ESCARCEGA ON PREPS: SUPER CONFERENCES COULD BE COMING TO A SCHOOL NEAR YOU
ESCARCEGA ON PREPS: SUPER CONFERENCES COULD BE COMING TO A SCHOOL NEAR YOU
Mt. Sac Releaguing Cycle Could Get Interesting in 2023
As with many of you that are football fans, it was a shock to the senses when it was announced that USC and UCLA were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big-10. In today’s mind-numbing 24-7 news cycle, events like what took place on Thursday are the norm rather than the exception.
In the aftermath of the day, several area fans contacted me and said if what happened on Thursday could take place at the high school level in the San Gabriel Valley.
The answer to that is yes... but it’s a bit complicated. Think of it this way, if you ever watched the film “Back to School,” there is a scene near the end of the film when Thornton Mellon (played by the late Rodney Dangerfield) is getting questioned by Dr. Bombay, during an academic evaluation oral test, and says, “I have only one question for Mr. Mellon... in 27 parts.”
That sums up what the releaguing process is like in the East San Gabriel Valley for the past 10 years.
First, a little background. Every two years, the CIF Southern Section requires its member schools that are in geographic areas to evaluate their leagues and make any necessary changes. It’s a mundane process. For example, in the eastern portion of the valley, as well as parts of the Inland Empire (better known as the Inland Valley), the area is called “Mt. Sac Area.”
There are other area categories throughout the Southern Section and a parochial category in Los Angeles County that includes schools such as Bishop Amat, St. Francis, etc and Orange County. The only area parochial school that is not under the Parochial umbrella is Damien (for geographical reasons).
42 schools encompass the Mt. Sac area and whenever the subject of releaguing comes around, well things can get a bit interesting. With non-stop negotiating going on, area principals and athletic directors love to play the area’s version of the popular game show “Let’s Make a Deal.” It can lead to long and heated meetings.
Among the factors that administrators would use included: school population, ethnic diversity, competitive equity, and much more.
In 2019, which was the last major meeting that took place in person, 70 proposals were submitted to the Mt. SAC Ad-Hoc committee for consideration. It took more than five hours, but schools decided that they want to go into a “four-team” league model for football while developing leagues for other sports.
In 2021, the membership schools in the Mt. Sac area decided not to make any changes for the 2022 and 2023 seasons. It was easy to come to this conclusion since football was not played in its traditional slot in the fall of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there appears to be buyer's remorse after the just completed 2021 season with the four-team league model.
Many schools didn’t know that only two automatic playoff bids were available in four-team leagues and, with only three games guaranteed in a four-team league model, football programs were finding it tough to find seven nonleague games. As one area football coach told me in 2021, “It’s tough enough to find five games, to find seven is unbelievably stupid.”
Don’t get it wrong, several schools loved the four-team model. One of them was Walnut High School. Jerry Person, the Athletic Director at Walnut HS and was the football team’s defensive coordinator, was downright giddy when we talked about the subject before last year’s league championship game against Diamond Bar.
“Look, all we wanted was a chance to become successful again,” Person said. “I think that the proposal that we turned in (which was ratified at the releaguing meeting) has worked out well not only for us but for other programs in the area. Just look at this crowd tonight (which was at full capacity at kickoff). This is all the evidence that you need.”
It can be argued that, while this may be true, there are a handful of schools that don’t endorse that type of thinking, (which includes the heavyweight schools such as Charter Oak and South Hills). They’ve been consistent in supporting a “Conferencing” Model that looks similar to what the Big-10 and SEC is going to look like.
Schools were asked during the 2021 releaguing cycle to turn in possible new league models for the 2022 and 2023 seasons. While the number was far shy of the 70 that were submitted in 2019, it did give valuable insight as to what is in the minds of area high school principals and athletic directors.
Let’s look at one that fits under the umbrella of two major conferences while aligning the other leagues in the area.
As you can see, the two “mega” conferences would be League/Conference #1 (12 schools) and League/Conference #2 with (18 schools). League/Conference #3 would be the Montview League, and League/Conference #4 would be the Miramonte League.
The question on the table is simple: “Can you offer any evidence that would show that this model would work?” Well, when it comes to football, there is only one way to find out, by using the Ned Freeman ratings from Calpreps.com. The logic here is this: If these ratings are good enough for the CIF Southern Section to align its playoff divisions in football, it’s good enough for releaguing.
Here are the factors that were not in consideration when it came to something like this:
Whether your team has a returning quarterback or not
Whether your team is projected to be 14-0 or 0-10 on 2022.
The person coaching your team.
What your offense or defense is looking like.
We took those factors (and more) off the table and approached it from a pure numbers/analytics point of view when it came to evaluating teams based on their assigned rating. Computers have no hidden agendas and do not read previews on websites.
With that as the backdrop, we decided to develop a spreadsheet using the last ten seasons of ratings (not using 2020-21 because it was not a full season of sport with playoffs) and start averaging ratings to see if the C2 Proposal had any merits.
