Focus Will Still be the Same Next Year

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.13.80
Current Song - Deacon Blues (Steely Dan)


I feel compelled to address the fact that there will be a big change next year in the northern Illinois sports scene. The NCIC Reagan and some Western Sun schools will form the Northern Illinois Big 12.

The NIB-12 is a conference that brings together similar schools: Eight schools are Class 5A in football and eleven schools are Class 3A in the four-class system.

It also brings together all of the NISB area's heavyweights that are not in the NIC-10 or Western Big 6.

The coming together of these schools brought excitement all throughout these schools. I was dreaming of a conference that would have a football team play in Champaign every year, and a team that can play in Peoria. It's a conference that brings together many of the message board junkies from this part of the state. It's big, and it's wonderful.

But as the months after the first press conference passed, I found myself thinking of being in Anakin Skywalker's shoes. He is witnessing the light saber battle between Palpatine and Windu (Episode III). I found myself being forced to choose a side: Be a person that is a face of the greater, or be a person that is a face of a few.

“POOOOOOWWWWWWEEEEEEERRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!”



“No. That's not me.”

Now, the new conference is NOT going to be some evil empire. I was trying to get the point across that I can't turn my back on 90% of my coverage area to service the remaining 10%.
I've probably lost some popularity among the NIB-12 crowd because I chose not to stress that particular conference amongst the rest.

It sounds like my loyalty experience in high school. I went to a high school that stressed school pride. I looked into that differently than others. As much as I should have pride in my own school, I should also respect other's pride to their schools. I should respect the pride one has to the Catholic school (Newman). I should respect the pride one has to the neighboring school (Rock Falls). I should respect the pride one has to the arch-rival school (Dixon or Geneseo).

My soft side for Dixon, Geneseo and Rock Falls got me into a lot of dissatisfaction within the Sterling High School brethren. At one point, it got too far and I wished some evil upon my own school. That didn't work out too well.

Having been raised in the NCIC and it's large school division, some say I should have a (“real-time” note: I was just called into work for Friday night and can't cover the Sterling-Lemont game) bias toward the NCIC Reagan and the NIB-12. But throughout my journalism career, I have respected a lot more conferences.

I won't make the same mistake again. I wish the NIB-12 well.

So with that being said, I'm still going to cover the same teams I always have been covering. The NIB-12 will just be one of the many conferences that I cover. This group may be the most popular, but all in all it is one of many. Kind of like high school students in a school.