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Cyril Brockmeier has indeed been announced as the new head coach at Plant. Coach Brock was not the current JV coach. He held the job for for a nice stretch a few years ago, leading the team to several undefeated seasons. Coach Weiner often referred to him as "the most overqualified JV coach in the country." Hyperbole aside, it may have been true. At that time, the former college player (O-line) already had two college coaching positions on his resume. Coach Brock had to step down from coaching a few years ago when his brother died suddenly (as I recall, a cut from a boat motor led to an infection that killed him within a week), leaving behind a wife and a couple of young boys. Brock stepped up and helped raise the kids (his nephews). As I understand, the kids are a little older and their mom has a new man in her life. As a result, over the last couple of years, Coach Brock has been able to return to his passion of coaching. I believe Coach Brock is on good terms with most all of the coaches, so Plant won't have to completely rebuild their coaching staff (although a couple of the assistants already had made the decision to retire even before Coach Weiner announced his move to Toledo). The administration was fortunate to have several good options available, including at least one other off the current staff and at least one from a nearby school. The principal at Plant made the announcement Friday night at the football banquet, much to the delight and approval of players and parents. Coach Brock spoke briefly and talked about building on Coach Weiner's legacy, while giving it his own signature. It's never easy to follow a coaching legend. Only time will tell whether this turns out to be the right man for the job. But it's hard to argue with the choice they made.

Not a fan. The possible benefits do not outweigh, what to me might be the worst situation. It seems like a knee-jerk reaction, that appears to satisfy an issue, but really can make no guarantees. I wonder how many years of data they researched, past seasons at ALL levels? Did they truly see that there were numerous years where reseeding might have prevented blowouts? Is this true in over half of the classifications, or just the ones with a louder fan base? Did they look at how many times a reseed would generate the type of travel that diminishes the overall experience for both teams? Do we believe that the point system really does the best job of seeding teams? It's supposed to be objective, but we've all seen the discrepancies. I looked at 2019 3A #'s as a for instance. Here some concerns with the RPI's determining a rank. 1. Of the top 10 RPI's the four semi-finalists were ranked # 4, 6, 7 & 10. In other words, the top 3 teams DID not even make it into the State Semi's. Does that validate this system's ability to predict the best teams? Or is it proof that the RPI #'s are still just an educated guess. Do we restructure travel based on a guess? 2. The overwhelmingly best team (Cham.-Mad) was a 4 seed. So the system we are relying on to determine who these good teams are, proved it's worth by giving them a 4 seed? Allow a "for instance" - the #1 seed, based on RPI, was Pensacola Catholic. Let's say that the RPI #'s were on target, and that the top 4 teams all made the state semi's. Then the team, we all know was the best in 3A (and maybe 4A, 5A, etc?), would have to travel 9.5 hours/659 miles to play the "1 seed." 3. My biggest concern is that when these extra long travel times are generated, it will cause some real issues with the visiting team. Money is tight for many families. So IF they travel their expenditures will increase exponentially. Gas, meals, hotels; plus a day off of work? Will Auntie or Uncle Ted make the trip? Will the student body travel - 17 year-old kids driving home 9.5 hours on a Friday? The elderly community that supports these kids all season? The current system isn't perfect, but it does allow for the games to be relatively close. I'm sorry, but I'd pump the brakes here. I also like to remind myself that this is the FHSAA were talking about. And I am usually skeptical that those folks do things well.

Remember what I said. Vero having the longest regular season streak is like having the record for going on the most dates without laying the lumber. Lol!

