[Wildcat18]

I don't know that the coaches are so much different in Indiana, but many of them seem less focused on their regular season records and more focused on the playoffs. There just seems to be more parity among teams in Indiana, but most of my observations come from living for a few years in the Indianapolis area. Blowouts happen in Indiana but it does not seem to be as rare for a team to go from first place in its conference to last place and vice versa within a year or two.

When Trinity lost to Lawrence Central earlier this season, it was Lawrence Central's 18th straight win and they were the defending 5A (Indiana went to 6 classes this season) state champions. LC never won another game this season, losing seven straight. Trinity beat Carmel and the Greyhounds are 9-3 and still alive in the 6A playoffs.

In short, there seems to be more teams in Indiana that are not afraid to make out tough schedules that might even result in losing records. In Kentucky, Trinity, Mayfield, Covington Catholic, St. X, and Highlands schedule tough pre-district competition, but most teams do not. It seems like the same handful of Kentucky teams play the strongest schedules every season.

I don't fault teams in most of eastern Kentucky for not playing the kind of schedule that Highlands does. A team like Highlands or Trinity can be in Indy in 2 hours or less, and it takes Johnson Central about as long to travel to Huntington, WV, 4 hours or more to Columbus, and probably 6 hours of more to Indy. But, IMO, anything that encourages teams to schedule "up," including opening the playoffs for everybody, would be a good thing.

That makes sense. I have family members who played for Ben Davis a few years ago and a couple others affiliated with Carmel. Kind of surprisingly, Indiana has pretty good high school football.