Apparently the post-season football coaches meeting was long one with lots of changes. The most important changes affect the tiers. If the executive committee approves the changes, a lot more teams will be forced to play in tier 1. Under the proposed new rules, schools with a junior team and AAAA schools will both have to play tier 1 next season. (Teams eligible for tier 2 are allowed to play tier 1 if they choose.) Assuming the rule passes and there are no changes to current commitments (not likely but I would rather do that than guess for now), next year's tiers would look like this:
Remain in tier 1 (all 13 current teams)
Lorne Park (Jr)
Meadowvale (4A & Jr)
Notre Dame (4A & Jr)
Our Lady of Mount Carmel (4A & Jr)
Philip Pocock (4A)
St. Augustine (4A & Jr)
St. Edmund Campion (4A)
St. Francis Xavier (4A & Jr)
St. Joan of Arc (4A & Jr)
St. Joseph (4A & Jr)
St. Marcellinus (4A & Jr)
St. Marguerite d'Youville (4A & Jr)
St. Thomas Aquinas (4A & Jr)
Move up to tier 1 from tier 2 (13/18 teams)
Bramalea (4A)
Cardinal Ambrozic (Jr)
Father Goetz (4A)
Fletcher's Meadow (4A)
Lincoln M. Alexander (4A)
Mayfield (4A & Jr)
Mississauga (4A)
Port Credit (4A)
Robert Hall (Jr)
St. Aloysius Gonzaga (4A & Jr)
St. Michael (Jr)
St. Roch (Jr)
Turner Fenton (4A & Jr)
Can remain in tier 2 (5/18 teams)
Clarkson
Iona
Loyola
St. Martin
Sandalwood
Anyone who knows ROPSSAA rules will see a problem. Unless some teams drop junior or some new tier 2-eligible schools join, there will not be enough teams to offer a tier 2 league. ROPSSAA rules require at least 6 teams to form a league or a tier.
Even if they get at least one more team, this new set up is going to increase the number of blowouts. There will simply be too much competitive disparity between too many teams. Football coaches, more so than many other sports, has done a pretty decent job of placing their teams in the appropriate tier. This seems like far too severe of a proposal. Unless there is a modification or the info provided to me wasn't entirely accurate, I don't see this rule change passing.
4 comments:
Don't forget Erindale is returning and they are a AAAA school so welcome to Tier 1!
Football is actually one of the better-balanced sports.
Every sport and level in ROPSSAA should be asked to create a system that makes a 50/50 split between tier 1 and tier 2.
Girls' basketball got rid of tiers a few years ago and look where we are now...Notre Dame wins their divisional games by an average score of 60-19, Campion by an average of 66-16 and then they go to OFSAA and get beaten because they are wasting their time in ROPSSAA playing true tier 2 teams.
In my opinion St.Augustine should be bumped down to Tier 2 next season because after this disappointing season I feel they need to work on their fundamentals before competing with Tier 1 teams.
Anonymous (Dec 9): Under the new rules, the quality of the team will play no part in determining tier 1 or 2. It will be based on school size and whether or not a school has a junior program.
Marty: Basketball is filled with blowouts but, even when it was tiered not too long ago, there was still a massive disparity between the top teams in Peel and everyone else. While it has made the problem of balance even worse, the current system was designed to minimize transportation costs; an important consideration with the ever-increasing costs of busing.
However, with teams like Campion and Notre Dame attending at least a half-dozen tournaments around the GTA and even down in Hamilton, I don't think their performance at OFSAA can be blamed on their league competition.
Goetz used to have no competitive league games (outside of Xavier for the first couple of years of their rise) but they still made the final four on more than one occasion.
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