High School Football

I firmly believe Joe would have been immensely successful next season. He has coached very successful teams in the past, both public and private schools.

But this particular program is, well, let’s just call them “very sensitive to parental input.”

Not an insider at any of the schools that were big on recruiting, my sense is that if schools start down that path, they pretty much need to be all-in with that direction. As soon as they back off from that approach, the wheels seem to fall off. Excusing the analogy, it has the feel of a drug addiction.

Lemme tell you about Jimmy Johnson.

Here in Normal, we have Illinois State University, which used to be called “Illinois State Normal University” back in the dark ages because it was a teachers college. Still part of ISU are two university “laboratory” schools, an elementary school and a high school, where student teachers teach and where different educational theories are tried and measured. The High School is, not coincidentally, University High School.

After the 2016 Football Season, U-High lost its winning Football Coach to another state (or maybe he retired, I forget) so they hired Jimmy Johnson for the 2017 season.
Jimmmy had coached HS way back in his career, he won titles as a college coach several times, and he even had a Super Bowl Ring from coaching the Packers. Now he faced huge expectations as a Head Coach of the U-High Pioneers.

In IL, all high schools ,whether public, private, or laboratory, play under the IHSA (Illinois High School Association). The first thing Johnson faced as the new coach was the decision to move U-High from the smaller “Cornbelt Conference” to the much more competitive Big State Eight Conference. Johnson was very philosophical about the move when I interviewed him prior to his first game of the season in 2017: “These teams are more competitive than the previous conference; that will pull our performance up and make us that much more competitive,” he told me.

2017, the Pioneers missed the IHSA playoffs by 5 seconds: had they won that final game, they would have gone, but they were driving in OT (which is not Sudden Death) and their opponents had scored a field goal with their possession. Clock winding down, UHigh quarterback throws for the end zone from the 25, the same play that had tied the score to force the OT... inter-freaking-cepted!!

But that was Johnson’s first season, and their first time in the more competitive league, everyone was disappointed, but eventually encouraged.

2018, however, the wheels fell off the bus. UHigh was only 2-7 on the season... but so far, no word about replacing Coach.

Best of luck to Meyer, a genuinely good guy who got chewed up by the Trinity League. Hopefully he can keep the local talent home--and out of the arms of the Bellflower Braves just up the road.

Poly might be in trouble sooner v. later. Their starting QB xfer'd, and their lower levels weren't all that great. The sweater vest might be up against it this year.

Does CDM play its home games at NHHS?