Last summer, I did a series of blogs on the evolving state of area sports leagues. Included in these articles was a data study of enrollments, travel times and performance.
Click here to read League Shuffling Part 1: The I.V.C. and the P.A.C. 7
Click here to read League Shuffling Part 2: Dover, New Phila, and the E.C.O.L.
Click here to read League Shuffling Part 3: Dover, New Phila, and the N.B.C.
Click here to read League Shuffling Part 4: A Two-Division Federal League?
Part 3 focused on the looming cloud that was hanging over the Northeastern Buckeye Conference at the time. The concern among the league members was that Louisville, the largest school in the league, was becoming too dominant in football as well as most other sports (more on that later).
For the most part, this league had been very stable since it’s inception in 1989. Six league members are charter members: Canton South, Carrollton, Louisville, Marlington, Minerva, and West Branch. Alliance joined in 2005, replacing Springfield (which replaced Dover in 1993). Salem replaced Northwest in 2011. (The Indians had to drop out because of a severe financial crisis for their district that affected sports scheduling). The long-term stability of the league, as well as the close proximity of the schools, has created healthly, natural rivalries among most schools. And 27 years of league continuity has developed many positive relationships among athletes, coaches, and fans.
This cloud of concern in the NBC grew darker this past autumn. Mike Brown of the Alliance Review wrote an article that discussed the strong possibility of Salem and West Branch leaving the NBC to join the All-American Conference, based in the Youngstown area.
The possible departure of those two schools created the stress of an murky future for the rest of the NBC schools. This uncertainty led to the start of meetings among seven of the NBC schools to discuss leaving the conference as a group to form a new league, thus leaving Louisville out in the cold. (NBC by-laws make it very difficult to vote out school members).
That dark cloud turned into a thunderstorm warning this past December when The Times Reporter‘s sister paper, The Repository, published a Joe Scalzo article with the headlines, NBC could disband to oust Louisville, which discussed those meetings and possible plans of those seven school members.
Speculation on the future of the NBC swirled over the next two months, until this past week when those seven schools officially released their plans to the media. Scalzo’s Repository headline said it all: Too much athletic success at Louisville; NBC will disband.
One statement in that article by Marlington superintendent and NBC spokesman Joe Knoll summed up the feelings of those seven schools:
“It is an issue over consideration of competitive balance and competitive equity at all levels in grades seven through 12.”
Let’s examine this issue of competitive balance and competitive equity from both sides of this quite turbulent argument.
Full disclosure: I am a 1989 Louisville graduate and am have taught at Louisville Middle School for the last 21 years.
The primary concern among the seven schools is Louisville’s success in comparison to the rest of the league. The biggest red flag is on the gridiron. Throughout the conference’s history, Louisville has won or shared 13 NBC titles. West Branch is next with 7, then Minerva with 5, Northwest with 3, Marlington with 2, and Alliance, Carrollton, and Springfield with 1. Needless to say, Louisville has worn the cap of the New York Yankees when it comes to NBC football.
Louisville fans, as well as many other sports fans, would argue that there are benefits to having Yankee-type team in any league. It raises the bar of performance while also bringing positive attention to your conference. Those baseball Yankees made the Red Sox, as well as the rest of Major League Baseball, elevate their play. Michigan State’s recent success, not to mention Jim Harbaugh’s rebound at Michigan, is a direct result of trying to match Ohio State’s level of success. The Southeastern Conference has become the gold standard of college football, in large part because Alabama’s great play has forced the rest of the schools to improve or become irrelevant.
The argument against this Yankee theory is that it greatly reduces the chances for success among smaller teams. Current Cleveland Indians fans can relate to that. And unlike professional and college sports, high schools can’t just go out and sign free agents or offer full tuition scholarships to acquire elite athletes.
Throughout NBC history, there were always at least one Red Sox team to counteract these Louisville ‘Yankees’. Coach Rick Crislip had many strong Leopard squads in the 1990’s, but Jim Laut always had great West Branch teams of his own, including the state title winners in 1994. At the same time, Lynn Molen built his own powerhouse at Minerva. Dover had early success, and Springfield was a force as well in its early NBC years.
In the 2000s, Paul Farrah’s Louisville squads and Vic Whiting’s Northwest teams usually vied for the the title of top dog. But NBC success spread well beyond those two heavyweights. Ed Miley had Marlington in the play-offs three times between 2010-13, making it to the regional finals in 2010. And the other schools had pockets of success as well. In fact, from 2004-2012, seven different schools won at least a share of an NBC title. Canton South was the only full time member from that period that did not, but those Wildcats did make the play-offs in 2006 and 2008.
And NBC schools carried their success outside of conference play. Here’s a look at the NBC’s playoff performance since the conference began a run of play-off wins in 2001…
As you can see, the NBC had a great run of play-off success, which ended just about when Northwest left in 2011. At about that time, Louisville began to transform from the powerful Yankees to a totally dominant Mount Union, in comparison to the rest of the NBC. In the past three seasons, the Leopards have gone 21-0 in league play. In 2013, Louisville won NBC games by an average score of 35-14. In 2014, the 2nd half running clock rule was instituted when a team was ahead by 30 points or more. Louisville’s average score that year was 50-14. This past season, the average result was 42-10.
The overall average for these past three football seasons was 46-12. Louisville’s 24-21 win at Alliance in 2013 is the only game that where the margin was single digits.
One question to consider is how much of this competitive gap was caused by Louisville’s football program becoming better, and how much is due to NBC football showing some regression. Prior to 2015, the three years of no play-off wins for the entire NBC lends credence to the thought that the quality of performance in NBC football had indeed dropped. Play-off wins this year by Louisville and Salem, as well as a fine 7-3 season by a West Branch team that was ahead of the Leopards in the 4th quarter, made it look like NBC football was turning the corner.
Beyond the football field, Louisville’s dominance has extended into most other sports in recent years. Here is a look at all of Louisville’s league titles throughout the history of the NBC…
If the titles were spread equally, each school would win 1/8, or 12.5% of the titles. And it should be pointed out shared titles among two or more conference teams actually inflate the percents slightly: sharing schools each get full title credit, though mathematically, they should only get half credit. Alright, enough with the math lecture.
As you can see, in the 1990s, Louisville was right about at that 1/8 average, both for boys (14%) and girls (14%). From 2000-10, Louisville jumped up to winning about 24% of the titles (26% for boys, 21% for girls). I am guessing that some high school leagues have a strong ‘Yankee’ school that wins titles at about that 20-25% rate. Also remember that many leagues have one or two schools that doesn’t win titles very much, leaving their extra ‘title percents’ waiting to be scooped up.
What became alarming to those seven schools is the trend in this current decade, where the Leopards have won at least a share of 50% of the NBC titles. The boys have won 37% of the time. If you don’t count their strangleholds in cross country and tennis (11 titles in 12 sport seasons), that percent drops to a more reasonable 21%. The Leopard girls, though, are dominant across the board. 66% is staggering.
That takes us back to this aforementioned statement…
“It is an issue over consideration of competitive balance and competitive equity at all levels in grades seven through 12.”
What has given Louisville this ever increasing upper hand? And does their recent dominance give justification to the momentous means that the other NBC schools have taken against their long-time conference brother?
To read An Autopsy of the NBC Part 2, click here.
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