We averaged the ratings into four categories, 10-year average, 10-year average eliminating the best and worse rating (averaging eight ratings), average from the last six seasons, and an average from the last four seasons. The results were fascinating.
6-year average model.
In this setup, you can split the Conference/League #1 “Inland Valley Conference” into two leagues:
Inland #1: Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, Chino Hills, Glendora, Etiwanda, Damien.
Inland #2: Ayala, Los Osos, Colony, Bonita, and Claremont.
In Conference/League #2 which can be named the “Foothill/Citrus Conference,” you can have three leagues
SGV #1: Charter Oak, Northview, Diamond Ranch, Los Altos, San Dimas, and South Hills.
SGV #2: Alta Loma, Don Lugo, Covina, West Covina, Chaffey, Chino
SGV #3: Pomona, Diamond Bar, Ontario, Rowland, Wilson, and Walnut
From a football perspective, how great is this? SGV #1 brings together the most consistently successful programs in the area. Every game would have an impact and (although this would be a minor issue to some) the geography factor works well. Rivalries such as Charter Oak vs Los Altos would be renewed, and Covina-Valley District schools Northview and South Hills would hook up with more on the line.
SGV #2 works nicely as well from a competitive-equity point of view as the top school (Alta Loma) and the bottom school (Chino) are separated by six rating points. That is parity. Plus, you would get nice matchups such as Covina vs. West Covina and, as was the case with SGV #1, geography works out nicely.
SGV #3 would be comprised of the majority of teams that are located with the 60 freeway and keeps alive the natural rivalries such as Diamond Bar vs Walnut. The separation in the ratings is only ten points - so that works as well.
I’ll present the 10-year models as well and as you can see, there are extraordinarily few changes to the six year-model.
10 Year Average eliminating top and bottom ratings (highlighted in yellow).
10 Year Average
And here are the four-year averages
In all these instances, the numbers don’t move much at all. And if you are wondering about other sports, these leagues also work well.
Who wouldn’t want to see Charter Oak, Northview, Los Altos, San Dimas, South Hills, and Diamond Ranch in the same league for baseball? Can you imagine what the final week of the regular season would look like? Epic!
Could you tweak the proposal by moving Charter Oak into the “Inland Valley” Conference? Absolutely.
Using the same six-year results model, you could insert Charter Oak into Inland Valley League #2 – thus making the league comprised of Ayala, Los Osos, Colony, Bonita, Claremont, and Charter Oak and make SGV #1 a 5-team league comprised of Northview, Diamond Ranch, Los Altos, San Dimas, and South Hills. (Note: The gap from South Hills (12.6) to Alta Loma (6.3) is wide enough to justify not moving Alta Loma into SGV #1.)
There was also a proposal that caught our eye, and it was under the category of Traditional #1 (T1).
Although the gap from the top-rated program to the sixth-rated team is a bit higher than we would like, it makes a lot of sense from a football standpoint when you look at the six-year average.
Conf. 1: Rancho Cucamonga (51.76), Upland (47.03), Chino Hills (29), Etiwanda (24.80), Damien (24.8), Los Osos (12.9).
Conf. 2: Glendora (29.4), Charter Oak (24.8), Ayala (22.1), Colony (18.7), Diamond Ranch (17.3), and Bonita (14.4)
Conf. 3: Northview (17.3), Los Altos (16.7), San Dimas (12.6), South Hills (12.6), Covina (5), West Covina (2.6).
Conf. 4: Alta Loma (6.3), Don Lugo (5.4), Claremont (5.4), Chaffey (2), Pomona (-6) and Ontario (-12)
Conf. 5: Chino (-0.8), Diamond Bar (-9), Rowland (-12.4), Walnut (-16), Montclair (-21.3) and Wilson (-28).
What makes this interesting is that you have addressed the league relief that Claremont would be seeking (from a rating perspective), and all three schools from the Covina-Valley Unified would be in the same league (which helps from a geographic perspective).
From the perspective of sports other than football, a basketball league that includes Glendora, Charter Oak, Ayala, and Bonita would be genuinely nice and one look at Conf. #3 from a baseball point of view would get a major nod from fans.
When you filter the results from a 10-year average, the Traditional #1 proposal looks that much stronger.
10 Year Average
Another minor change you make can is a simple tweak of moving Baldwin Park and Wilson with no objections from anyone. Other than that, the evidence is compelling.
The process of looking at releaguing will not begin in earnest until next fall, so we won’t revisit the subject until next year, but it’s never too early to look at the endless possibilities.
One other thing to remember are the words that Bishop Amat football coach Steve Hagerty said to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune’s Fred Robledo last year when he was asked about the new process to determine the divisions for the CIF-SS playoffs.
“We’re searching for the Holy Grail and you’re not going to find it,” Hagerty said. “We’re looking for something that doesn’t exist, and we keep knocking on doors looking for it and it isn’t there.
“There is no system that comes out where everyone goes ‘yes, this is it.’ There is nothing going to come out where everything is fair. You will always have groups happy and unhappy.”
Amen!