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While your position is well-argued, reality is not totally consistent with your conclusions. Here are the teams that would have made the Open Division bracket in 2024 had it been in effect: Nease Cardinal Newman Venice Jones Gadsden County C-M West Boca Raton AH-P And in 2025: DeLand Cardinal Mooney Vero Beach Buchholz Miami NW Mandarin Carrollwood Day Bolles So in the past 2 years: no STA, no Miami Central, no Raines, no Lakeland, no Edgewater, no Armwood, no Lake Mary, and so on. The variable that cannot be accounted for is the use of MaxPreps rankings to select the Open bracket teams. At this point, there is no human element involved in selection, no selection committee, no "eyeball" test, no historical element of success, and no "these are the teams that I think should be in the Open Division" in the opinion of various members of this board. All we know is MaxPreps uses W-L record, strength of schedule, margin of victory, and who knows what other variables in some weighted formula to magically produce a numerical value. Will a team with a 9-1 record whose only loss is to an out-of-state powerhouse be pushed out of the Open Division by a 10-0 team who pounded a bunch of cupcakes? I don't think the entire playoff system in Florida is going to implode into a pile of rubbish with the advent of the Open Division, although you may be correct in the end. I think there are enough good teams in Florida to keep things interesting. I'll give it a year to see what actually transpires before drawing any conclusions.

The last discussion about the Open Division by the FHSAA Board of Directors that I am aware of is from January 29. At that time, the Executive Director said that the final product was going to be tweaked from the initial proposal. He indicated that the double-elimination format was likely not staying, since double-elimination doesn't really make sense for football. The original proposal featured 8 teams, but he also mentioned 12 teams as a possibility. The one factor that seems pretty set in stone is using the final regular season state MaxPreps rankings to select the top 8, or 12, or whatever number of teams they decide on to be placed in the Open Division bracket. There was supposed to be further discussion at the February BoD meeting, but I have not seen any reports that any discussion took place. The next BoD meeting is April 19, and I would think they would need to make some final decisions pretty soon. That's all I can offer, but glad to hear from anyone else who has more information to offer.

Miami Central 8/14 Orlando Jones-Traz 8/21 at Orange Lutheran (CA) 9/4 St Brendan-Traz 9/11 at Buford (GA- in Atlanta) 9/18 Jackson-Traz 9/25 Northwestern-Traz 10/2 at Miami Springs 10/9 Key West-Traz 10/16 GMAC 10/23 North Miami Beach-Traz 10/30 Carol City-Traz

lol, and following it up a week later with a long road trip to play Giannis and the Bucks in Milwaukee

I like the idea of the open division, but only if they cut the classes substantially. Think about this garbage. They have 7-8 freaking classes, and at the end of the season they essentially take the best team from each class and put them in one epic open bracket. sounds great, until you realize you now have 6 other playoff brackets that all now become obsolete because the best teams were removed making them fake brackets. Imagine if Raines, Central and MNW were all removed from their class. Or Lakeland and STA. You would have some fake winners bragging they won a championship over teams from the same class that were thrown in the open. how pissed would you be to be the number 1 team in a class, get thrown into an all star bracket with teams double your size and strength, you lose and watch a dud team from your same class breeze through your class bracket to win the title. Lol.

big time facts inever ever knew there were so few privates. all these years, i thought for sure we had like a full division of them. whiny crybabies. jeezus christmas

Based on the logo, it appears to be the same school. But, hey, Venice gets another home game and SmartEn picks up an azz-whipping and a paycheck. By the way, the game probably has to be played in Venice, as SmartEn appears to be located in a shopping center (something I tried to confirm but my efforts to click on their website through two different browsers were both met with warnings suggesting someone might be trying to steal my information).

the sentinel advertising the "transfer portal" is a doggone shame to me. literally falling into exactly what the trickle down effect has happened thru football free agency. its all the way down to the youth ball now too. kids stating they are taking their talents to abc team as a 4th grader and xyz school as an 8th grader going to hs, absolutely is killing HS football. maybe im too old for this crap. surely fhsaa will do something about it, right.....nevermind, i know better.

Although not widely reported, the FHSAA Board of Directors, as expected, approved the utilization of MaxPreps rankings to rank and seed for football state championships (in place of the FHSAA rankings). No updates on the format for the Open Division coming this year.

