Southeastern Football Conference to take on new approach for 2014 season

With John Carroll returning to district play in Class 3A, the Southeastern Football Conference didn’t go far to add a new team to fill in the open spot with the addition of King’s Academy.

However, with the addition of King’s Academy, the conference is going to be going through some restructuring that is meant to help keep successful teams going while giving teams that have been struggling a chance to improve in 2014.

Matt Dillon, head coach and athletic director at Pope John Paul II who also oversees the conference, told FloridaHSFootball.com their will be two different formats for this season. That means some teams will be shifting around to a different division.

First the current divisions that exist are going to become slightly smaller with each having six teams instead of eight teams as it was this past season.

In what will be called the new Championship Bracket, there will still be two division divided between the North and South. The North division will include Benjamin, King’s Academy, Pope John Paul II, Pine Crest, Coral Springs Charter and Calvary Christian. The South division will include  Coral Shores, Florida Christian, Arcbbishop Curley, Immaculata-LaSalle, Westminster Academy and St. Andrew’s. St. Andrew’s was previously in the north division the past two seasons.

Each team in the Championship Bracket will play five division games, plus three games against an opponent from the opposite division for a total of eight games. The top eight schools overall, regardless of division will qualify for the playoffs which will take place towards the end of the regular season.

The second part of the changes for the Southeastern Football Conference includes the creation of a Developmental Division. This new division will have its own format and will include four teams. Teams that will be part of the Developmental Division includes Miami Country Day, Pompano Beach, Ransom Everglades and Marathon.

For the Developmental Division teams, they will play each other in a home and home format for six games and will find opponents for at least two other games if not more, according to Dillon.

The Southeastern Football Conference was created in 2012 for schools looking for a leveled playing field outside of the FHSAA state series. The conference started with 14 teams, which expanded to 16 teams for the 2013 season.