North Dakota Preps

I wouldn’t say this every year, but I do believe there are 14-15 teams in A that would compete, & probably beat, 80% of the teams in AA. And, the top 2-3 teams in A would easily compete with the very top 2-3 of AA this year.

My personal opinion is that the A level teams are getting much better (especially the bedroom communities.) And, the AA level is struggling a bit & really having a down year. It’s definitely some interesting times for ND football.

I was hoping that the Class B 11 would be competitive every night. But there has been so many blow outs. Yes would CC, Kindred, HCV, Langdon, Harvey and Beulah all could compete a level up. BUT.... that is quite a few teams that will be compete to see who gets to state as well.
But take Lamoure.... will anyone come close to beating them in 9 man..... or would it have been better for them to be playing 11 B. They would still be winning but they would not be crowned state champs 4 games into the season. Saying it is not fair that schools that have 120 boys should not be competing against teams that have 80 or 90 boys. But then you say the schools with a 120 boys should be playing the schools with 400 to 500 boys..... Now that really makes no sense to me.
Football is a numbers game and I will not argue that the bigger the school the better your chances of having depth and a couple good players.

Here's how I would fix it:

3 Divisions

Class AA- Schools with male enrollments above 300
Class A- Schools with male enrollments between 75 and 299
9-Man- Schools with less than 74 for a male enrollment

Schools without defined district borders must play in A or AA
Schools can opt up a division at any time, but to opt down a division a school must be within 25 students of the cutoff for the lower division, have a winning percentage under .300 and no playoff appearances for 4 consecutive years.
No Free and Reduced multiplier.

What we need to do is make sure that Kindred and CC play nothing but Class A schools because they should be Class a in sports because they win State every year in Football.... Oh wait.... Kindred made it to the finals once in 2016 and never before... Central Cass.... I can not find they have ever made it. BUT these two schools are the problem...

maddog1971 wrote:What we need to do is make sure that Kindred and CC play nothing but Class A schools because they should be Class a in sports because they win State every year in Football.... Oh wait.... Kindred made it to the finals once in 2016 and never before... Central Cass.... I can not find they have ever made it. BUT these two schools are the problem...

Isn't this kind of everyone's point? They are playing a bunch of B schools in football and are big favorites in the state. They are competitive at the AA level and now they are clear favorites in the east in A.

maddog1971 wrote:What we need to do is make sure that Kindred and CC play nothing but Class A schools because they should be Class a in sports because they win State every year in Football.... Oh wait.... Kindred made it to the finals once in 2016 and never before... Central Cass.... I can not find they have ever made it. BUT these two schools are the problem...

Do they have 300 boys in their school? In my plan they would be in the second class, which is exactly where they belong.

bison football73 wrote:

maddog1971 wrote:What we need to do is make sure that Kindred and CC play nothing but Class A schools because they should be Class a in sports because they win State every year in Football.... Oh wait.... Kindred made it to the finals once in 2016 and never before... Central Cass.... I can not find they have ever made it. BUT these two schools are the problem...

Isn't this kind of everyone's point? They are playing a bunch of B schools in football and are big favorites in the state. They are competitive at the AA level and now they are clear favorites in the east in A.

My whole point is the complaint is they win every year .... but the funny part is they never win state in fact they made it to the finals once and that was in 2016. Langdon wins every year. Why not complain about them.


The horse keeps getting beat...

Everyone hates the east schools because they are competitive???

It’s because most of the users on this site are from the East…if we’d like to add larger or successful West schools to the complaints then add Beulah, Trinity, Velva, Bowman, etc.

No matter the system put in place…there will ALWAYS be complaints by someone…it’s inevitable!

Sometimes it just s*cks to s*ck. You can't legislate the competitiveness and IMO these good programs, as long as they retain their coaches, are going to be competitive wherever you stick them within reason. I personally like the 3 class system presented up thread.

People need to look within their own programs, are your kids lifting 3-4 days a week during the school year like these top programs even with playing all 3 sports? Are they lifting 4 days a week and running as well all summer? If not then you are never going to compete with them regardless of numbers.


**had to edit s u c k to s*ck or it changed my whole message

Well put but I will not argue that numbers make a huge difference in football. Yes with more numbers you have a higher chance that you will get a stud athlete or two. Or you will find more kids that are willing to spend that time in the weight room, all year, even tho they are playing 3 different sports.
A group of kids that will play a double OT basketball game, take a 3 hour bus ride, get home do their homework and still get up at 6 AM to still lift with team mates. Or they make their parents get up and drive them and a couple teammates to school.... that is the part I don't like.
I don't like the gap of 79 to 299... I think that is way to big a gap. If you are playing 9th,10th grade kids on your Varsity... they should not be going against an all senior class of grown young men.

I'm going to take the argument that it's cyclical. The west dominated this division (A/11B) for the first 15 years since the original re-alignment. Now that the east has become relevant, there's somehow greater imperfections in the competitive balance? This football re-alignment has been hashed and rehashed since 1997 and they still haven't found a perfect scenario... because there never will be one. There will be a day in the not too distant future that the West will be dominant again for a stretch of years and the East will play second fiddle.

I long for the days that we can just go back to the 3-class system of A, B and 9man, and this current alignment is probably the closest we have been to that since 1997 (if we can just look past those goofy 11AA and 11A divisions).

We just have to let the games play out and let the outcomes happen.

maddog1971 wrote:Well put but I will not argue that numbers make a huge difference in football. Yes with more numbers you have a higher chance that you will get a stud athlete or two. Or you will find more kids that are willing to spend that time in the weight room, all year, even tho they are playing 3 different sports.
A group of kids that will play a double OT basketball game, take a 3 hour bus ride, get home do their homework and still get up at 6 AM to still lift with team mates. Or they make their parents get up and drive them and a couple teammates to school.... that is the part I don't like.
I don't like the gap of 79 to 299... I think that is way to big a gap. If you are playing 9th,10th grade kids on your Varsity... they should not be going against an all senior class of grown young men.

Right now the enrollment numbers for 11B are roughly 73-152. If they were changed to 79-299 with the parameters of schools w/out district lines would have to play at least in the middle class that would drop 2 teams down to the lowest class (Bowman and WNG) WNG already opts up. It would allow 4 teams to drop down to the middle class (Valley City, Wahpeton, Bismarck St. Mary's and Fargo Shanley). Shanley already opts up into the top class. You would have 3 more schools who are close to the 299 cut off (Watford City, Devils Lake and Belcourt).

It would also put teams like Grand Forks Central, Grand Forks Red River, Fargo North, Fargo South, Dickinson and Jamestown in the top class, where they belong.

Of the schools that would drop down into the new class made up of primarily the current 11B schools only Bismarck St. Mary's has a lot of recent success in football.