My Final Thoughts on D1 D2 and Enrollment

[PPHSfan]

My good friend Old Cardinal made a statement on another thread that pretty much says "the larger schools win the lions share of the games, and are consistently stronger than the smaller schools." Therefore D1 will always be stronger than D2.

I say.....Hogwash :D

First of all, as of last year there were 207 schools in 3A. I took all 207 and added up their enrollment and came up with 123,285 students. If you divide that number by 207 you will get an average enrollment of 595 students per school. The average enrollment of D1 Schools is 769.

Next I looked at all 32 Districts and counted how many times the school with the largest enrollment won district. Then I counted the other places as well.

The largest enrollment won as follows.

1st 10 of 32
2nd 8
3rd 7
4th 5
5th 2

Then I took all of the teams that won 1st thru 8th in all 32 districts, and averaged the enrollment of each position. The results are as follows.

District Winner 599 enrollment avg.
2nd Place 632 enrollment avg.
3rd Place 581 enrollment avg.
4th Place 568 enrollment avg.
5th Place 538 enrollment avg.
6th Place 495 enrollment avg.
7th Place 670 enrollment avg.
8th Place 536 enrollment avg.

Now according to logic, the school with the highest enrollment Should win more districts, but the fact is they don't. So I decided to find out what Does factor into the most district wins, so I went back to 1992 and counted the playoff appearances of the top 3 teams in each of the 32 districts and the last place team in each district and came up with these numbers.

District Winner....AVERAGE of 5.5 playoff appearances in the past ten years.

Second Place.......AVERAGE of 5 playoff appearances in the past ten years.

Third Place........AVERAGE of 4.5 playoff appearances in the past ten years.

Last Place.........AVERAGE of 1 playoff appearance in the past ten years.

My Conclusion?

The best programs win the most games, consistently.

Size Does Not Matter :D

[BanderaBlahBlah]

Uh oh... Good research and good presentation PPHSFan...

<small>[ June 18, 2003, 06:19 PM: Message edited by: BanderaBlahBlah ]</small>

[eye of the tiger]

You put in a lot of work on that project PPHS. Nicely done.

[Old Cardinal]

My good friend, that data does not present reality- REALITY is that there are 13 District winners that are the largest school out of the 32 Districts THAT IS A 41% of winners that are the largest school. Now there are 19 winners that were not the largest school in the District- that makes the calculation 19 Divided by 175 (that's eliminating the 32 big ones)...That is 11% winners on the smaller schools. PPHS, you can work your way down with the second largest enrollment, and the Division I type schools dominate all the may down to 5th largest school in the District. That's why schools like say Forney or Gainesville could beat Bandera, the powerhouses in Bracket play reside in Division I.

[BanderaBlahBlah]

I see no credible back-up... How do we know that Bandera would get beaten by Forney or Gainsville? Just because of their higher enrollment? Is that why in 1999 when Cuero had 700 kids they beat Corpus Christi Calallen (who won their district in 4A) that had an enrollment in the mid 900's? There's atleast a 200 student difference there, not to mention a classification difference... The fact is, if higher enrollments won, Sealy wouldn't have won 4 in a row...

[vet93]

PPHSfan...I have argued both points of this issue and I believe that you are only half right. I fully agree with you that there are good programs that consistently win year in and year out. These programs for some reason (coaching, tradition, town personality, attitude genetics) will win regardless of their numbers. If this were not the case then everyone would have a 50/50 split on wins and losses over a given number of years when the law of averages comes into play. However, I also have to agree with Old Card on the issue of larger schools having an advantage. Your own numbes prove this point. The largest enrollment school won district 31% of the time. The smallest school won the district 6% of the time. That means that statistically the largest school has a 5 times greater chance at winning disrict than the smallest school. For those that have taken statistics in college that is incredibly statistically significant. To be real honest it shouldn't take an Einstein to figure out that if your opponent has more athletes to choose from than you do, then that will give him a statistical advantage. Does that mean that the bigger school will always win state or will always defeat the smaller school....no. What it does mean is that enrollment is a significant factor in predicting success but not the only factor. Where we get into trouble with statistics is when we try and take the exception to the rule and use it to make a point. Statistics also get us into trouble when we try to apply the rule to everybody with out considering other factors. For those who make the point that you can only play 11 at a time...I say hogwash. Year in and year out our starting 11 match up pretty well with Wylie's starting 11 players. Where Wylie really puts it on us is players 12-22. By the end of the game their starters are fresh because they have had quality back up. Our starting 11 are worn out. That is where quality depth hurts. That and over the course of a long season where injuries are so important. With quality depth a team can withstand an injury...with a small enrollment a key injury can be devestating (even more so when that player starts both ways). I am nor arguing that the larger teams are destined to win and all small enrollment schools should just give up. What I am arguing is that having a significantly larger enrollment is a sizeable advantage and that ignoring this fact goes against both common sense and statistical data.

