TERRE HAUTE —
Single-class basketball not likely part of Indiana’s sporting future
Television hasn’t been the same since “Seinfeld” ended.
Music never recovered from the breakup of The Beatles.
AM radio was better when it featured Top 40 hits instead of cranky, ranting talk-show hosts.
Teenagers became more skilled behind the wheel when they learned to drive using a stick shift.
Yet, things changed. Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer left the NBC lineup in 1998. John, Paul, George and Ringo all went solo in 1970. The AM dial veered toward all-anger, all-the-time in the 1990s. And, manual transmissions — present in 70 percent of American-made autos in the 1940s — can be found in just 7 percent of domestic vehicles now.
Given all of its current weirdness, Congress could try to force the “Seinfeld” cast to reunite, mandate all-music formats on amplitude modulation radio stations, and require automakers to build cars and trucks that reintroduce the U.S. driving public to a clutch. Likewise, the British parliament could order surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to tour and record together for as long as they’re physically able.
But it wouldn’t work. Those genies can’t be stuffed back into their bottles.
The same goes for Indiana’s old single-class high school basketball tournament.
Like it or not, that tradition — envied around the country for its unaltered, time-worn, David-and-Goliath structure — died in 1996 when the Indiana High School Athletic Association voted to divide its postseason hoops tourney into four separate classes, based on enrollment size. No longer would all 382 schools compete for one state championship.
Big metropolitan schools would play other schools with four-digit student bodies. Tiny rural schools faced only those of similar enrollments. 4A’s vs. 4A’s, 3A’s vs. 3A’s, 2A’s vs. 2A’s, and A’s vs. A’s. No more mismatches.
At the same time, the little guys’ dreams of re-creating the 1954 Milan Miracle by knocking off the giants and winning it all — resurrected every March — ceased.
The death of those against-all-odds aspirations, immortalized in the movie “Hoosiers,” was sad to watch. A significant slice of our culture took its last breath.
But, unfortunately, it happened. And, despite the perception of state legislators now trying to pressure the IHSAA into reviving the single-class basketball tournament 16 years later, the association’s 1996 decision to adopt multiple classes involved extensive public debate. This past spring, a few lawmakers threatened to force a return to a one-class tourney through an amendment to an education bill, but IHSAA commissioner Bobby Cox averted that action by agreeing to a series of 11 town hall meetings on the topic around the state. At one of those meetings last month in Connersville, Mike Delph — the Republican state senator from Carmel leading the single-class effort in the Legislature — said, according to an Indianapolis Star report, “The time is right for public feedback. We didn’t have that in 1996.”
My memory of 1996 differs from that.
Indeed, back in ’96, the IHSAA did not conduct town hall meetings to solicit opinions about its basketball tournament as it did this year. But the volume of input from the average fan 16 years ago was an avalanche compared with the modest turnouts at those 2012 gatherings. In ’96, everybody and their cousin weighed in on class basketball in advance of not one, but two affirmative votes by separate IHSAA bodies. The second vote, which followed nearly five months of intense controversy, was triggered by grassroots petition drive that resulted in an unprecedented statewide referendum of all 382 IHSAA member school principals. (The multi-class idea won decisively, 220-157.)
Hoosiers wrote letters to the editor, cussed and discussed it at ball games, coffeeshops and after-church lunches. As sports editor of this newspaper during that era, I know that debate received more coverage than any single topic since Larry Bird took the Sycamores to the NCAA Final. The Tribune-Star sports staff talked to coaches, players, former coaches, former players, parents, fans, IHSAA officials, principals and even, yes, politicians.
Rest assured, state legislators, we’ve had this argument. A long time ago. And, that is why the level of statewide interest in this revisitation of single-class basketball is so mild, by comparison. There is no groundswell to go back, regardless of polls. Yes, a phone survey of 500 Indiana residents conducted by a Washington-based opinion research firm, Wilson Perkins Allen, revealed that 52 percent of those contacted favored a one-class tourney, and 73 percent would like to express their views through a ballot question in the coming fall election.
That survey, though, included one other finding that glares like the sun — while 85 percent felt basketball was important to Indiana’s identity, only 36 percent said they closely followed high school hoops.
As comedian Bill Engvall says, there’s your sign.
The multi-class tournament — with its strange, dispassionate, long-distance sectional matchups — helped erode prep basketball passions, but not all by itself. March in Indiana no longer is the sole turf of high school boys hoops. Since 1990 — the year that Damon Bailey (Bob Knight’s phenom Indiana University recruit) and his Bedford North Lawrence teammates won the IHSAA championship in front of a national-record 41,000 people in the Hoosier Dome — Indianapolis has hosted the NCAA Final Four five times. In nine other years, Indy has hosted NCAA regionals. Since ’90, NCAA Big Dance berths — once the domain of primarily IU, Purdue and Notre Dame — have also gone to six other Division I Hoosier colleges: Butler, ISU, Evansville, Valpo, Ball State and IUPUI.
Our March Madness attention-span contains far more slices now.
Other prep sports, both girls and boys, have grown and draw moms and dads, and grandparents, too.
