What to do about the few high schools who slaughter almost everyone else

We have an interesting high school football situation here in CA. We are too big to have a state championship tournament. 40M people—more than Canada.

.

They used to just have regional championships. My son Dan's team won his, North Coast, 40-0 in 1998. He scored 26 points. His QB was Ken Dorsey who went on to win the college national championship at Miami. He is now OC at the Bill's. But Ken could not do much passing in that NCS game. It was raining sideways and freezing.

.

12 miles from my house is De La Salle High School, the most successful football team in the universe. They hold the national consecutive wins record of 151. Their 150th win was over Monte Vista where I was freshman head coach at that time.
.

.

Perhaps their biggest star was Patrick Walsh. He is now head coach of Serra HS, Tom Brady's alma mater. This year, he was the northern CA champ and went south to play their champ Bosco.

.

They got beat 35-0 at half. Bosco added 10 more in the second half. They used a running clock in the 4th quarter to end the game which had become an embarrassment. Normally the game clock stops for penalties, incomplete passes, change of possession, etc.

.

Walsh was asked after the recent loss if he wanted to play them again next year. He said not if his team had no chance.

.

These are all Catholic schools. In the past, public schools also had top teams who beat De LaSalle and the southern CA perennial champs Mater Dei and Bosco.

.

In order to have a league at any level, you need to have a certain amount of parity. When I was a kid, the Yankees won the world series too often. Now, the only competitive game Bosco had was against Mater Dei.

.

What is the solution? In the NFL, they have salary caps and a draft. NCAA is a bit like CA high schools with perennial ranked teams like most of the four FBS finalists this year.

.

CA needs to set a parity goal and experiment with different rules until they find the right formula. I gave been in this as a high school coach here. I coached some of DLS's star players, like Kevin Simon, in my youth coaching. My son went to the DLS summer camp twice when Walsh was a player there.

.

They provided lunch to the kids and I said to Patrick, "I heard they do not have enough food for all the kids—just five loaves and two fishes—but it'll be okay because you're handing it out."

.

Former DLS head coach Bob Ladouceur let me attend his Spring practice one year. I attended clinics given by hIm and his DC/STC. Also the Mayer Dei coach.

.

They are excellent coaches. Super. But they also have better players. They attract from a larger radius. Same is true of perennial public school champs to a lesser extent.

.

The idea that Catholic schools have a built-in advantage is generally way overstated. They do not all dominate. They have tuition. Scholarships are available, but only based on need and need is decided by a distant arbiter who has no information about the student other than financial need.

.

Public schools sometimes dominate. Like my son's Miramonte where I coached. My son went there on an inter-district transfer.

.

Students moving in or attending on inter-district transfers need to be scrutinized more carefully. Law bans athletic-based transfers. It is not enforced strictly enough. Top coaches, both Catholic and public, attract stage fathers and their sons.

.

I am not sure of the solution, but I can see that parity is the proper goal and it is not being achieved and needs to be. Coach quality varies enormously at the high school level. And that should not be part of the parity changes.

.

But player quality should NOT vary consistently among schools. That is, no school should have top athletes year after year. Clearly, top high schools are ATTRACTING top talent if not recruiting it. The latter is illegal, but both must be prohibited. High school football players are rated nationally and any perennial high school champ with disproportionate number of blue-chip players should be investigated and that disparate situation MUST be ended. This is not jealousy about the champs, it is required if you want to have a viable league for all the players in your region.
.
There are variations among different states, possibly higher populations of blacks. Last I checked they were 77% of NFL players. But there should be no dominant teams within those states or any others if adequate attention is paid to the need for parity.
.
There are 131 FBS teams. Each can recruit 25 players on scholarship. That is 131 x 25 = 3,275 FBS recruits each year. There are 16,000 high school football teams in the US. So the average high school should have about 3,275 ÷ 16,000 = .2 recruits per year or one FBS recruit every five years. The sizes of the student bodies vary considerably so you would have to adjust for male student body size and adjust the random distribution for that variable—smaller schools maybe every ever ten years; larger schools maybe one a year. You may also have to adjust for local black population.
.
In other words, absent any recruiting or attracting by HS coaches, the average HS would produce about 1 FBS players every five years. Maybe one every two years in a large predominantly black high school. Higher concentrations are ILLEGAL TRANSFERS FOR ATHLETIC REASONS.
.
“If you attend St. Thomas Aquinas High in Florida and play football, there is a good chance you will be playing at the next level when you leave. The Raiders have 67 former players on active college rosters (data excludes junior college). Of the 67 former St. Thomas Aquinas players, 40 of them are playing FBS Division 1 football.” MaxPreps.com
.
That is too many. The time period is not stated. The average NCAA player plays for 4 years I will guess (some 5, some 3). That suggests that St. Thomas Aquinas produces 40 ÷ 4 = 10 FBS players PER YEAR!
.
Am I jealous of St. Thomas Aquinas. No. They probably have an excellent coach but you cannot allow all or most the the best players to congregate on one team. Not in youth, high school, college, or the NFL. This would be the equivalent of ending the payroll cap and draft in NFL or removing limits on number of scholarships or payment of college players. The financially richest teams would win almost all games and players and fans would lose interest in participating or watching the “competition.”
.
There is a safety issue, too. Boxing commissions limit who can fight whom by weight and also by past fight record.
.
One solution would be to create a separate interstate league for high school teams that produce more than their share of FBS recruits. They would need to travel out of state for most away games. Who pays for that? NFL/NCAA are benefitting from it.
.
Local teams could simply refuse to play FBS player producers. They should. Leagues should throw them out of the league. That would force them to travel out of state most of the time for games. If you want to play local, do it with local players. If you are attracting players from a wide area, play your schedule over a wide area.