[PPHSfan]

Old Card, I refer you to my argument on the other thread. First of all it was 11 not 13. The only spots that matter are first second and third. That is 96 playoff spots, of which D1 gets 32. There are 32 districts and D1 won 11 of them, or approx. 1/3rd. Regardless of what you want folks to believe, there are 69 D1 teams, not 32. If D1 makes up 1/3rd of the playoff bracket, then they make up 1/3rd of the league. 1/3rd of 207 is pretty close to 69. Now if 1/3rd of the league won 1/3rd of the districts, I say that is just about average, (not domination). So if D1 wins one third of the districts, and represents one third of the playoff bracket, then where is the domination? You wan't to use Fuzzy Math, and try to convice us that it is One team against the other five in any given district as far as D1 goes, and that my friend is just not true. One third of the league wins 1/3rd of the districts. How much more Sears and Roebuck can you get?

[PPHSfan]

Vet

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think you may have missunderstood me. I say that D1 vs D2 is not The largest school vs the smallest school. D1 makes up the top 1/3rd of the leauge. D2 makes up the other 2/3rds. D1 wins 1/3rd of the districts. D2 wins the other 2/3rds. I don't see where D1 is dominate. I totally agree that there is and advantage in Depth with more students, I have never argued that fact. My argument is that just because D1 should dominate, they do not. Size does not matter when it comes to the numbers. There are just as many small schools in 3A that can beat any of the 207 teams on any Friday night, as there are Big teams, and the record for the past 80 years proves it. Large enrollment is nice, but it is not what makes a winning team, and it never will be.

[vet93]

Sorry that I misunderstood. I agree with you that just because a team is d1 doesn't mean that they will necessarily dominate. This past year DI had the advantage. In other years DII will have an advantage. The whole distinction is really kind of a farce anyway. Bandera was D2 and they had almost 800 students!


PPHSfan:
Vet

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think you may have missunderstood me. I say that D1 vs D2 is not The largest school vs the smallest school. D1 makes up the top 1/3rd of the leauge. D2 makes up the other 2/3rds. D1 wins 1/3rd of the districts. D2 wins the other 2/3rds. I don't see where D1 is dominate. I totally agree that there is and advantage in Depth with more students, I have never argued that fact. My argument is that just because D1 should dominate, they do not. Size does not matter when it comes to the numbers. There are just as many small schools in 3A that can beat any of the 207 teams on any Friday night, as there are Big teams, and the record for the past 80 years proves it. Large enrollment is nice, but it is not what makes a winning team, and it never will be.

[Old Cardinal]

There is only ONE DIVISION I TEAM FROM EACH DISTRICT(32) in the bracket play. You start out with 16(games), 32 teams playing, then 8, then 4, then 2 It takes five weeks in Division I ...On the contrary, ALL THE OTHER SCHOOLS are separate from the Division I's, they HAVE TO BE COUNTED, and counted in the Division II group(maybe one or two big ones are down there with the rest of the losers)! Yes, there are a few loses in the highest enrollment but there are nearly 200 losers below them, almost all with lower enrollment!.... That FACT alone, makes all your arguments void. Big school beat small schools most of the time, especially big schools like Division I, can smoke Division II, IF they were to play at higher levels of the Bracket teams!

