Shot clock? Seeding? Changes to transfer policies? We caught up with Indiana High School Athletic Association commissioner Paul Neidig on those topics and more:

We are coming up on two years since girls wrestling and boys volleyball were introduced as emerging sports by the IHSAA board of directors. A bylaw change in the spring of 2023 lowered the number of schools participating in a sport to 100 to be a recognized sport. Are girls wrestling and boys volleyball on track to be approved as recognized sports this spring (the board of directors meeting is April 29)?

Neidig: “I think both are on track. The request will go to our board of directors to go from emerging status to recognized status. I can’t speak for them but I think, according to the rule, both sports are going to have numbers in place to be considered for adoption. We’ve seen substantial growth in both of those sports. I think that is huge. Adding another sport wasn’t really an option before, the way the rules were written. We’ve been able to adjust that and anticipate some other (sports) will be knocking on the door at least to review the possibility of coming up in the future.”

Last time we talked about the two emerging sports, boys volleyball had far fewer teams participating than girls wrestling. Is boys volleyball catching up?

Neidig: “Boys volleyball is catching up. You have to have six to play the game. It’s a team game, where girls wrestling is an individual sport. If a school has one, two, three, four wrestlers, that’s a team. You don’t have to fill all the weight classes to be considered a team. If you have a couple of girls wrestlers, that would be considered a team and counted in our number of 100 schools needed to offer a sport. (boys volleyball, a spring sport, is right around 100 teams).”

What other proposals are you expecting for the April meeting?

Neidig: “Schools have until March 1 to submit their proposals so we don’t have those yet... This is a team sport year so we do have some things from the volleyball coaches, and baseball and softball coaches, under consideration that will be bylaw proposals this spring.”

Do the proposals involve seeding?

Neidig: “I have not seen that yet, but I understand there is some talk of seeding going on out there. I can understand both sides of that equation. I understand it well. I think people think it’s easy to seed No. 1 and 2, and I think from experience that is not the case. There will always be that argument. If you ask the coaches to seed their sectionals, I think there will be some battles that go on there a little bit. Can you use something such as Sagarin? You could. But we don’t have Sagarin for all team sports. Ultimately, how do you seed those?”

How do you feel about seeding?

Neidig: “I’m always going to root for the underdog. Sure we want to see Brownsburg vs. Ben Davis (first round sectional football game last season) in the championship rather than the first round. But I point to Knightstown a couple of years ago. They didn’t have a good football year, then won two tournament games. I think they lost every game during the regular season. They had a number of kids who came out for football the next year — it was significantly more. You put them against No. 1 or No. 2 at the end of the season and it’s a significant loss or mercy rule loss, what does that say for a program that is trying to get better for the next year? Another thing for me is most states, you have to qualify for the tournament. We operate a little different in that everybody gets to play in the tournament. I think that’s a consideration that also needs to be on the table. At the end of the day, as I’ve told you before, if there is a proposal, it will be considered. Discussion will happen around seeding. We’ll see where it ends. The people who are the loudest want seeding. The ones who don’t want seeding won’t tell us until it’s time to get input from membership. Anytime (seeding) has come before the membership, it’s been 50% or less. It’s not been supported at all.”

To be clear, you could potentially seed one sport and not others?

Neidig: “Yes. But it would be naïve to say if we did start seeding (one sport) that it wouldn’t become a significant conversation in other sports.”

Is football working on a proposal?

Neidig: “I understand football is still working on something, so possibly. There is some discussion about not only seeding at the sectional level but also wanting to seed each half of the state after the first round. The semistate and regional would be seeded also. That would throw significant travel in. That’s a lot for me to consider.”

There is a lot more competition on Friday nights than there used to be. How does that impact decisions on football seeding?

Neidig: “The climate is different. I can stay home and flip the channel on Friday night and watch Big Ten games instead of going to Friday night football. I have a lot of concern about that right now. I think our product is good enough to stand alone. I don’t think we can make the assumption that people don’t go to games because there are more options on Friday nights, but it’s a factor. We have to continue to make sure our product is strong. The world is changing quickly. So we’ll see where it goes. I can argue both sides of seeding. I understand both perspectives. If you ask me where I lean, I would probably lean to the random draw we’ve had in the past. In the end, I think the right teams end up at Lucas Oil Stadium. We get it right and the best teams still arrive there.”

There is always discussion over the transfer rules. How do you feel about that process?

Neidig: “Based on the changes that have gone on with the NCAA, I think it’s natural for those things to start to affect the high school level. We try to adjust our rules as we can. I looked the other day and in the last 10 years we’ve made 26 different bylaw changes that directly affect transfers and the transfer process along with that. Things change, and we want to be able to make adjustments. I think there are 75 schools roughly in Indianapolis within a 25-mile radius. It looks different in Indianapolis because of the availability and number of people. If you go to a rural community, that’s all they’ve got is the people in their community. Ultimately, if there is no transfer rule someday — and I’m not proposing that — they we’ll really have to start considering how we classify our schools. I think that would look drastically different if people had the ability to gather in urban areas (without restrictions). It’s tough. There’s a lot of different opinions out there. People believe there needs to be guardrails until it’s them or their situation, then there needs to be an exception — and we provide a lot of exceptions.

