High school basketball practice begins in a month and Public League coaches are still unsure of the conference structure and season format. It appears a major change may be in place.
Months ago, Chicago Public Schools Sports Administration sent schools a new league structure. The Red Division has technically been increased from 20 to 24 teams. But instead of a geographical division between two Red superconferences, the two Red conferences appear to be separated by the perceived quality of the teams.
The top conference is the Red Shield: Clark, Curie, Hyde Park, Kenwood, Lane, Lincoln Park, Lindblom, Phillips, Simeon, Taft, Westinghouse and Young.
The Red Star conference contains Ag. Science, Bogan, Carver, Crane, Dyett, Englewood, Farragut, Northside, North Lawndale, Payton, Perspectives-Leadership and Marshall.
The eight White and Blue conferences remain geographically divided into Central, North, South and West.
All the teams have worked out their schedules with this new alignment. Teams play conference opponents once. But CPS has declined to confirm the new alignment to the Sun-Times on multiple occasions.
The new alignment was created under David Rosengard. He was fired as head of CPS sports in early September. CPS also switched out the head of boys basketball around that time with Laquandis Riley replacing Tony McCoy.
“With Rosengard out and the changeover I don’t know that anything is certain,” Lane basketball coach Nick LoGalbo said. “We are about to post our schedule and we are going [with the new alignment]. I don’t understand the promotion and relegation at this point. I’ve heard rumors about a two to three-year window instead of every year. But I don’t know anything for sure.”
There is also uncertainty around the city tournament format.
“I’ve heard about the top four teams getting byes and it maybe being a 16-team tournament now,” Curie coach Mike Oliver said. “But I don’t think anyone knows for sure.”
Reaction to the new conference has been mixed. A majority of coaches the Sun-Times spoke with said they were against the change.
“I’m not a big fan of it because of the travel,” Oliver said. “And I don’t think the playoffs are as exciting if we are just playing the same teams over and over. We will play them in conference, in the city playoffs and in the state tournament.”
Young coach Tyrone Slaughter isn’t worried about the travel issue and likes the change overall.
“The travel argument is akin to the shot clock argument,” Slaughter said. “Any time there is the slightest degree of inconvenience it becomes a problem. It is not that dramatically different. There are longer distances but you see teams travel 40 miles for games in the state playoffs. The world does not come to an end. It is a pain worth tolerating for the excitement and quality of basketball in the conference.”
The Public League’s promotion and relegation system hasn’t been as effective in the superconference era. It worked well under the previous geographical conference system. Some coaches have major concerns about the rumored two or three-year conference freeze.
“It is upsetting,” Julian coach Steve Parham said. “I’ve been working for five years to put together a team to move up to the Red. We moved up from the Blue to the White this year and now we would be stuck. That hurts. And the Red Division teams are going to poach all of our kids because they are guaranteed to be up there for two years and we can’t move.”