<small>[ June 18, 2003, 09:54 PM: Message edited by: Old Cardinal ]</small>

[slpybear the bullfan]

Old Cardinal:
There is only ONE DIVISION I TEAM FROM EACH DISTRICT(32) in the bracket play. ...On the contrary, ALL THE OTHER SCHOOLS are separate from the Division I's, ...(maybe one or two big ones are down there with the rest of the losers)!....

That FACT make all your arguments void. Big school beat small schools most of the time, especially big schools like Division I can smoke Division II, IF they were to play at higher levels of the Bracket teams!Whooooooaaa partner...

#1 - Old Card, I respect the heck out of your opinion, but if you want to come on here and say that DI are winners and DII are the "Losers" then you can just kiss it. To heck with all my politeness, that is just an arrogant, assinine thing for you to post. Maybe you should go back and reread your post and rethink it.

#2 - The Facts are the facts... the largest school in each district only won the district championship 31% of the time, (11 out of 32). Don't water down the math or make it fuzzy. That fact stands out pretty well. I also took statistics in college (man, let's not do that over wink ) What that 31% means is that you can predict with a high order of confidence that 7 out of 10 times the largest school in district will not win the district. So how does that make the biggest schools the best?

#3 - There is no Div I or Div II known before post-season starts. This is simply a line drawn through the playoff pool after the final regular season is finished and the enrollments are counted. Teams can be Div I one year and Div II the next. Saying that Div I teams can "smoke" DII teams has little validity.

And to think... we in D/FW get blamed for being "Regional Homers" who think our teams are invincible... This "DI will smoke 'em" stuff is a joke...

*deep breath*

okay, I feel better now...

<small>[ June 18, 2003, 10:16 PM: Message edited by: slpybear the bullfan ]</small>

[Old Cardinal]

Sorry, I have reread my post and the teams that place 4, 5, 6, 7,8, in district are the lower enrollment schools, almost exclusively. And they too have a lower percentile of District Champs. To figure those that did not qualify as Division I- you have to divide. 22 by 207, and that gives you a 11% percentile! Doesn't even your logic alone tell you that the smaller enrollment teams across 3A lose more games that the 32 largest enrollment teams?

[BanderaBlahBlah]

The D2 schools lose more games? Logic could go two different ways in that statement... It could be that D2 schools have more competition amongst themselves? I'm not saying that's the truth... But your statement wasn't very conclusive...

[slpybear the bullfan]

Old Card, Why would I divide 22 by 207? What does that tell me?

207 is the total number of teams in 3A...

I assume you mean 21 which is the number of district champs that weren't the largest enrollment in their district...

And this number means... um... what exactly?

What next, do we divide 11 by 207?

Again, my point was that there is no such thing as looking at the list of teams right now and picking out DI. You can't slice up the upper 1/3 of the enrollment of the teams in state, because it is not a hard number until after the post season. All DI means is the that it was a team that finished in the top 3 of its district and it had the highest enrollment.

And 7 out of 10 districts last year were won by DII schools

Think about that. Out of those 32 DI powerhouses you keep mentioning, only 11 of them could take care of business and beat the "DII" teams to win district...

Geez, does everyone see how idiotic this is? A school with an enrollment of 855 loses the district championship to a school with an enrollment of 820. And we call the 820 school DII??? No one would think of that school as "DII", but that is what you have to call it.

This is ridiculous...

Here is my Defining statement on Big School vs. Small School...

Logic says schools with more atheletes in them than other schools should win more games than schools with less atheletes.

I will agree to that statement, but not to the DI and DII horsehockey... DI and DII have nothing to do with which school has more atheletes... It has everything to do with what district the UIL drops you in and how many students (not football atheletes) the school registers.

[Old Dog]

Holy Toledo, you guys are awesome! I haven't seen that many stats to attempt to prove a point since the BCS standings were started. You guys are deeeeeeeep! I need some post holes dug here in hard rock Burnet County if ya'll need to keep busier.

I'm just kidding, you guys are really a load of fun to follow. I have to re-read some of your posts to get my pea brain on track sometimes. Keep up the banter.....it's great!

