we're so excited three local northwest indiana teams going down state and we want to catch up with commissioner bobby cox about all the stuff that's going on down there he bobby thanks for calling in today jim how are you doing today we're doing all right else doing pretty well too want to ask you a few questions first of all just the general thought here you've got louisville kentucky on friday in lucas and then over at bankers life we've got four great high school games on and indianapolis is the place to be in the united states this weekend one of the best basketball kerman in high school sports is going to be played on saturday with as you say for a very exciting games and i look at the matchups i can't remember a year we've had more interesting ball games across all four classes and then of course the n c a a regional here on friday night and then on sunday for the championship team leaving apples going to the final four if you're about football junkie this is where you need to camp out this weekend you know that all sounds like so much fun and we're all going to go down and have a ball with it but a lot of people are going to be going down i sixty five who may have not ever been to a state final so let's guide them i think coming down i sixty five is going to be easy to park they're going to be able to buy tickets at the at the gate how's it going to work for all these fat some of the i wouldn't i would encourage patrons to come on i sixty five and stay on it all away into town until you get to west street and you're going to exit there at west street that will put you in the downtown core door and then there's there's parking garages all over indianapolis and bankers life from that exit is about less than a mile away there's plenty of parking right adjacent to the arena there in the virgin your street garage but there are surface slots all around the arena and parking will not be an issue the  apples host events of this magnitude on a regular basis including the napoles cold and and other large events where there's literally thousands and thousands of people that come in here so i think parking will be easy in grass any grass will be easy and we encourage everybody to come down and participate this weekend you know bobbie when people call indianapolis the amateur sports town in this country or maybe even in this world sometimes you get a funny look from them they go indianapolis but i think this coming week is going to prove that that claim is legitimate when you agree i would agree allen and you have to go back to the vision of mayor bill had not and way back in the eighty's when indianapolis made the conscious decision to build athletic facilities and become the amateur sports capitol of the world and they've done that and when you look at the not just bankers life field out now which is the evolution from market square arena and and before but you look at the united torreon for swimming and the track and soccer stadium and all the things they built for the pan american games and then you look at all the events that  has been able to attract or the fact that the n c a a moved from kansas city in two thousand to indianapolis it all has come together and any nablus truly is a sports mecca where people come to to participate in all kinds sporting events we're talking about basketball today but there are so many other things are happening you know large large volleyball tournaments large large cheerleading events all kinds of sporting things that happen and they happen regularly it's not just a certain weekend here a certain weekend there any time you go downtown indianapolis all year long there's something going on of a large scale and so it it's an exciting place to be right now we're talking  die say commissioner bobby cox bobby let's talk about a little bit about this weekend and let me just go through this for folks who want to see all four games you got to get there by nine thirty local time i know it gets confusing you look at it i mean the star anything like that it's nine thirty local time and that's one michigan city marquette will take on bar reef then you've got the class to a game to follow that so our local games will be class three a that will be ball men at by pm they'll be taken on greensburg and then to follow that will be our own lake central indians against indianapolis tech and that should be kicking off about seven fifteen the best suggestion if you're local and you want to go down and see those two afternoon evening games is to get out at least by four o'clock park walk around a little bit and get in there and get a seat is early as you can let's talk about a couple of these matchups bobby you got the two last two two defending state champions facing off in class three and greensburg comes in at twenty seven one and bowman at twenty two and for a lot of people looking for this game yes or and i would say of the four this might be the most interesting match up where you have bowman academy that has been moved to three a d rule two five of our bylaws and greensburg coming back of the defending champion in that class i've had the opportunity to see both of those schools play this year and they're both very well coached they're both very athletic they  play within what their coach want them to do and i think it's going to be a battle of wills and and down the stretch who doesn't make a mistake and can hit their free throws and defend well i think that's going to be the school to comes out on top it's it's and my mind it's a dead even he and bobby it is a problem with bowman up here and it's unfortunate they have a tremendous fan following very loyal fans alumni but the other schools and coaches in general hesitate in scheduling them and the reason is is you know because it's a charter school and it's constantly being accused of recruiting but charter schools are springing up all over the state is that an issue with the  to deal with them