I think it’s Bayside Academy from Alabama. The clown that made the graphics got it wrong

It be the 1st week of August and 80% of South florida still hadnt released their schedule

Hardee

What’s the deal with spelling Fast with a PH? They are the Falcons aren’t they? So shouldn’t they want to keep the word Fast the same? Lol. I’m willing to bet there is nothing fast about this team. Lol. Especially since they finished last year in the 8,000’s nationally. They probably resemble a junior varsity team. I wish varsity teams this bad would play more JV teams. It would help with development for all parties involved

I thought that was East Carolina

Looks like they're playing the Pittsburgh Pirates on October 2.

Want couldn’t they list the names of the damn teams? Fire this social media clown who put this together. I thought they were playing Grayson GA

Yes, seems to be more in line with their schedules of old. Much more manageable, all local schools and allows for them to be competitive in at least half of the games. They will still struggle against Vero, FP Central, John Carroll and probably Jensen Beach, but maybe the embarrassing losses are gone for them. I really like Coach Jones and the culture he built there, and it was a shame to see them fall apart like they did. His offensive scheme - while successful for a time, just doesn’t fall in line with today’s athletes goals. He (like Apopka before him) tried to throw in some spread offense, but most of his athletes had already fled (I would guess back to Central, Vero, and elsewhere.) Hopefully this schedule will allow him to reset the program on an upward trend.

Looks like TC is trying to get their program back on the tracks with a much softer schedule than past years.

Your efforts and information is greatly appreciated.

Treasure Coast

Much better schedule this year, last year's was terrible for the talent base Manatee had coming into the season.

And what’s crazy is the public’s have the same opportunity to stockpile talent as the privates do. Lake Mary had 21 football transfers just last year alone and won state. You didn’t hear anyone crying about them. Carol City took like a dozen guys from Chaminade. Not a peep. Armwood, Plant, Lakeland, Venice, Northwestern and Central all have multiple state championships since the turn-of-the-century. Crickets. I just don’t like the fake outrage

Miami Carol City Chiefs Football Schedule West Boca Raton (KOC) 1. Mainland 2. Deland 3. Miami Norland 4. Miami Edison 5. Booker T. Washington 6. Grayson 7. Miami Northwestern 8. GMAC 9. Mater Academy Charter 10. Miami Central

Oddly enough there hasn't been a list put out yet but Eau Gallie did get about 4 players from Cocoa, starting RB and starting TE/ATH who played QB in the Eau Gallie game due to the starter being hurt, one of their DBs that had significant playing time and their starting slot receiver

Just for information, these are the private schools in 3A-6A: 3A: Bishop Kenny, Cardinal Newman, Bishop Verot, Cardinal Gibbons, St. Brendan 4A: Bishop Moore, Tampa Jesuit, American Heritage Plantation 5A: Archbishop McCarthy, STA 6A: Columbus

so..... there are 6 private schools in the top 3 classifications and 11 in the top 4.....are we really crying over 11 schools? do those 11 schools dominate every state championship? every year? guess i need to look this over before posting some h8, but yall crying over 1 school in 6a? and 2 in 5a? jeez....lakeland aint private, venice isnt private, armwood, dr phillips, vero, northwestern, central, on and on and on, whats the crying about for them....they recruit? well no Spit, they all do, everyone does. look at the youth leagues, they been doing it longer than anyone.

Well, it is very nice to hear from you again MarkECannon!

Hi Jambun, I have certainly missed our friendly discourse about the Lightning and the Panthers. It’s getting close to the end of the season so the playoffs are near. The Lightning are in very good shape currently in first place of the Atlantic Division. So I see the Panthers are in last place in the Atlantic Division with 7 games to go. Do you think there is still a path to the postseason for The Cats? When I moved to Boca Raton the people down here constantly talked up The Cats. Somewhere around the prolonged All-Star break you boldly stated The Cats were going to rise to their championship form. What happened? Reality?

Venice setup very nicely to avoid the open bracket.....The entire District schedule will be over by half......strenght of schedule will be Venice's best friend, to help avoid the open bracket

For example, as you know, Tennessee separates out publics and privates. They have 6 public classes and 3 private classes. Regular season play between publics and privates is allowed, but they compete in separate postseason brackets. Here is the breakdown of the number of teams in the FHSAA classes for 2026, and the number of private schools in each: 1A: 49/25 2A: 37/16 3A: 73/5 4A: 87/3 5A: 79/2 6A: 81/1 Total: 406 teams/52 private This does not include SSAC schools nor teams that have committed to the FHSAA "Independent" League. Dividing up the smaller privates would be easy, but creating a class for the largest schools would be trickier.