Proseteye, I was around when OTC was playing those teams, these new OTC teams are not on that level. Don't get me wrong they are good, but they just aren't the same. In 2005, OTC struggled with Union County (twice) (Union was good then with CJ Spiller) and Pahokee on their way to a 14-0 season. In 2006, OTC goes 13-1 with a loss in the state championship to Pahokee. In 2007, Coach Bell is gone, schedule is upgraded, and OTC struggles to 7-5 including two losses to Newberry and a loss to Union County. In 2008, OTC goes 12-2 with a loss against Mainland and Pahokee (again). In 2009, OTC goes 9-3 with loses against Bolles, Tampa Catholic, and Gainesville. in 2010, OTC goes 14-0 beats some impressive teams along the way including a Derrick Henry led Yulee team, Bolles, and University School (when University School was doing it's thing). in 2011, OTC goes 7-5 including losing to some local schools (Vanguard, North Marion, Gainesville). In 2012, OTC goes 8-5. In 2013, OTC goes 8-4. In 2014, OTC goes 10-2 against a fairly easy schedule to lose to the developing juggernaut of Trinity Christian. In 2015, OTC goes 4-8 (including a loss to Lake Weir) In 2016, OTC goes 4-5. In 2017, OTC goes 5-3 (misses playoffs). In 2018, OTC goes 5-5 (misses playoffs). In 2019, OTC goes 8-4 with an impressive home playoff win against Trinity Christian (Jax). So why go through the last few years, OTC's successes are a long time ago of when they were a dominant beast. Vanguard: 2004: 2-7 2005: 5-5 2006: 5-5 2007: 2-8 2008: 0-10 2009: 6-6 2010: 10-3 2011: 7-4 2012: 6-6 2013: 5-5 2014: 4-6 2015: 9-3 2016: 10-2 2017: 11-1 2018: 13-1 2019: 9-3 I think partially what has happened is that Vanguard has stabilized it's football program. Notice the worse years of Vanguard coincide with the best years of OTC. There was a reason that OTC was called the Marion County All-Stars for a while. As long as Vanguard continues to have a solid program, OTC won't get the 1 or 2 additional star players they need to make them a state finalist. They will continue to be good, but not able to overcome some of the recruiting powerhouses. Additionally, if you go back to the years of 2B, it was made up of a lot of the larger 1A schools today. You weren't playing Trinity Christian, Pensacola Catholic, Florida High, Chaminade-Madonna to win the state, the competition was easier. It is telling that since they did away with 2B that Trinity has struggled with consistency.

I'm currently interviewing for that new show on TV called Yo MTV RAPS!

We melted down in the final 5:30 of the game. Till then the 49'ners were in charge. I lot a bundle on the game!

by cheating

Trenton beat them because they recruited... Hard. I would never promote recruiting and that is the only way a Dixie, Trenton, etc truly has a chance to beat them in my opinion. Unless something magical happens and one of those schools produced multiple SEC caliber guys like Union County did back in the 90's, nobody other than Pahokee will beat them.

Yeah but in most cases that format creates state championship blowouts as several classes the 1 and 2 region winners are the 2 weakest regional champs But if your in the final 4 you really shouldn't care about travel as the idea of knowing your one game away from going to a state championship should matter more than "how far you got to drive"

They are in a talent rich area and there is nothing to do in Madison other than football. They work relentlessly year around and have a good coaching staff. In addition, there is not much competition for them on a consistent basis in 1A other than Pahokee. Everyone else in 1A is playing for 2nd/3rd place.

@VeniceIndiansFootball @941football hear Venice is playing Pine-Richland,PA

Silas is at Steinbrenner. Hope all are having a safe and healthy off season

Ha. More like "Counselor, please do your own research before you walk in here and ask the Court to answer all of your legal questions -- especially when the answer to all your questions can be found in the transcript."

What 561 is describing is correct, but just to be clear... if one of those 500 plays football/basketball/etc... they do count towards the population, but the vast majority of the kids going to the charter school are not playing a sport, thus still having the same effect of lowering the population purposefully.

Yes they are. Mainly Rockledge and Viera

I've been attempting to mathematically show which areas of the country are best at football. As Floridians, we fundamentally believe the best college ball is played in the South. And obviously with the likes of Clemson, Alabama and LSU, it's very hard for others to dispute. But while attempting to validate this, I ran into a bit of a snag. As you can see above, the distribution of football playing colleges throughout the US is completely unbalanced. There are over 200 more colleges playing football east of the Mississippi River than there are to the west of it. If we dig into it further, there are "holes" found all over the map showing major imbalances depending on the level of football being discussed. For example, in New England, there are 58 colleges playing football but only one (Boston College) plays at the P5 level. In NY, NJ, Pennsylvania, Delaware there are another 96 football schools, 4 of which play P5 football. So out of the 154 colleges in the Northeastern US, only 5 play big time P5 football. This leaves 60 P5 schools for the rest of the country, 22 of which can be found in the traditional south. So I found the map to be geographically biased towards selected areas of the country. To compound matters, the more regions I used, the worse the situation became. So I decided to categorize each region and distribute the teams as fairly as possible trying to keep the number of teams and areas "balanced." The comparisons will be divided as follows: P5 (North/South), G5 (North/South), FCS (North/South), D2 (East/West), D3 (East/West), NAIA (East/West). To do this, I was required to completely disregard Conferences. So please keep that in mind because it will mess you up. The data will be shown on my next post.

That keyboard is ruined

They're supposed to announce Monday from what I hear. there's a couple of finalist but they kept everything under wraps. I know two names but I don't want to say anything because I don't know if those guys are in the final two or not.