how to watch them and you know how to make sure that they're doing everything properly because charter schools are are suddenly getting this negative image at least up our way sure i would tell you this now that we exercise the same diligence with any of our member schools as we would charter schools we have public private parochial and charter school members and we have a set of bylaws that all four hundred twelve member schools shall follow and when we have and students has the issues that might violate the bylaws our office investigates those things and and we try to exercise due diligence across all four hundred twelve member schools and i've heard the same kinds of has the tent cities that you're speaking to with with other members schools playing bowman there is an attitude that that bowman is taking their kids and playing against them and they don't want to play against them so it's difficult for bowman to schedule local opponents and i've looked at their schedule and they do play out of state opponents and they travel quite a bit they come down to the indianapolis area and they play a lot of schools that they play in tournaments in this area and and i think it's going to have to be incumbent upon bulman as a member school to ensure to their to their neighbors that they're following the rules and that they're doing things in concert with the bylaws and they're not taking their kids and they're actually those kids are coming there for academic reasons and if they're coming there for academic reasons and there's no undue influence being exerted then there shouldn't be any reason why schools wouldn't want to play them there and they're an excellent basketball team and and you know i've always said this out at the end of the day you need to play somebody that's good if you want to advance in the tournaments you've got to play good competition and not be afraid to play good competition and bowman's good competition now if you philosophically disagree with how they operate their school as a member school you certainly have the right not to play them so that decision rests with our members and i think that all things said it the end of the day it's go be how bowman academy resides in the neighborhood and how they the relationships they build with the schools that set around them let's talk about rule two five there it's been talked about a lot and eyeball man moved up from two a to three a because it accumulated a certain amount of points it's possible if they do it again next year they would actually be a two a size school playing in class for ages that mean the system's working i think it is jan i  think that when you look at the success factor here it got to remember we had one season of it were in the second season of the first year of the success factor and we were and we've been in class sports now for sixteen years we're in our seventeenth year now so i think first and foremost we've got to let the success factor work for a longer period of time to to really determine whether it actually works but the reality is when schools that are smaller than the largest classification dominate that classification and their particular sport it stands to reason that they need better competition in the whole reason we went to class sports was that we had a notion that the largest schools in our enrollment and then our membership with enrollments were the better schools and that's the whole reason you classify schools is to let smaller schools leg and smaller schools and so forth if a school that is smaller is dominating that sport and to move up you have to either win both some us states in that recycle period or when the state champs if and when regional then it stands to reason that you have dominated that competition and you need to move up to larger schools that in theory have better competition and you've written this where bowman you know they started as a one a school by enrollment they went to two they won the two a championships they've moved to three hey they're standing in a great position to win another championship in advance and quite frankly there are four school if you watch their kids play and you compare them to any for a school in your area there for a school so in my mind i think the works they should be playing in for if they earn it and if they are in it that's where the wind up being and i think that will create the best competition for that school i think you're hundred percent right i fact i think they could beat some n a i a teams at the moment and that's the that's the rub against them the fact that these are men playing against boys at least it seems that way and i don't know how it is an indianapolis as far as the reputation of char schools but bobby did take a beating up here they can't get into a conference like you said they travel all over the united states to get to get games i don't know if then image is ever going to wear off well i think a lot of it depends on  how well bowman their leadership relates to the neighborhood and relates to them the members schools in that area they have to convince the people in their area that they're following the rules and that they are there by the book and when when they make that when they can convince schools that they are operating on the same level that the other schools are then i think that attitude will soften but you know the reality is when a school experiences that kind of success at the rate they have there there are going to be questions by people how are they doing that you know we've been playing this term for fifty years and we can advance and in five years look what they've done there's always to be question about that and when we have situations that are brought to our attention that need investigation we've we've looked into those things and and i will tell you that every time we've done that  appropriately they have been forthright they have given us the information that we