I think it's enlightening to see all of the interest.......at the end of the season. How about hammering on this when it still counts, you know, like when the BOD is actually putting the plan together?
Now, onto the particulars.
Playin, our difference is not between "bottom up" and 'top down". Our difference is that you insist on clinging to the 1958 model of enrollment cutoffs. You must have friends that are superintendents in one-roomers all over the state.
Enrollment cutoffs are the dinosaur. Like opponents are the future. The quicker you accept it, the quicker we move on.
The reason you approach this from "bottom up" is because you refuse to accept one thing: there comes a point where you can't put a team on the field anymore. It's just over. You're approach crafts a plan where the smallest have no skin in the game.
I'm willing to form a fifth class to balance out competitiveness for the majority of schools. I'm not willing to craft any plan that keeps schools with 25 boys on the field on their own. Co-op, find someone to play with. Kensal and Spiritwood and Eckelson and Sanborn and Rogers and Dazey and Sibley and Walum and Cooperstown and Jessie and Glenfield and Sutton and McHenry and Binford (all one team) are finding a way.
As far as the east-west thing: Lake Oahe makes a north-south format pretty difficult. Not impossible, just tough.
But Playin, thanks for listening. That's more than our empty-suits BOD is doing these days. Devils Lake and HCV just solve all of their problems for them. I mean, why try? We all saw their willingness to work for kids when they sent out the letter about "your kids will lose games if we approve Measure 8". There is no willingness to go sit in a room and figure something out. This forum has been the most enlightened, active, solution-driven conversation about athletics in ND for the past 5 years minimum. The NDHSAA BOD is nothing more than a lifeless bean-counting group, willing to tell us that western North Dakota starts less than 60 miles from Fargo.