Dude, this wasn't directed solely to you. It was directed to anyone who thinks that a six-hour plus bus ride will not adversely affect a team's chances of success. Columbia may be the world's best road warrior team in the history of high school football. I don't know and I don't care. But, in my view, more visiting teams are going to lose games in which they've traveled that far than they will win them. And, in my mind, the RPI simply isn't accurate enough to reward one team with a home game and punish another team with a long road game. And it certainly shouldn't be used to make a south Florida team travel to the panhandle (or vice versa) just in hopes of creating a 1 vs. 2 match-up in the finals based on the regular season power rankings. Just an opinion. Everyone has one . . . . just like a---, well, just like noses.

I'll tell you what. If there's anyone out there that doesn't believe that traveling 6 hours or more for a playoff game adversely affects the traveling team's chances of winning, I'll make a blanket bet with you right here and now. Over the next five years, in each high school football playoff game played in the state of Florida where one team has to travel 6 or more hours to play another team, I'll take the home team and you take the visiting team. $100 per game. No, you don't get to pick and choose which one or two games you bet on. All or nothing. Who's in?

Who’s your team? North Port?

It is impressive regardless of how many of those games were not that challenging but the issue I have is when he tries to push this streak like it's in the same discussion as the DLS streak or that this streak makes Vero Beach a powerhouse So in other words it's not that I don't find the streak impressive but I think he tries to blow it out of proportion and make it sound like it's on par with streaks that IMO are much better

Maybe I'm a little bit shell shocked because I'm in an area where there aren't many teams that can have that kind of sustained success. To me, 60+ wins in a row (regular season, I know) is already an outstanding accomplishment. That's not easy to do. Is it as impressive as other streaks since it didn't include the playoffs/state titles? I don't think so. Does it need to be a decade long to be impressive? No. I think there's a reason many teams haven't been able to accomplish what Vero has done, and is there anybody else who is close to Vero's win streak? I'm not too familiar with other areas of the state?

With all due respect to ColumbiaHighFan2, I think the main reason people don't do state polls (at least the main reason for me) is that it's darn near impossible to rank and compare teams that you've never seen before -- especially at the beginning of the season. It's hard enough for the college sportswriters and coaches to rank college teams that are on TV a couple of times a month. But unless you've got a HUDL account and about 60 hours a week of free time, there's simply no way in the world that you can watch enough games to be able to analyze all the relevant teams and rank them. Yeah, I know you can base some of your rankings off of how a team has done historically. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to start out the 2020 season tabbing STA as the number one team in 7A, if not the entire state, based on what they've done the last decade (and depending on how their off-season recruiting goes . . . but I digress). Rankings, especially during the first half of the season, are what they always have been and what they always will be --- conversation starters and a means to drum up interest in the sport. Last, I recognize that some of the brave people who put themselves out there and create the polls rely (heavily) on information that they get from other people . . . eyes in other stadiums because, well, because there just aren't enough hours in the day to watch all the games themselves. While this makes sense, I'd love to have a dollar for every time the telephone conversation went like this: Pollmaker: "So, did you get a chance to watch the Wildcats Friday night?" Fan from city 300 miles away: "Yeah, I watched them beat EastWestern." Pollmaker: "So, how'd they look?" Fan: "They looked good. QB could throw the ball; they've got a couple of fast receivers and a young running back that can move." Pollmaker: "Great. What about their defense?" Fan: "Yeah, they shut down EastWestern. Only points they EW scored were in the 4th quarter when the Wildcats had their 3rd string in the game." Pollmaker: "So, you think the Wildcats deserve to be ranked in the Top 10." Fan: "Oh, hell yeah!" Pollmaker: "OK. Great. By the way, how'd your boy do Friday night?" Fan: "Eight solo tackles, a sack and a forced fumble." Pollmaker: "Nice. OK, thanks, I'll talk to you again soon." Just a dollar for each time . . . that's all I'm asking for.

Any idea what kind of recruiting class Venice is bringing in this season?

Trenton was putting it on 1A not that long ago. But MadCo is the most consistent, by far.

so put a question mark after cheating. A casual reader thinks Madison is cheating

They aren't, in any way, shape or form, in the running for DLS's record. DLS's record was ALL games, not merely regular season games followed by early playoff exits.

you can expect it to take longer than expected.

