Jim Naveau: Football big player in private vs. public

When it comes to the debate about public schools, private schools and sports, I don’t know if I’ve met anyone who is completely in the neutral zone.

Some people are proponents of one position or the other. Some are opponents.

If the subject comes up in conversation, everyone seems to at least lean one way or the other.

If there are any really neutral people out there, they probably are the ones who have absolutely no interest in high school sports.

The issues are familiar. Do private schools recruit? Do they have an unfair advantage because of the size of the area from which they can draw students?

Does the controversial school vouchers program tilt the playing field?

Is it unfair to lump all private schools together because some private schools break the rules or stretch them as far as they can? Should public schools be included in the discussion of recruiting when you see how often players move from one public school to another?

Should there be separate state tournaments for public schools and private schools?

A group of northeast Ohio school administrators is pushing the Ohio High School Athletic Association to allow its member schools to have an up or down vote on the two-tournaments idea.

The OHSAA, which most people agree does not want separate tournaments and all the controversy that would come with splitting the publics and the privates, has responded by saying it wants to study the issue and maybe rework the overly complicated “competitive balance” proposal, which schools voted on last year.

But something I’ve noticed recently, which is mostly overlooked in this debate, is how much football is driving the car in high school sports and in the public-private discussion.

It sounds strange to say this in the middle of basketball season. But this debate probably wouldn’t be quite as heated without football.

The reason? Actually, there are two big reasons.

This is a football state, even more than ever in the last 10 or 15 years. It is probably no accident the two-tournaments proposal has come out of northeast Ohio, where football has always been king.

The other reason is that everyone can win a state championship in every high-profile sport in Ohio except football. You have to qualify for the postseason in football.

The recent eviction of Lima Central Catholic from the Northwest Conference and its aftermath illustrates the strength of football in the public-private battle.

It’s only speculation, but it appears the Northwest Conference was O.K. with LCC being a boys basketball power when it was admitted to the conference, but once it became a football power too, it became a problem.

Going forward, the biggest scheduling difficulty for LCC by far is in football.

The recent announcement of a four-year deal among LCC, Delphos St. John’s, Bath and Elida to play each other in football was good news for the Thunderbirds. But there is still a lot of hard work ahead to put together a reasonable football schedule.

One or two losses could mean you’re going to stay home from the playoffs, so teams are reluctant to add a nonleague football opponent who has had the success LCC or Delphos St. John’s has had in recent years. There are no sure computer points in putting a team like that on your schedule.

Indiana solves that problem, and seems to have a little less public-private acrimony than Ohio, by putting everybody into the football playoffs.

That works because there are just 409 high schools in the Indiana High School Athletic Association and only around 300 of them play football. Ohio has more than 800 high schools and had 717 football playing schools last season.

So, football will continue to be a big player — maybe one of the biggest — in the public-private discussion.