EXCLUSIVE: FHSAA Classification Task Force Committee proposes changes to classification system to help address competitive balance

EDITORS’S NOTE: All information presented is currently being formed into a proposed policy of changes regarding classification that would go to the FHSAA Board of Directors and the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) with an eventual vote by the FHSAA Board of Directors. We are reporting this information to keep our readers informed. Please note changes could be made until a drafted policy is presented to the Board of Directors all the way through until a final vote on a change in policy occurs by the Board of Directors. It is imperative that readers understand that changes could happen at any time since this report was published.

UPDATE NO. 1 – 12:11 p.m. – Oct. 4, 2023: Wewahitchka High AD and Head Football Coach Bobby Johns, who serves on the committee, emailed FloridaHSFootball.com with an update that the committee agreed to a change  regarding rural classification since the meeting took place. As such we have updated that on here in red font to note the changes made.

UPDATE NO. 2 – 12:48 p.m. – Oct. 4, 2023: Added notes on how teams would be seeded for the Open Division bracket which was not initially included but was also part of the plan voted upon by the committee. That information is added in red font.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Some significant changes to how team sports are classified in Florida could be one of the first items up for business for the newly minted look of the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) Board of Directors in November as the state is currently in the second year of a two-year classification cycle with a reclassification on the docket for the upcoming 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 school years.

QUICK NOTES

However, before we proceed with this, please do note that all information in this article is what was proposed and voted upon unanimously by the FHSAA Classification Task Force Committee that FHSAA Executive Director Craig Damon selected with input from many people across the state and among FHSAA staff. This means this is just in proposal form with the language of what the policy would state officially, should it be voted upon by the Board of Directors, currently being drafted by FHSAA staff along with the guidance of the committee.

Also, Damon told FloridaHSFootball.com via telephone that the FHSAA Classification Task Force Committee wants to address a couple of more issues that came about after the meeting back on September 25, with one specific item mentioned regarding the FHSAA power rankings. Damon hinted that a change in how the power ranking is used could be a possible item on the table and could eventually be incorporated into the proposed package of policy changes regarding classification to be taken to the Board of Directors. Also a possible a public hearing which would be done via video so people around the state could participate in learning more about the plan is also highly likely in the very near future.

With all that said, again, we want to make it clear that what you read here is being drafted into a proposed policy and that changes could be made up until a final vote is called for as input is still currently being sought out and eventually will be sought out by all 800-plus FHSAA member schools for their input.

THE COMMITTEE

The first thing to note is that the Classification Task Force Committee included a wide range of who’s who of athletic directors and school principals from across the Sunshine State representing some of the biggest school districts down to the smallest school districts, as well as athletic directors from private schools and charter schools. Some of the athletic directors who are a part of the committee also include current sports coaches in sports like football and basketball, among others. Some of the most notable people selected on the committee included:

• Tammie Talley, Duval County Public Schools athletic director
• Lanness Robinson, director of athletics for Hillsborough County Public Schools
• Richard Finlayson, former FHSAA Board of Directors member and current principal of Aucilla Christian in Monticello
• Jade Brown, athletic director and head girls basketball coach at Booker T. Washington in Pensacola
• Richard Pettus, athletic director and head football coach at The Villages Charter High School
• Bobby Johns, athletic director and head football coach at Wewahitchka High School
• Jermaine Hollis, athletic director at Western High School in Davie
• Louis Romero, athletic director at Coral Gables High School

In all, there were a minimum of 15 people selected for the task force committee to represent all regions of the state.

THE MEETING

At the committee’s most recent meeting at the Robert W. Hughes FHSAA Building in Gainesville, which marked the committee’s fifth meeting, Scott Jamison, FHSAA Associate Executive Director of Athletic Services, which told FloridaHSFootball.com they have roughly met between 15 to 20 hours over the course of five meetings that include one previous in-person meeting and meetings over video.

With it being the fifth meeting and with the first full business meeting of the Board of Directors approaching in early November, the committee felt the need to come up with a plan that was unanimous in nature with changes made to improve classifications in Florida while not forcing too much systematic change all at once. The decision to focus just on team sports at this time was one of much thought as the committee agreed it was easier to make changes first to team sports as individual sports like golf, bowling, and tennis are more complicated and complex and would need further study before recommendations of how to change any ways of classifying programs in those sports come about to the Board of Directors.

Near the end of the meeting, the committee asked FHSAA staff to continue to have a Classification Task Force Committee going indefinitely into the future to help guide the FHSAA in what works and does not work for classifications in the ever-evolving world of high school athletics.

THE GOAL TO BE ACHIEVED

The goal at the end of the day for the FHSAA Classification Task Force Committee was to come up with a potential solution to help solve the longtime question of how to start achieving competitive balance in high school athletics in the state with current open enrollment laws that are in place and potentially pending Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policies that could be coming forth from the FHSAA later on during the 2023-2024 school year.