Did multi-class hoops take a piece of Indiana’s heart? Undoubtedly, but the state has adapted. Current high-schoolers have no recollection of single-class basketball. Despite the fond memories of older Hoosiers, tourneys structured on fairness, rather than dramatic “To Dream the Impossible Dream” showdowns, are what these young people know and expect. Forcing kids, especially those at small-town high schools, to return to their fathers’ postseason reality of one-and-done sectionals because “it’ll be good for you,” is like asking adults to voluntarily give up their jobs so they can be toughened by the experience of unemployment.
At its meeting next month, the IHSAA executive board will consider the public input at those town meetings, but don’t expect big changes. An overwhelming majority of member schools favor four classes. That’s the reality. Politicians should accept it, and stay out of it.
Communities longing to recapture the single-class atmosphere should take a page from Terre Haute, where the wildly popular Pizza Hut Wabash Valley Classic pairs big and small schools in a well-attended four-day tourney every December. That’s as close as Indiana can get to its prep basketball glory days.
In ’96, I and others argued strongly in these pages for Indiana to stick by its revered tradition. It changed anyway. This is 2012, and it’s better to look forward than back. As Cosmo Kramer once said, “Giddy up.”
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
News Columns
MARK BENNETT: Single-class basketball not likely part of Indiana’s sporting future
- News Columns
-
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering Mom a day after Mother’s Day
I don’t think there has been a day in the last eight years that I haven’t thought of my mom. Being all grown up with wrinkles to call my own doesn’t make me miss my parents any less.
-
MARK BENNETT: After running for 28 hours straight, what’s another 5 miles?
Some phrases can only be uttered by a few people, or none at all.
-
MARK BENNETT: Glitches show limitations of high-stakes testing concept
The dog ate my homework. That age-old excuse — based on a shockingly unforeseen complication — rarely works for a kid who didn’t finish yesterday’s math assignment. Yet, in a role reversal, Indiana school children, along with their teachers and administrators, are left to accept an explanation for a disruption best described as the mother of all ironies.
-
MARK BENNETT: One step at a time to save lives
Joan Brown.
Remember that name. -
MARK BENNETT: Sometimes, the mere posing of questions is significant
The era seems quaint now, almost like a fable. When people left their house doors unlocked. When the sight of a police officer in a school meant it was Career Day.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
-
MARK BENNETT: New reality steers Nashville singer to Crossroads for Historical Society concert
People pass through the Crossroads of America for lots of reasons.
Business trips. College campus events. Federal prison sentences. Visits with relatives. Gas pitstops.
Or maybe a career change and a twist of fate.
Ty Brown makes his first stop in downtown Terre Haute as the headliner of a multi-band Sweet Sensations Country Jam concert May 4 in the Ohio Building — a fundraiser for the Vigo County Historical Society. -
HAYDEN: 9-year-old lobbyist weighs in on school safety
Senate Bill 1 shot to the forefront last week, after it was amended by the House education committee with a provision that mandates every public school in Indiana would be required to have someone on staff armed with a loaded gun during school hours.
-
HAYDEN: Republican shift proving to be real
When a federal judge struck down key provisions of the state’s immigration law last week, it seemed anticlimactic.
-
LUNSFORD: A different kind of resurrection story, no foolin’
If you’ve had pets in your family long enough, it’s likely that you’ll see a miracle or two — a dog that couldn’t possibly have lived, but did; a cat that grew to 20 pounds after being born the runt of the litter; a goldfish that had been belly-up too many times to believe it could have survived another day.
-
STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Americans of Hispanic heritage becoming active in Republican party
When Republicans in the Indiana General Assembly decided earlier this year to put off a vote on locking the state’s same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution, it sent a signal that GOP leaders were evolving on the issue of marriage equality.
-
MARK BENNETT: Terre Haute barber ‘sharpens up’ customers for 50 years
People streamed through this section of downtown Terre Haute in those days.
“You could hardly walk by here,” John Hochhalter said, pointing toward the sidewalk outside the window.
The bustle has faded since the early 1960s. Hochhalter remains. He’s still barbering in the same shop he and late business partner Kenny Thomas opened a half-century ago this week. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
-
Americans for Prosperity aim to browbeat GOP lawmakers
If you're outside the Indianapolis TV market, you may not have seen yet the Americans for Prosperity ad that demonizes the House Republicans for resisting Republican Gov. Mike Pence's tax cut plan.
-
MAUREEN HAYDEN: Pence may find himself in a mess if he gets what he wants
Here’s a story to consider: A Republican governor with ties to the tea party and possible presidential ambitions decides he wants to slash the state’s income tax rate, but meets with massive resistance from legislative leaders from his own party.
Sounds like the scenario playing out in the Indiana Statehouse, right? -
MARK BENNETT: Reflections of grid success stir with Brent Anderson’s passing
A few hundred miles away, and nearly 40 years gone by, a special game ball still occupies a fond place in Rudy Bohinc’s memories.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: If handwriting is a window to my soul, I’m glad this is typewritten…
Somewhere in the mess I call my “archives,” I have most of my grade school report cards hidden away. I have kept them under wraps, because I want to be long gone when my children — or grandchildren — unearth them and discover that their self-righteous teacher of a dad was, in fact, a terrible student in his formative years.