Not until you all grow the stones to play a home and home with us And by salty you mean honest? You want Vero Beach to be mentioned alongside nationally elite programs but you have to twist the data to make it sound more impressive This past year was the perfect example of this, you all played 2 road games the entire regular season (both were district games) That is the definition of safe scheduling but you want to ignore the fact that the streak by DLS included PLAYOFFS but because you know that completely destroys your argument you got to rely on "well Columbia lost to this or that" or "you being salty" it's called being honest

While I know many people are excited about a Madison County vs Pahokee state championship... this year, Madison would have been a #1 seed and Pahokee would be a #4. Same result as this year.

Outside of Madison County, most of the teams that consistently win state championships are either private schools or Miami/Fort Lauderdale schools.

I'm waiting on Trenton on someone to make a super team again. Hopefully they move Madison to blountstown region, so they play pahokee for state.

In several cases, yes. But at this stage of the tournament, it would probably not be that big a deal. And, like Bad Bird, I am okay with this, as on a net basis, I think we would often get better finals.

I'd be interested in going through the years and comparing. 2010 STA on paper one of their best teams ever. That being said, MC seemed to struggle vs option teams back then and I would be kidding myself if I said MC wouldn’t give STA a game. *Playoff difficulty very slight edge MC only because South Dade>>>Cooper City. Both Miami and Creek sucked. BA beat Cypress bay 36-17 that year. Manatee and Plant vs MNW and DP would be a VERY interesting debate (back then I would have said Manatee/Plant no doubt), looking back ehhh I think it's pretty close. STA: beat Camden County GA 42-28 (home), beat Cypress Bay 60-14 (away) *playoff wins: Coconut Creek (59-0), Cooper City (49-7), Boyd Anderson (47-6), Manatee (31-7), Plant (30-7) Central: Lost Camden Co GA 42-45 (away), beat Cypress Bay 30-27 (away?) *playoff wins: Miami (55-0), MNW (42-27), South Dade (38-7), Cypress Bay (30-27), DP (42-27) 2010: Edge STA (MC was NASTY though) I'll try and do 2011 and 2012 tomorrow.

Jeff Webb at Walton (1985) and Baker (1993).

Yep; that's the blessing. The curse is having very little, if any, control over what non-district teams end up on your schedule. This curse gets magnified now that power rankings are used to determine which non-district winners make it into the playoffs and seeding for all the teams that make it (which, of course, determines home field advantage). Also, I suspect it helps to be in an area that may have 100 schools within an hour or so drive (like Tampa, Orlando and South Florida) versus being in a rural area, relatively speaking.

Madison SOS

Jeff Webb, Baker and Walton

I think it’s Carl Madison at Tate and Pine Forest

Northwestern

If there are 10-15 national academies that only play each other, so be it. But to stop the rise of this crap, normal academic institutions have to stop playing sports academies.

Hence the word "arguably"....

The guy is at a school named American Collegiate Academy. One would think preparing kids to get to college and get a degree is a focal point. And the director himself has yet to get a college degree. How, exactly, can they actually sell themselves as superior to most any school? How do we determine if they have, in fact, done things "properly"? They appear to be operating (like most all charter or private schools) free of much of any oversight.

Clearly Jesuit has the better track record over the last several years. The ONLY explanation for a kid leaving Jesuit for Gaither for football is that Gaither has a coach(es) that are hip and popular with the kids. They look like the flavor of the month. Which, I suppose in these days, is equated with "accomplishment". Barf.

OK. The only way Ransom makes Lakeland better is if he brings several other quality players with him. IMO, Mason Martin was their best QB last season. This season, he figures to certainly be better than Ransom. Perhaps equally important in the transfer thread is the fact that Will Bahler took a job on USF's staff. He's been Lakeland's recruiting coordinator for several years, and is thought by many to be a big factor in getting so many transfers to Lakeland the last few years. The vague Twitter rumblings are that Lakeland hasn't fared well in the transfer sweepstakes. Probably a good thing, but one that suggests they won't be loaded like the last couple of seasons.

I would think that Randazzo will have to travel out-of-state a few times to complete the 'away' end of the home-and-home series with some of the teams they hosted this past year.

Whoa how do you leave an elite academic institution like Jesuit for a garbage ghetto school like Gaither? Talk about having your priorities out of whack. my kid goes to Gaither and it sucks. Our old address is zoned for it so we let him go. We are pulling him out at the end of the year. He only goes because it’s close to my job and my little ones school. Not worth it

Booker T Washington (Miami) hires Gerald Cox from Coconut Creek... surprised they didn't promote the Associate Coach who just helped win the State Championship.

He was a good kid. Lived right down the street from where I work. I coached him in an all star game coming out of middle school. You hate to hear this.