All schools with no boundaries will be multiplied. There will be no waivers. |
Class expansion has been one of those issues over the past decade that has repeatedly been brought to the forefront by member schools. However, until the membership was polled in the recent advisory referendum, there hadn't been the kind of support to warrant such an expansion. |
I believe there have been high school athletes in Illinois to use steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. It's probably a small number, but I think it would be naive to believe there hasn't been any usage. People like Jose Canseco have brought this to the forefront, and it isn't going away anytime soon. |
I could see one of two things happening. If a state law isn't put in place, I can see our association moving in that direction [by conducting random steroid testing]. |
I know a lot of people think it will water things down, but they said that when we went to two classes. I think this will do a lot to help balance out the competition. |
I think our member schools clearly think we needed to take some steps to level the playing field and this is the measure that will accomplish that at this moment. |
My reaction is that I think it's great. I think it's a wonderful site and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to work something out to get back in there. |
No, it really isn't. People who believe we have made a mistake by expanding the classes believe we will generate less revenue with this. |
No, no way. There's not even been discussion of it. |
Our membership felt that something had to be done to level the playing field. |
People had their chance, had their opportunity to respond. At this point, our board is committed to going through with this expansion. Now, if somebody collected some data saying they want to look further into this expansion, it's something we'd look at. |
The 37 schools that sued us agreed to this process and, quite frankly, I think it's time to move on and move forward and see how this works out. |
The expansion of classes was supported by our membership, and as I've said in the past, we're a membership-driven organization. Those who voted favored this move. |
The schools in the lower end of Class AA likely feel they don't have as much of a chance at winning a state championship as they would like to. Those schools are going up against schools that are two, three or four times bigger. We're looking to have competitive equity. |
We had a tremendous bid from Northern and we also had a tremendous big from the University of Illinois. At the end of the day our board concluded that we would return to the U of I. |