need and we will continue to exercise that due diligence with all our members schools when these types of situations are brought to our attention we're talking to  i say a commissioner bobby cox sensibly about basketball right now but let's move on one other things in the news right now bobbie and that is the idea of concussions there's a whole all sorts of new data coming down the line we also have some new concussion laws that have come into effect here in indiana what's going on with the i h s saying concussions right now well jim we've always had a pro but we had a protocol before that the initial concussion law was even written and that protocol was when a student suffered an apparent concussed if event during a contest the contest official would go to the coach and have that student removed that held out for the rest of that contest and they could not return to the next contest until they had written clearance from that license dr now there's been amendments to the concussion law and sen bill two twenty two is signed by governor pence yesterday and what that bill does now is it enhances the concussion a lot to speak to the education of football coaches and this is the sport where the  preponderance of concussions occur and so what has occurred now is that there's going to be a coach education component within the law that requires all coaches to be educated in certain areas with regard to the sport of football including concussion education we have an opportunity through the national federation of state high school so ca sions which is our umbrella organization we provide a concussion online course over one million people nationwide have taken this free course and we will incorporate that as part of our requirement that football coach is taken the reality of this legislation is this is just the beginning of legislation that will be extended to all coaches in all interscholastic sports the second sport that has the highest number of concussions amazingly is girls basketball and so if we're going to truly protect student athletes let's protect all the student athletes i thought just focus on football let's protect all young people and let's make sure our coaches have that knowledge at their side to be able to do that in an effective manner bobbie in all the years i've been doing this i probably asked this question of maybe a dozen i say commissioners and that is when the southern part of the state ever feel some love for the region and i say that because even though you've been up here several times and we really enjoy that when you come up to visit because in the past that was not always the case with previous office orders of your position but the image we have downstate has just again been so negative and every time i go down there i ask people what do you think of the region and they kind of reserve eyebrows a little bit what do you think the perception is as of this year this moment among coaches and administrators down south because we always hear you know all states nerves all star snubs it's that or etc i think it's not true but i still get this feeling that the people down there are afraid of us well i think to give you my honest opinion jan i believe that the relationship is improving we have really worked hard to make sure in the last three years since i've been doing this job that people understand that the i just say is the indiana high school athletics us asian it's not the indianapolis high school athletic association and i think the i to say gets a bad rap because of where where the offices are located and how things in a from the center part of the state but we've reached out to the region you've mentioned fact i've been there but many of our staff i've been there and we've tried to bring events to the region we've tried to incorporate more and more things we run a wrestling semi state merivale we've run there for thirty years we try to bring basketball tournaments there and we have to have hosts that are willing to do that we read about paul turman hammond civic center this year we're trying to bring events to the area we're trying to reach out we're we're working extremely hard with for example if we can our television agreement as you know we're with fox sports indiana and our footprint extends right to the bottom of lake county and that's where fox sports chicago takes over well those various regional fox sports groups are very territorial and their broadcast footprint we have worked very hard people have no idea how hard we work this week to make sure that people in the region can see this game this weekend we've done a lot of work arounds and we've reached out to sister stations and we've got it solved but you know if we didn't care about the region we wouldn't do that i mean this is this is hard and it's expensive but we've done it and people that can't come to the game are going to be able to watch it on t v and we've done that because we think that area of our state is very important just like evansville is very important just like fort wayne is very important just like risings it is very important it's the indiana high school athletic association and we continue to reach out to everyone in our state and hopefully people understand at least from my perspective that we are a statewide organization and we do care about all ninety two counties and all four hundred twelve member schools bobby cox a recall and today we look forward to seeing you three northwest indiana teams down there we're very proud i want everybody to hear from bobby that don't be afraid to go down there because they're having the n c double a regionals the state of the state of indianapolis the city of indianapolis is used to handling these things they'll be plenty of room for everybody thank you jim and now i your support and we do invite all our patrons in the region to come to internationalise and we got plenty of room and will have a great time thank you so much