Here’s something to remember during the debate about class expansion in boys basketball: It’s not just about the kids.
Some advocates of a switch from a two-class to a four-class system will tell you it is. They will tell you that more kids wearing state championship medals and savoring victory rallies is worth messing with the crown jewel of Illinois high school sports.
They’re only partly right.
Sure, it’s about the kids. It’s their sport, and they get to play it for barely the blink of an eye. But if basketball belongs to the athletes, it belongs to the fans too.
Tampering with the state tournament is not just some curriculum reform. The Illinois High School Association Board of Directors, which will decide whether or not to expand, must realize that the tournament is a public treasure and public trust.
There’s a reason we have March Madness and not November Nuttiness for football or May Mania for track. The IHSA will acknowledge as much Wednesday when it announces the nominees for its “100 Legends” online election as well as other plans for its celebration of the 100th boys basketball tournament in 2007.
Support for three or four classes in basketball has been around almost from the time the tournament doubled to two classes in 1972. But another double play now seems more possible than ever, in part because the IHSA currently is conducting a non-binding referendum among member schools to measure support for expansion and in part because a proposed enrollment multiplier may give it added momentum.
Boys and girls basketball, baseball, softball and girls volleyball are eligible for expansion to four classes. Boys and girls track and boys golf are eligible to grow to three classes.
The referendum ends Dec. 19, and the board could decide on expansion as early as its Jan. 11 meeting and implement it as early as next fall.
The board should vote no, especially for the sake of basketball. A sample four-class system submitted to members contains a number of reasons to do just that.
For one thing, the sample would replace a two-class Elite Eight system with four Final Fours. So though twice as many teams would win trophies, no additional athletes would enjoy the Elite Eight experience.
Some expansion supporters argue that the smallest schools in Class A and AA not only have no hope to win a state title but also little chance to win even a regional. That argument helped sway sentiment in the switch to two classes.
Maybe some weaker programs would win more regional titles in a four-class system, but because the sample proposal has eight sectionals and 32 regionals, half the number each class has now, you wouldn’t have more regional or sectional champs.
This eight-sectional system, by the way, also would mean the end of the Sweet 16, not only a grand tradition but also still the basis for state finals records.
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Four classes also could split traditional rivals and increase travel for regionals and sectionals for some schools. That in turn could affect attendance, hurting IHSA finances.
To understand this, you need only look across the border to Indiana, which boosted its storied single-class tournament to four classes starting with the 1997-98 season.
No one fought that change harder than did Bobby Plump, who personifies the myth of Hoosier Hysteria because in 1954 he hit a buzzer-beater to give Milan, 161 students strong, a state title victory over a school about 15 times its size.
Plump and other one-class supporters predicted expansion would hurt interest at the sectional level (equivalent to Illinois’ regionals) by breaking up rivals and increasing travel. They said attendance and revenue all the way to the state finals would suffer.
All of that has come true, and Plump fears Illinois is in for a similar fall.
“I don’t know what benefit comes out of four classes other than the fact you have more trophies to give out,” he said. “I thought Illinois had a great compromise system when they went to a two-class system, but four classes . . . in Indiana, anyway, it takes away all the interest.
“It seems the only winners we have in Indiana are trophy makers.”
The Illinois Basketball Coaches Association also opposes expansion. Executive director Chuck Rolinski acknowledged that some members support a four-class system but said the IBCA board unanimously opposes it.
“You’re going to lose the small schools versus the bigs,” said Rolinski, who helped lead the push for two-class basketball. “We’re diluting it too much to provide schools that are pushing for an advantage for themselves whereby they want a chance to win the state.”
IHSA Assistant Executive Director Kurt Gibson doesn’t agree that a four-class system would dilute March Madness. He pointed out that Indiana has only about 100 boys basketball teams per class compared with Illinois, whose fields would range from 156 teams in 3A to 225 teams in 1A under the sample proposal. “I think it would be very competitive,” said Gibson, who doesn’t believe a four-class system would necessarily shrink tournament revenues either.
The fields in an Illinois four-class system still seem too small, especially when the main thing we’d get from expansion is just 30 or so kids more a year hoisting championship trophies.
The IHSA referendum allows schools to vote for class expansion but against the sample proposal, so we could eventually wind up with a different plan. But it’s hard to imagine there’s one that would make expansion worth the cost of watering down the best state tournament in the country.
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