low level of attention and commitment to hosting junior high sports or anything other than high school football. Lots of public schools just don’t have time and money to ensure these non higher school football games are run appropriately. It ain’t cool to arrive for a game and no one prepared to professionally host the event.
Make no mistake….the parents enjoy the fake winning.
But they are in the same spot as 7A, which is rapidly concentrating power. Just a few areas where people want to move, and they are so much bigger than everyone else.
Big 4 need to just join 7A, because they will at least be assured of programs that care, and they won’t be going to any truly rough areas. And like another poster said, they’ll have legit junior high programs to compete against.
As someone who grew up in Louisiana and now has a kid playing sports in Louisiana, I think MS academy ball is so stupid. I know why it was created, but I don’t understand why it still “segregated” from public school competition.
Yes, this is correct in many places. I was once a private and public sports official. Private schools had gameday operations down pat. Most larger public schools with A or B ratings did too. The problem came from high minority/low parental involvement areas and included total disregard for what gameday operations mean. They did not care much about running things properly or at all.
When I was in school maybe it was a weird period, but everyone sucked at football except JA and Prep and we/they weren’t recruiting anyone. I remember it coming a few years later and had started to happen in basketball.
At the time, Pillow had a good Jr High team. MRA got good a few years later, but was losing by 4-5 scores. Hillcrest was awful already. Washington kept it close once or twice and lost bigger other years.
At the time, Pillow had a good Jr High team. MRA got good a few years later, but was losing by 4-5 scores. Hillcrest was awful already. Washington kept it close once or twice and lost bigger other years.
That is absolutely hilarious, and totally fitting for private schools in Mississippi.
And I thought MHSAA was bad with only 24 teams in classes 7A, 6A and 5A. That's insane. Some smart coach is going to figure out he can throw a critical late game so he falls to 4th in his division and thereby gets to add a Division III state championship to his resume instead of potentially losing in the Division II playoffs.
I hope Barrett Donahoe will bring some sanity and proficiency to the entity. The MRA crew that’s been running it was collecting a paycheck.Let’s be frank.
The MAIS has been trending in this direction for years.
If not for the fact that theinmates are running the asylumschools run the association, I’d hope that one of the executives on the board would do this…
Schools are too caught up in winning sports. Hell, catholic schools in river towns were practically kicked out of the MHSAA because they had some success. Way too much pride in how public and private schools compare to each other.
But beyond that, there is no single rule that works for adjustments to population. Private schools near decent public schools need a multiplier because even if they don't recruit, they are likely to pick up some extra players that want more playing time or a more prominent role. Private schools with no decent public school nearby don't need any multiplier. Hell, they might should get multiplied by a fraction.
If they would do something that was approximating relegation, where schools got moved up and down based on success instead of class size, you might could get people to buy in. I think you'd still hear a lot of bitching though.
Why would a parent pay extra money on private school tuition to try to avoid that thug criminal environment just to put their kids right back in it during a game with even less oversite and control of that element? You wouldn't. Just like no one goes to Jackson if they don't have to.