EDITORIAL: Illinois high school football thrown up for grabs, and for what?

Brian Badke played football for Brother Rice, a Southwest Side high school that belongs to the 106-year-old Chicago Catholic League. His father, George, and grandfather, Bernard, also played football for Catholic League schools.

Badke became Brother Rice’s head football coach in 2012. His son, Mick, goes to school there now and represents the family’s fourth generation in the Catholic League.

But another son, Jack, a third-grader, probably won’t get the chance.

Beginning in 2021, high school football in Illinois is going to look a lot different. Instead of playing the traditional conference games, schools will be assigned to eight- or nine-team districts by the Illinois High School Association. District assignments will be based on school enrollments and geography. Classic Catholic League rivalries will be diminished.

“To get away from rivalries more than 100 years old, that’s disappointing,” Badke, whose team made it to the state championship game last month in Illinois’ largest class, told us. “For us not to play Mt. Carmel, St. Rita or Loyola is ridiculous. . . . Think about getting away from Bears-Packers.”

The reorganization passed by a vote of 324-307 by high school principals. That nothing more than a simple majority — in this case, a margin of just 17 votes — could dictate such a drastic change leaves us scratching our heads. Proposals like this one should require a three-fourths or three-fifths supermajority to pass. More people should be convinced first of the merits of the change.

We understand the reorganization will be advantageous for some schools. Brother Rice will benefit in at least one way.

Badke typically has trouble scheduling early-season games against opponents outside the league, a common problem for teams that usually make the playoffs. He has had to take his team out of state for non-conference games.

Some would-be Brother Rice opponents don’t want to risk non-conference losses that could hurt their chances of making the playoffs.

Schools have become obsessed with a “drive for 5” — at least five wins to have a shot at making the playoffs. Scheduling issues drove massive conference realignment in recent years. The DuPage Valley, which includes Naperville Central and Naperville North, is down to five schools because four left for the DuKane Conference.

Under the new system, teams will play seven or eight district games, with the top four teams advancing to the playoffs. One or two games will be outside the district schedule and not count toward making the playoffs. That should help out schools that have struggled to find early-season opponents.

But the non-district games could become “glorified scrimmages,” Deerfield football coach Steve Winiecki said. “Will coaches play their best kids if the games don’t count toward the playoffs?”

Troy McAllister, who coaches in the Chicago Public League at Phillips Academy, sees advantages for his team. Under a district format, he expects half of Phillips’ opponents to be top-tier teams. “We like that piece of it,” he told us.

But the remaining teams in McAllister’s district likely will include Public League teams that are no match for Phillips, which won state championships in 2015 and 2017.

“We could be paired with Juarez in Little Village,” he said. Juarez went 1-7 this year. “That would not be safe. Neither program would want to play that game.”

Teams that struggle could grow discouraged about fielding freshman, sophomore and junior varsity teams against powerhouse programs, which would create haphazard scheduling. That also would result in younger players quitting the sport.

Currently, officials in the Public League match up teams of about equal ability. Thirty-six schools this year did not play in state playoff-eligible divisions. As newer or struggling programs evolve, they can earn their way into divisions that can qualify teams for the postseason.

Under the new system, how could those teams eventually move into the state’s district format to be playoff eligible? Would even more Public League teams end up going their own way, outside the state’s system?

The Illinois High School Association’s reorganization of who plays whom creates clear winners and losers, all the more reason to wonder why the association was so keen to approve it by a simply majority vote.

Brother Rice won’t be playing Mt. Carmel? What was the IHSA thinking?

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