The MSL’s tradition should not be taken lightly
I spent the last week trying to wrap my head around the Mid-Suburban League.
A week thinking about tradition.
When league officials announced they’d begin realigning divisions based on athletic success instead of geography, it struck a nerve. That’s what happens when you mess with history.
The goal, on the surface, is a noble one based on competitive balance. The 12-school league will be divided into East and West divisions in name only. In reality, one will be a premier division and the other determined by relegation.
The two-year trial begins next school year in all sports except football, which will remain the same.
The new divisions will be determined annually based on a three-year success formula. Teams in each sport will be ranked by their record from the previous three seasons on a weighted basis. For next school year, 60% of the formula will be based on this season’s conference records, 30% on last season and 10% on the season before.
Sounds basic enough, except this is the Mid-Suburban League. One of the last bastions of conference stability. I realize all the same schools are remaining, but any shift seems seismic when compared to the chaotic state of surrounding leagues.
The venerable DuPage Valley Conference no longer exists in football, the sport it dominated for decades. While core members of the Upstate Eight have remained, other schools seem to come and go annually.
I could go on and on about the conference jumping throughout the area.
Perhaps the only other conference around here that compares with the MSL in terms of stability is the West Suburban Conference, which for years has resisted overtures to expand or splinter.
The last time the MSL realigned, in the 1998-99 school year, a similar success factor was considered but abandoned because of the potential loss of identity from sport to sport. The MSL, formed in 1963, first split into two divisions in 1970 and has featured the same 12 schools since 1986.
Realignment happened in the 1990s due to fear of the league slowly dissolving. Now the MSL faces competitive challenges, and realignment is the response.
“We get some pretty lopsided games and contests in our conference right now, because that's just the way we have always done it,” Schaumburg athletic director Marty Manning told Daily Herald correspondent Dick Quagliano last week.
But with a version of the MSL title game to remain in several sports, you could have the top team from the top division facing the top team from the lower division. That doesn’t seem ideal.
Even worse, it’s possible Fremd vs. Palatine and many other storied rivalries won’t happen in certain sports. The boys basketball schedule for one school may not match the girls.
It’ll be difficult to maintain continuity from one sport to the next and one season to the next. The overall identity of the MSL could suffer.
It’s a two-year trial, though, so I’m willing to see how this shakes out. Who knows, maybe it’ll work and competition will thrive.
Watching so many other conferences blow up the last decade was tough to stomach. That’s not happening with the MSL, which should be applauded.
But let’s not take tradition for granted.