[Rabbit'93]

My head is spinning............I think I'm gonna be sick frown

[Owen B]

Old Cardinal,

You are aware that Bridge City is not one of the 32 largest enrollment schools in 3A, right?

Are you aware that 4 of those 32 largest schools went D2 last year? Or that 10 of them didn't make the playoffs at all?

Did you know that Sinton, a 2001 D1 State finalist and 2002 quarterfinalist, isn't even among the largest 75 3A schools? Did you know that 18 of last year's D2 schools are larger than Sinton?

Oh, maybe your right after all. Those top 32 teams are the best. The other 175, including Bridge City and Sinton, are wannabe little schools. :p

[vet93]

Old Card...I will agree with you that the larger the school the greater the potential for having a good team...however I think that you are going a little too far with the DI vs. DII rhetoric. It comes across kind of arrogant and snobbish to us guys in Division II. The alignment of DI and DII is so arbitrary each year depending on the individual teams that are involved that it is virtually impossible to come up with any valid statistical trends other than larger schools have a "statistical" advantage over smaller schools in direct proportion to the size difference of the schools. This statement has nothing to do with the divisions other than there are more high enrollment schools in DI than DII.

[PPHSfan]

So out of 32 districts, the largest school in the district wins 10 times last year. The remaining 22 largest schools placed in 2nd 3rd or lower. But since the highest enrollment of the first three places is the automatic D1 rep and finds themselves in a bracket of 32 rather than 64 that makes them superior? So a team like Celina that wins district has got to win 6 more games to grab the title, but a team like lets say Paris North Lamar, who comes in 3rd in their district behind a team that has 300 less students (Commerce)only has to win 5. And by your logic, Paris North Lamar is on of the elite 32 by default, and is obviously superior to Commerce? Sorry Old Card, but if you want us to believe that the 32 D1 teams are superior by default, I can cite 21 more examples of your superior teams losing district to meager little D2 schools last year.

[rholl]

I'm trying to think of a solution here.....lets classify all schools into districts where there is no more than a 20 student difference in enrollment. Therefore no school can claim a competitive advantage over another based on too many students. THe districts turn into a mess...no telling how far you have to drive to find schools that have an enrollment 20 students within yours...my point...there are always going to be schools with larger enrollments no matter how you slice 'em. You just have to play the cards as they are dealt.

[PPHSfan]

rholl, nobody is complaining about who they have to play, we are just telling Old Cardinal that being the largest school does not put you into a class of 32 elite teams.

[FranksBullDog]

Division 1 VS Division2 is just something for all of us who love HS football to argue about in June waiting on O week.The UIL does need to elliminate the two divisions but make the size of the schoolmatch their classification. Marlin is alwaysnear the bottom of enrollment in any district they are assigned but they have won dist. in 17,18,and 19AAA and have not lost a dist. game since about98.In non dist.they always play teams with enrollments twice or three times their enrollment and usually fare very well.As far as i know they were the smallest school still playing in the fourth week against Bellville.ALso BV would have been a DIV 1 school in their dist.Basically enrollment does help but it is not always the deciding factor.

[Old Cardinal]

To Owen B, We are talking about the LARGEST ENROLLMENT- PER EACH DISTRICT. I think that with that fact, you can see the logic. PPHS vasilates back-and-forth on what is being discussed...When you get the biggest schools in the District at- 1st 2nd and 3rd spots placed in a District( which incidently started the discussion), them for the most part, there is a preponderence of low enrollment schools that, fill all the remainder of the spots, and have the losing seasons. It is interesting however that even the giant schools tend to fill all of the other Div II PLAYOFF spots(per each District), in most cases. Ex. Borger is the Biggest in the District yet Canyon which is one of the biggest enrollments in the State- gets to play in Div. II. In East Texas, there are whole Districts that have a lower enrollment level per all schools; while in high density areas, around Cities, most of the District teams are quite large. That's why you see those teams tend to do quite well in Div. II, they should!....The only fair solution is to divide the 207 school in half by enrollment figures-then contain the Bracket play called Div. I to the upper half; and likewise call the lower enrollment schools Div. II.

