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To the contrary. I'm all about parents and kids having all the information that they can get. And if they want to reach out for information, that's fine. But until the FHSAA changes the rules, it remains illegal for schools/coaches to reach out to parents and kids to encourage them to consider their school. And that happens. And that's wrong.

8-16 sounds about right. It would remove all the real powerhouse teams while not forcing some very good, but not great teams, into a group with the best of the best where they would have little chance of ever winning it all.

A 32 team open division would destroy the credibility and water down the other classes. An 8 team open division would put the super teams in one division while maintaining some competitiveness in the other classes.

Well, I know that I, for one, can go to bed tonight and rest peacefully knowing that no coaches, assistant coaches, handlers or other representatives of any Florida high school football program will reach out to any of these players or their families to 'discuss their options.'

And here I thought those were the values that high school athletics were supposed to impart on its participants....... aah, naivete.

With the FHSAA now married to the MaxPreps rankings for selection and seeding, teams will know exactly where they stand from week 1 until the end of the regular season. Someone asked what is to stop a team from losing intentionally to manipulate their postseason situation. How about integrity, character, sportsmanship?........ (silly me).

6-8 teams that recruit seems a tad bit low. Come on. That might make up the teams that recruit in Dade and Broward county alone. The real number of football factories that recruit is is closer to 24-32. Take out top 24-32 and let them beat each other up since they disregard the FHSAA rules anyway

First off, comparing high school athletics to college is an apple to an orange. Colleges are supposed to recruit as they offer scholarships for coming to play for them. Secondly, the purpose of school choice was started for academic purposes, so parents can find the best option for their children. I personally support the concept, but what we see happening with athletics wasn't what school choice was intended for. As I stated earlier, I have no problem with a transfer when there is indeed a legitimate move. But what I have observed is certain schools poaching players from neighboring schools through one tactic or another.

You are correct. But here's the point that I think is being made. 'Back then' the teams in the metro areas were, in theory, constrained by district boundaries. A kid could only go to Central if they lived in the Central district (again, in theory). So, Central's talent pool was limited to the kids who lived in the Central district. Just like Pahokee's talent pool was limited to the kids who lived in Pahokee's district. Now, with school choice, and as a practical matter, Pahokee's talent pool (and the talent pool of all the other rural schools) is essentially still limited to the kids who live in that relatively-sparse geographic area. Contrast that with Central, who now has the ability to legally pull in any kid from Dade County. Yes, they are competing against other schools, like Northwestern, for that top talent, but recent history seems to suggest that only a small handful of teams are going to end up with the vast majority of the top talent. To oversimplify, if one rural high school football team has a thousand kids to pick from (including gamers, trombone players, theater buffs, etc.) and a metro high school football team has a hundred thousand kids to pick from (because district lines really don't matter any more), which team is more likely to end up with a group of thirty talented football players? Now, it wouldn't surprise me at all if a rural team, like Pahokee, could beat the bottom-feeder teams in the metro area, because all the talented kids from those metro teams ended up at the super-power de jure. But when it comes time for playoffs, the rural team likely won't stand a chance against the metro power. And, yes, there will be exceptions along the way, but for the most part, the numbers won't lie.

Pahokee is about as rural as it gets yet they were able to compete with anybody in the state for years in the first decade of the 2000's. People weren't sending their kids from the metro areas to attend that school.

Point is you can see we had parity before the current law. Rural schools aren't scared to play schools from metro areas when there was a level playing field. There's this myth that South Florida has always been the dominant area of the state when it comes to football. That's not exactly true. STA use to get to the championship but typically they'd lose. AHP use to never get past the first round, neither could Cardinal Gibbons. And other than 2004, I can't remember when Chaminade was all that. In fact the rise of these programs has been at the expense of other schools down there which are really struggling .