Anywhere in Ohio, with a top program, is fine because with today's scheduling you play schools from all over. It isn't like Texas, distance wise. My old high school plays in a league which three of its opponents are more than 45 miles distant and has played schools from Indy, Detroit, Cleve, Akron, Columbus, Cinci and so on.
This kid is legit!
A few years ago Suburban Columbus was the best overall area (multiple leagues.) Cleveland has had a resurgence. (Witness the fall of St Iggy, the other teams have gotten better, including public schools like Mentor, and Valley Forge.
Northwest Ohio has always been an anomaly; twenty percent of Toledo and suburban football has always been really tough. The rest has been very pedestrian. And Northwest Ohio has had some incredible programs in some of the outlying communities. Patrick Henry, Fostoria, Clyde, Tiffin, all come to mind. (Fostoria in their heyday with Woodson and crew as Division II or III in Ohio, could have competed anywhere in the country!)
From my era where NWO football became too diffuse, the schools apparently learned their lesson. (I don't seriously believe that this was any more than school districts planning with their resources.) But schools have become more concentrated. Some schools like Central Catholic have had a resurgence. The fact is when you look at the quarter finalists in the top three divisions in the state, they have more than the (population percentage share from NWO). But it is much sparser and smaller than all other parts of the state. With Cleveland-Akron to the east, Columbus metro to the central and south, and Cinci-Dayton to the southwest. The only large city in NWO is Toledo, #5 in Ohio, behind Dayton, just ahead of Akron.
I think over-all the other major metro areas as a whole are always better than NWO. But the toughest teams from NWO fare well against the top teams from almost anywhere else in the state.
Thus says the Black Swamp Fianna. Sort of the NWO Mafia. (There is a reason NWO was settled last.)
