Another thing to keep in mind is that 90% of the private schools aren't an issue in football. The CCL/ESCC is just a different beast, especially with 24 teams all recruiting over each other to be the best football team in the state. They split the teams into 6 4-team conferences by quality/locality, and I wonder if it just makes sense for IHSA to classify each division up front (so the top 2 divisions are 8A, next two are 7A, bottom two 6A). Could be more spread out I guess as enrollment dips in some programs, but there's an inherent advantage in being in the CCL for football, for better or worse.
People hate the multiplier and the waiver (for different reasons), but the waiver is correctly applied most of the time, it's just weird that it's on the 2 year cycle (so a team like IC Catholic that is a perennial 4A power will get bumped down to 2A this year because they automatically get the waiver for lack of playoff wins in this recent 2 years).
There are other things that should be addressed too, like certain schools pulling in senior transfers to overwhelm a small division and effectively buy a state title, which doesn't feel good for anybody.
On the flip side, the losing teams are all extremely salty and looking for any way to declare the situation unfair, and to them I say suck it up, sometimes you just get beat, or it's not your day.
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