BY FRANK KIELPIKOWSKI
With the football season coming to an end, I wanted to address a topic I’ve been thinking about and discussing with my colleagues for some time.
This is in regard to the makeup of the Duneland Conference.
The last changes to the conference came after the 2002 season when Hobart left to join what was then the “Lake 10 Conference”, and Lake Central was brought in to replace them.
Since that time, ideas have been proposed to bring other schools in, but many questions remain, such as how would the league look.
How would it fit across sports besides football?
Are the incoming schools large enough to provide competitive balance in several sports, and of course, are there financial ramifications to such a move as well?
One of the more popular opinions that I have heard is that Penn, one of the state’s largest schools, should join the Duneland Conference.
They would definitely check many of the boxes when it comes to what they would provide to the league, but being based in Mishawaka means a lot more travel for the existing members, and vice versa for Penn themselves.
As far as schools in the Region, programs like Munster or Andrean have been mentioned in conversations before, but I’m not aware of any serious discussions on the feasibility of adding either of them.
In recent years in college football, we have seen a number of conferences expand with no regard for geography at all.
For instance, the Big 10 expanded to add teams from Washington and California.
We have also seen the SEC, ACC, and Pac-12 make radical changes to their conferences.
However, geography in the case of the NCAA takes a back seat to money.
I remember mentioning all this in a conversation right as the high school season began, and it led me to thinking about expansion in the Duneland Conference, and how that would look.
So, I got out my trusty pen and paper and started jotting down ideas, initially adding two schools to the conference, to make it a 10-team league.
But that didn’t really look that great on paper, so I explored other ideas about expansion, and discovered after talking through it, something interesting and perhaps worth considering.
It’s modeled after both some of the high school as well as college football conference alignments, and in my opinion, I think it would both make sense, and minimize at least some of the travel.
Here’s my proposal:
The Duneland Conference expands from eight schools to 12 schools.
The current makeup of Lake Central, Crown Point, Merrillville, Portage, Valparaiso, Chesterton, LaPorte, and Michigan City would remain.
However, four schools, all from the eastern time zone, would be added: Penn, Mishawaka, Elkhart, and Warsaw.
These four schools are in Class 6A and 5A with Mishawaka (1,603 enrollment as of the most recent IHSAA figures used for football) being the smallest of the four schools proposed.
However, they would be larger than current DAC member Michigan City, so they would be competitive.
The 12 schools would then be divided into two divisions for football, east and west.
Here’s the division breakdown:
East: Penn, Elkhart, Mishawaka, Warsaw, LaPorte, and Michigan City
West: Lake Central, Crown Point, Merrillville, Portage, Chesterton, and Valparaiso
The next step would be putting together the schedules.
Currently, each Duneland school plays two games out of conference and seven games in the DAC.
My proposal would be to continue to have two non-conference games, especially when some of the schools have non-conference rivalries they wish to maintain, such as Merrillville-Andrean, and Crown Point-Lowell.
The schools would then play the five other teams within their division., which then leaves two remaining games, one of which would rotate over a five-year period with one school from the other division.
For example then, Valparaiso would play Warsaw every five years, and Mishawaka would play Crown Point.
The other game would be based on the standings and be played the final game of the regular season, with the first place teams in each division playing each other, the second place teams as well, and so on, with the schools alternating as the host team by division each year (East division year one, west division year two, and so on).
This would create a true conference champion at the end of the year, and a meaningful game in week nine of the regular season every year.
Keep in mind, this proposal is based on the effect it has on football, and not necessarily on the other team sports, boys or girls.
For instance, in basketball, divisions may not be necessary if they wish to just schedule all 11 games against the other schools in the conference.
At the present time, there are only seven conference games per school, so this would cut into the non-conference portion of the hoops schedule.
However, many of the current DAC schools play teams like Penn and Warsaw during their regular seasons in basketball or schedule non-league games against downstate or out-of-state schools.
Divisions may not be necessary in many of the other sports either, although a case could be made to split into divisions for baseball and softball.
One more thing, just to be clear, this is purely my opinion;
I have no special inside information or knowledge of any other proposals that are being discussed among the school administrators, or even if it is being discussed at all.
I just wanted to offer up my suggestion to anyone reading this blog.
Hopefully, it makes for an interesting and entertaining discussion.
Hope you find it as fun a topic of conversation as I have had in discussing it with others.
Who knows, someone may read this and it ends up actually happening, or some variation of it happens?
Until then, we can only speculate.
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