People have to remember that student athletes in this state, less than 1% receive no eligibility. About 8% receive limited eligibility. All the rest have full eligibility. We handle about 3,500 transfers a year. We’re not trying to find a path to ineligibility. We talk about that as a staff every day. ‘How can we work toward a path to eligibility?’ We work on that philosophy or through that lens until we can’t anymore. And I think there are people out there who are non-education based coaches who don’t want to coach the kids in their community. They want to go get the best kids, put them on a team, go coach those kids. Pretty simple. When there is a transfer for athletic reasons first, there is usually a student-athlete on a team who had no involvement in the process who may not make the team, or is pushed back down to JV, and their experience will change and they didn’t do anything. They are just part of that team. Because that athletic transfer comes in, that kid may get displaced. We always worry about the victim who doesn’t get eligibility; I worry about the victim who is not in the process.

Winning is just not that big. Winning is important but you have to remember that every tournament, half the teams are eliminated after the first night of the tournament with a loss. So if we define that as the sole aspect of success, we’ve missed the entire mission of athletic-based success.”

Do you anticipate any changes to the IHSAA’s transfer rules?

Neidig: “I anticipate some changes. We’re still working through that. You always have to have undue influence on the table. You cannot have coaches out there recruiting kids into the high school scene. That will, in my opinion, always be around. But can you get a transfer prior to your sophomore year? You get that one transfer. I hate the word ‘free’ because there are some guardrails around that. But there would be a possibility of transfer for prior to your sophomore year. Some people think you need to be able to do that one time in your high school career. I hesitate with that a little bit simply because the team you see playing for one of the AAU organizations in the summer probably will end up at one high school at some point in his high school career, especially when you don’t have to move.”

What do you see as the issues with a ‘free’ transfer?

Neidig: “Call me old school on this, but coaches have to hold their student-athletes accountable for their behavior, work ethic and all of these things. And all of a sudden a student-athlete falls below the standards we believe as a society are important and it’s, ‘Well, I’m just going to transfer.’ So then coaches are faced with holding the standard of behavior for development of student-athletes and all of a sudden it’s, ‘Well, I can’t do that because they are going to leave my program.’ They are going to go somewhere else. It really handicaps coaches ability to coach kids, even through tough times. Sometimes tough lessons have to be taught. Again, call me old school but I think society is in trouble if we can’t hold those high standards, especially for youth kids that need guidance, need boundaries and need guardrails along the way. But I’m anticipating at least one or more bylaws to be considered around the transfer process this year.”

Any movement on a shot clock in Indiana?

Neidig: “I have not heard a word. It just doesn’t seem to be a big (topic). There is always somebody who says we need a shot clock but it hasn’t come up a lot.”

Do you anticipate the redraw after the regional for basketball and baseball will continue?

Neidig: “Yeah, I think we will. In fact, there is a proposal from the volleyball coaches to do the same thing in volleyball. We did it with boys and girls basketball and baseball last year and I anticipate we’ll be doing it with volleyball this fall. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with coming out of a tough sectional week and you have to prepare for one (game). Then if you want to get to the big game, you better bring it that semistate week. Think we saw a lot of interest last year with that. I think the only criticism I heard was a few coaches who once they got to semistate round to had to prepare for two really good opponents, rather than maybe one good opponent and one really good opponent. But we anticipated that was going to happen.”

The state finals for football was shown entirely on the Champions Network ($15 per game and $20 for all six games) for the first time. Do you anticipate the football finals could go back to television?

Neidig: “Our Champions Network continues to grow. There are some things I wish we had linear release of our product, like everybody else now. But the television world is changing. We still try to offer as much free viewership as we can. Somebody wants it all for free, they will probably criticize. But there are still expenses involved to offer as much free as we do. There really hasn’t been for years a single source (on television) that allows everybody to watch. That’s just gone. Could we pick up a channel from the Indianapolis market that allows Indianapolis folks to watch it? Possibly. But you know, that means it won’t be in Evansville or South Bend or Bloomfield or whatever. Nobody has reached out. There may be somebody at some point and we’ll always listen. But it’s just not out there and hasn’t been for a while. One thing to remember, and people have written it, is that when you pay a cable subscription you are still paying a fee to watch that channel. It’s just lumped into your entire subscription service.”

What are you most proud of with what the IHSAA is doing?

Neidig: “I think our office is really focused on the whole population of the student-athletes. It’s easy to be attracted by highest scorers, best batting averages or whatever. We really spend a lot of times, when we look at rules, make decisions that are focused on all the kids. Is what we do best for student-athletes? Is it best for the last kid who makes the team? Think the efforts we’ve had as far as trying to develop and recruit officials is headed in the right direction. Hopefully that continues to grow and we have enough officials to work these games.

"We’ve made some changes around here. We’re not afraid to look at how we align tournaments and class our schools. There will be others along the way. We’re not stuck in the days of yesteryear; we’re willing to look at change. We’ve made some and will make more. I don’t know that association has always been in position that change was even possible. It may not be the change that somebody think we need to do. But we’ll certainly make changes and make adjustments."

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IHSAA commissioner Paul Neidig Q&A: Transfers, seeding, TV, proposals