Yeah i first seen that in Georgia a few years back with a guy commited to Michigan. He transferred to Grayson, won state and then transferred back to his dumpy school after Christmas break. Lol. It’s called Rent-A-Player. You got to be in tight with U-Haul.

I have actually seen players tweet out that they are “Commited” to another high school when they transfer. That’s crazy to me. And another crazy thing is how many people have transferred in the middle of the school year

Yeah that was back in January that is was 4. I’m sure it’s over a dozen now. Edgewater was at about a dozen In January. The Orlando Sentinel has not updated it yet, but I’m sure it’s gonna look crazy.

Yes, I'll be there - maybe we can hook up?

Naples Golden Eagles 2026 Schedule. 9 playoff teams from 2025, the other 3 are required district contests.

Very sorry to hear about this. My condolences to his family and fiancée. Saw Rex play many times for Plant. Used to see his family in the stands supporting him.

Its actually Bayside Academy from Alabama. I was confused also. Bayside posted there schedule and Escambia was on it. Wrong logo.

Palmetto

When I think of top 5 , top 10 i think of consistency. Dillard is consistent playoff team year in and year out, making it further some years then others. And thats without a mass of transfers like a miami central,northwestern, west boca, or last year mcarthur and west broward. right now In broward my rankings would be #1 ST THOMAS #2. AMERICAN HERITAGE #3. CHAMINADE #4. ARCHBISHOP MCCARTHY #5. DILLARD #6. MONARCH west broward and mcarthur both lost over 20 transfers and coaches within the last 2 months. Players are transferring out left and right so its yet to be seen if they can even be .500 next season. Outside of that Who else ? Plantation aka the "Young gate jumpers" as they were called down here had a team full of transfers last year due to their assistant coach darel Strong who has strong ties in the optimist circle. Well since plantation beat dillard in round 1 last season, not only did they lose that assistant coach to cypress bay, they also lost his brother who the colonels head coach, he left and followed his brother to cypress bay and hes now the head coach of the cypress Bay lightning. On top of all that in the last 4 weeks plantation has self imploded losing 8 players to carol city, 4 to Columbus & 15 to players to cypress bay to follow their coaches. So again Who else is it ? That without a doubt can be placed above or before dillard in broward outside of the Top 4 private schools ??

Most definitely dillard not only was dillard top 5 in points per game and top 5 in opponents points per game in the state, dillard also over the last 3 years have a record of (27-8) a playoff berth in every season this decade, multiple 2nd round or further playoff appearancs. In two appearances in the broward vs usa classic dillard is (2-0) "Both games" we were the underdogs. Especially against dr phillips last year who was just in the state semi finals the year prior. And made it to the regional finals last year. Dillard was also ranked top 5 in broward every all of last year. By sunsentinal, Larry bluestin & they were also Top 10 in the miami Herald all of last year. No our schedule wasnt the toughest and yes we lost a close playoff game to a heated rival in round 1 last year, but do that mean dillard isn't Top 7 in broward absolutely NOT. ESPECIALLY compared to fly by night programs who are faithfully doormats in florida football in west broward and mcarthur. Two teams who got a wave of transfers last year to help a team who barely won 4 games the year before. Hell in mcarthur case they were (1-9) in 2024 b4 the transfers came in & like clockwork they all transfered right back out this season.

Best of 7 without dillard in there is insane, also as stated in another thread mcarthur, west broward both has had mass exodus from their programs players wise and more then likely will struggle to win 5 games next year.

The Teddy Bridgewater Act passed both the Florida House and Senate unanimously, and awaits being signed by Governor DeSantis, which will happen. This is a great bill, which will help prep coaches as they help their players with some basic needs such as transportation, meals, lodging, etc. A step in the right direction by the great political leadership of the Sunshine State, and thank you to Teddy Bridgewater for caring about his players as people, not just X and O's.

Best of 7 Columbus vs STA Miami Central vs AHP MNW vs Chaminade Southridge vs West Broward Norland vs McCarthy True North vs Cardinal Gibbons Palmetto vs McArthur