<small>[ June 19, 2003, 11:02 AM: Message edited by: Old Cardinal ]</small>

[Cameronbystander]

Finally after 22 posts the last sentence hits the nail on the head. For fairness, the school size must be taken into consideration. Why else is there 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, and 5A. Unless Caldwell comes alive, Cameron will always be the D1 school at 520 students. We have an outstanding program and a storied history but you can only compete at the level of the athletes available. It is tough year in and year out to be competitive against schools that have a 175% higher enrollment.

[PPHSfan]

Old Cardinal
...PPHS vasilates back-and-forth on what is being discussed..Old Card, If you are going to try and use big words, at least spell them right.

I think you meant vacillates

[BanderaBlahBlah]

Some use it as an excuse, some use it as a reason to play harder... D1 numbered teams have never dominated and neither have D2 teams...

I remember in '98/'99 the talk was D2 had better teams than D1...

[PPHSfan]

Old Cardinal:
....The only fair solution is to divide the 207 school in half by enrollment figures-then contain the Bracket play called Div. I to the upper half; and likewise call the lower enrollment schools Div. II.....
Actually I think if there has to be a D1 D2 split, then it should be the top 8 teams in each region in D1 and the next 16 in D2 in order to make it fair. These teams could then be seeded and bracketed for the Regional Playoffs.

[Bandera YaYa]

Gosh, I am learning so much from all this banter...least of all that you don't want to misspell a word in front of PPHSFan!! What is he, a closet English teacher! LOL :D

Anyway, love to see "Bandera" mentioned so much on here....better late than never!! :)

Ya Ya!!

[Chief Woodman]

Here is the short answer to the problem....I can say without doubt that there will be......and I am willing to bet money on this....there will be at least one District champ in each district. And even that does not mean as much as some would have you believe. Three of the four teams in the 3A championship games last year DID NOT win their own district.

[PPHSfan]

Well two of them did't anyway. As far as I know, Burnet and Greenwood both won their district. But you make a good point. At least most of what you say can not be disputed or spun. :p

[Matthew328]

Wow my head is really spinning from all these numbers being thrown around....geez...BUT this thread is what makes the site so great...intelligent posters who can back up their opinion with legit data...

As for the Div I Div II argument..lets look at things year by year....in my opinion it runs in cycles...

in 1998 Aledo was the Div I champ, Newton was Div II..in that year I'd say that Newton had a slight edge over Aledo and Div II was much stronger than Div I that season..

1999 Liberty-Eylau was the Div I champ and Commerce was the Div II champ...if LE and Commerce play that year again another toss up...but again I think on a whole Div II was stronger than Div I...

2000 Gatesville in Div I and LaGrange in Div II...this year I'd give a very slight edge to Gatesville and also this is the first year I'd sa the Div I bracket was a tad bit stronger than Div II...

2001 Everman in Div I and Commerce in Div II...again I'd give Everman the edge here...both brackets seemed stout this year...Div I was more top heavy though...I think the top 5 or 6 here were real strong..(Everman, Sinton, Forney, Bellville to name a few...) but on the whole the Div II bracket was better..

2002 Everman in Div I and Bandera in Div II..again I'd give Everman the edge...and again Div I seemed to be very top heavy...Everman, Forney, Jasper, Burnet, Sinton....but depth wise D2 is a little stronger..

The reason why D2 is deeper is notice the number of blowouts you see in Div I...especially when the top teams play the weaker teams...Div II has a lot more close games come playoff time than Div I...it all runs in cycles...I feel this year the best team may come from Div I but the Div II brakcet will have more good teams and more close games..

[Chris Hart]

Well guys the Div. I and Div. II argument has been splendid, but there are some other factors you are all leaving out. You have to consider all the players that have been recruited, and all those stud kids that are moved into the tradition rich programs by their world class athlete parents. Now if someone could do some research on this subject and give me some cold hard numbers, I will be able to come up with my final conclusion on this subject. :D :p

<small>[ June 19, 2003, 10:25 PM: Message edited by: Chris Hart ]</small>