THE PLAN OF THE PROPOSAL – FOR NOW

The committee, as such, through a meeting that lasted for five hours, came away with a proposal to be drafted for a formal vote that would keep familiarity with the classification model used for years by the FHSAA while at the same time adding some new twists to the system.

Here is what the Classification Task Force Committee proposed:

• Keeping the current classification model in all team sports (excluding football currently), which classifies teams that are committed to the state series in each sport by enrollment.
• Move football back to the classification model that classifies team sports by enrollment, which was used in the sport up until 2021 before the shift to the Metro-Suburban classifications in the 2022-2023 school year. In this situation, Metro-Suburban classifications would be eliminated.
• Football would have seven classifications (1A through 7A), plus a rural classification in the shift back to the previous model. The smallest schools in 1A would be those not in the rural classification, with the largest schools in 7A.
• Keep the current structure in place when assigning district placements in all sports except football, where there is no mandated district schedule, and having a district tournament after the conclusion of the regular season in which teams are seeded based upon the FHSAA power rankings.
• In football, districts would still be assigned to teams, except in the rural classification, but the mandate of a district schedule would be eliminated for all teams. Instead, the two highest-rated teams based on the FHSAA power rankings after Week 9 games are played would play for the district championship in Week 11. This would keep the element of winning a district championship in place but remove the mandated district schedule, freeing schools to schedule more competitive and balanced schedules to meet their program’s needs.
• As such, all teams in the state would be mandated to keep Week 11 open that is assigned to a district in one of the seven classifications outside of rural. Once teams are announced for the district championship pairings, teams not slotted to play for a district championship would then be free to schedule a game with an opponent of their choosing or keep Week 11 open.
• Add an Open Division for all team sports, which will include the following team sports: Football, Volleyball (Girls – Fall; Boys – Spring), Basketball (Boys and girls), Soccer (boys and girls), Baseball, Softball, Flag Football, and Lacrosse (Boys and Girls). Single-classification sports like Beach Volleyball and Water Polo could be included in this as well, depending on what the final language of the drafted policy looks like that will be presented to the Board of Directors. The Open Division playoff backet was a concept first mentioned by Executive Director Damon nearly a year ago as a way to potentially addressing issue surrounding competitive balance.
• Teams selected for the Open Division would be selected based upon the final FHSAA power rankings after the final rankings are finalized that are then used to seed regional brackets. Teams seeded to the Open Division bracket would be seeded in true order regardless of geographical location meaning no regional brackets would be had. The committee felt that seeding with teams divided by North and South could potentially at anytime see potential one section of the state have the highest rate teams (i.e. teams 1-16 in the rankings all came from the South for instance). To avoid that issue, true seeding was best decided upon just for the Open Division bracket.
• The number of teams selected for the Open Division will be based on the number of classifications each sport has:
  • Sports with 5 to 7 classifications, including rural, would see the 32 highest-rated teams, regardless of classification, be placed into the Open Division playoff bracket, seeded in order from 1 to 32.
  • Sports with 3 to 4 classifications would see the 16 highest-rated teams, regardless of classification, be placed into the Open Division playoff bracket, seeded in order from 1 to 16.
  • Sports with less than three classifications would see the eight (8) highest-rated teams, regardless of classification, be placed into the Open Division playoff bracket, seeded in order from 1 to 8.
• Teams selected for the Open Division bracket will have no option of pulling out of the Open Division bracket. Placement would be final.
• Keep the rural classification for team sports that already have a rural classification while adding a rural classification to soccer for both boys and girls. As such, the rural classification would most likely garner the designation of Rural Division, with no classification number being used as it has been in the past in such manners as Class 1A or Class 1R.
• Remove the current rural classification enrollment cap of 600 students or less, which has allowed all schools qualified for rural that have 600 students or less to be a part of the classification for the sports that sponsored a rural classification. Instead, the 32 smallest schools that are playing football would be assigned to the rural classification. As such those school assigned rural for football would be assigned rural for ALL sports. After that any rural schools that do not participate in football that meet the rural designation and choose to be in the rural classification would then be placed into the rural classification. 
• his part of the proposal is originally from a proposal made by Bobby Johns several years ago during his time serving on the FHSAA Board of Directors due to several known instances of schools possibly having manipulated student enrollment numbers to qualify for the rural classification. This change would make it impossible to know where the cutoff line would be for a school to qualify for the rural classification for each sport.
• All 32 teams selected for the rural classification in each sport would automatically qualify for the playoffs in that respective sport. Should any of the teams in the rural classification be selected for the Open Division bracket, any open spots in the bracket would warrant open byes for the teams that are the highest seed in the Rural classification bracket.

FINAL THOUGHTS

With this being drafted into proposal form currently, NONE of these proposed changes have been voted upon and passed by the FHSAA Board of Directors at this time and are subject to changes and modifications. Once the final language drafted by the FHSAA staff is sent to the Board of Directors and FLDOE, we will share that language with you all here in an update that will be posted at the top of this story.

Follow FloridaHSFootball.com through all the latest updates about the proposed changes to FHSAA classifications in team sports over the coming weeks.