-
MAUREEN HAYDEN: Are legislators gambling with the future of gaming?
Indiana lawmakers have been debating whether to give the state’s casinos more financial incentives to compete with the shiny new gambling palaces popping up in Ohio.
-
MARK BENNETT: Never truer: Knowledge vital to narrowing ‘skills gap’
The pillar at the gates of Faber College in the movie “Animal House” bore a wise motto, despite its tongue-in-cheek intent …
-
STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Pot decriminalization bill dead, but reduced-punishment aspect still alive
In the flurry of activity at the Statehouse in recent weeks, I missed reporting some sad news for stoners: The legislation to decriminalize marijuana is dead.
-
MARK BENNETT: Great-niece to re-enact Paul Dresser’s musical legacy in Terre Haute show
People can be forgotten. Their lives end, time passes and memories fade.
Often, the only keepers of their legacies are family and friends, who tell and retell their stories, generation to generation.
For Paul Dresser, his fame burned strong enough as a turn-of-the-century, million-seller songwriter to preserve bits of his public notoriety. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘lovely gift’ of a beech tree …
This is not the season that I usually write of trees, for besides a few pin oaks that hang on to the most stubborn of leaves, my woods stand bare and dormant and cold right now. My trees are patiently awaiting the green of spring that I feel, for some reason, is to arrive a little earlier this year than is usual.
-
STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: What to do with that $2 billion sitting around
We Hoosiers like to think of ourselves as special, but when it comes to the current debate in the Indiana Statehouse over the budget, we’re a lot like other states: Grappling with some post-recession questions about how to balance spending and taxes.
-
MARK BENNETT: An Olympic takedown
Imagine an iconic image of American sports history erased.
-
STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Pence sticks to his ‘Roadmap’
As a U.S. congressman, Mike Pence made it perfectly clear how he felt about the need for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
-
MARK BENNETT: Indiana’s ‘skills gap’
A problem lasting decades ceases to be a “problem.” By then, the situation becomes “part of the culture.”
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
-
STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE:Supreme Court providing convenient cover for GOP
If GOP leaders in the Indiana General Assembly announce this week, as expected, that they’re postponing a vote on a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages and civil unions, you can expect them to cite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to step into the larger issue later this year as the primary reason.
-
MARK BENNETT: America’s best quality of life? Indiana must address flaws, set priorities
Just as the job interview seems smooth, the interviewer drops the question.
“So, where do you see yourself in five years?” -
MARK BENNETT: Pondering what is meant by ‘quality of life’ to Hoosiers
Sometimes it’s sincere. Other times, it’s sarcasm.
You cross paths with a friend, ask how they’re doing, and they say, “Ah, just livin’ the dream.”
Livin’ the dream. What exactly does that involve? Can it be defined? - More News Columns Headlines
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering Mom a day after Mother’s Day
Raw: Tornado on the Ground in Oklahoma
Raw: Aftermath of Massive Tornado in Oklahoma
Raw: Rescue Workers Search Oklahoma School
Raw: House Burns After Massive Oklahoma Tornado
Raw: Walking in a Flattened Okla. Neighborhood
Raw: Witness Describes Scene After Okla. Tornado
Split-second Choice Ended With NY Student Dead
White House Backs 'Shield Law' for Media
RAW: TV Staff Take Cover From Tornado
Raw: Swarm of Tornadoes Slams Plains
Raw: Suspects Butt Dial 911, Lead to Arrest
Oklahoma Gov: 'Hearts Are Broken' After Tornado
Tornadoes, Storms Strike Midwest
Raw: Rescuers Pull Tornado Survivors to Safety
Raw: Okla. Tornado Aftermath 'Like War Zone'
Huge Tornado Kills Dozens Near Oklahoma City
Commuters Face Delays After Conn. Train Accident
Pug Life on Display at Wisconsin Festival
Analyst: Tumblr Fills Void in Yahoo's Offerings
'Babyland': Camp Lejeune's Toxic Legacy?
RAW: Moore, OK tornado touches down near school
Okla. tornado survivor finds dog buried alive under rubble
Robert Pattinson Moves Out
RAW: Russian dash cam catches car 20 feet in the air
Oklahoma tornado survivor: "Everything is gone"
Khloe Lashes Out at Kim Kardashian's Critics
Couple Argues As Woman's Lover Crawls Out Window
RAW: Brad Paisley Forgets Lyrics To His Own Song
Justin Bieber Gets Booed
New 'Anchorman 2' Trailer, Drake Joins List of Rumored Cameos
Eva Longoria's Wardrobe Malfunction
Heat Star Dwyane Wade Surprises Coral Gables Teen At Prom
Steak n' Shake waitress scores huge tip
Singer Miguel Accidentally Lands on Fan At Billboard Music Awards
Celebs Celebrate the Rise of the Side Butt
Grizzly bear gets up close and personal with camera
Justin Bieber Gets Booed After Winning at the Billboard Awards
Singer forgets lyrics, makes up words to National Anthem
