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Some people were saying Mullen shouldn't have gone for 2 so early in the 4th and if he hadn't then the worse the Kentucky FG would have been is a tie if the Gators had just kicked the 2 extra points. Today, Doug Marrone (Jax) has a chance to tie the game with an extra point and decides to go for 2 and misses. I truly believe that Mullen made the right call, even early in the 4th. His offense hadn't done much all game, his defense was playing ok, but not lights out and who knows what was going to happen with your back-up QB in. I look at the decision to go for 2 as the right decision even if they didn't get it. Marrone, on the hand, went with the idea win on the road, tie at home. I get it, but as a coach, you gotta see a bigger picture. Your team is 0-1, has lost it's starting QB for half the season at least, you are coming a dreadful season, you have had a shouting match on the sidelines with a star CB, you gotta play to not lose. I don't get the decision here and I am usually on the 4th and short, go for it. 2 point conversion, go for it, but overall whether Fournette makes it or not, I don't like the call. When should coaches go for two? (Any level)

It is funny that Lakeland people are saying that they don't recruit when the entire "High School Free Agency" bill that was introduced by representatives of Polk County was because the FHSAA punished Lakeland for a couple of kids transferring for athletic reasons. And the fact that our state legislature hates public schools.

The video is a couple of years old at this point, but my buddies and I have watched it as instinctive of what a coach should generally do on 4th down. It is also the reason why I loved watching Georgia Tech and Paul Johnson's triple option because of how aggressive he was in trying for it on 4th down (except last year). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbgqKHxzTfU A good example of a lack of aggressiveness in hurting the team was the PItt-Penn State game. Pitt on the 1 yard line decides to kick the FG rather than try a 4th attempt from the 1 yard line. The kicker misses the kick and Pitt never really recovers. Pitt was down 7 at the time with 5 minutes left. Interestingly, Denver went for 2 when they were down 1 at home with 30 seconds left and got it and Chicago drove 40 yards in 31 seconds to allow former Gator Eddie Pineiro to hit the game winning 53 yard field goal.

Is Tampa Bay Tech legitimate this year? I don't think they have ever advanced past the Regional Finals, but the Laz Index has them ranked #5 in the state with a game against an 0-2 Plant. Is this the year that somebody breaks the Plant/Armwood stranglehold on Hillsborough County?

Before this weekend, I was hoping to be able to say Forest Hill as they have definitely be on the verge of a breakout year and I thought with a down Dwyer that they could do it. Unfortunately, they lost to Palm Beach Gardens, who while undefeated hasn't played anybody. So to answer your question, I think it is Atlantic and the 7 dwarfs and nobody we should consider to be good until the end of the year.

St. Joseph (NJ) and those 4 teams are relatively the same size. Additionally, they weren't always in their own conference, they played the large public schools in the area as part of their conference until the public schools all complained to the point those schools got placed in their own conference. Additionally, while NJ does use conferences, the conferences don't determine who gets in the playoffs. All 5 of those teams can play each other and still all end up in the playoffs.

Over the past 3 years, Palm Beach Lakes was 8-4 (2018), 3-9 (2017), and 8-4 (2016). Not really a dominant program. While their win over Glades Central is a good win in general, I don't think Glades Central is Glades Central anymore and is probably a 6-4 team and decent mid-size school, but the days of them producing the talent and teams of the 2000s is gone until they get some coach stability. Coach Hester is in his 3rd year there so maybe Glades Central can get better, but the days of pointing to the Muck as a place of premium teams, I think is over.

Glades suffers 2 losses this week as they lost to Palm Beach Lakes early. Perhaps Glades Central ain't what it used to be.

http://lazindex.com/index.php I would absolutely consider them legit. They have been doing this a long time and their results are definitely more right than they are wrong. @LAZL is on these boards frequently, I believe and he can tell you more about how his formula works.

Other than IMG, none of these schools will truly ever to admit to recruiting a player. We can talk all we want about the number of transfers that a school gets (I rarely believe it makes a team that much better, but rather simply just worsens average teams). The reality is that none of them consider themselves recruiting schools. They consider themselves schools with great football programs that people are just naturally attracted to because they are winners or send athletes on to the next level. Again it is why we should push for promotion/relegation. Good teams move up, bad teams move down. Eventually, you end up in the exact situation you are asking for (really good teams (recruiting or not) play against other really good teams).

I am not against a Volleyball, Basketball, Soccer, or Baseball/Softball team doing that as a reason to travel to a tournament. Tournaments though are over 3-4 days and you can actually sightsee and do different things. I was in Palm Beach County during Christmas last year and I went to their version of the City of the Palms Basketball Tournament. Several teams from cold Midwestern states were very happy to be in the beaches. Football though, I can't imagine doing that as a reason. These coaches are all about routines and never breaking those routines. Some of these coaches would sooner cut off their leg then allow a routine to be broken by a sightseeing tour.

Glad they solved their problem, and they have the right approach of Competitive Games allows for the sport to continue at our schools and continue to grow. But tell me again how promotion and relegation doesn't solve this issue. If Reagan is that bad, (Lax Index of 430), then why not move them down to 7A so maybe they are more competitive, why not move a school like Northwestern up so that they play against better competition. Increase the size of classifications to 96 (16 districts 6 teams per district) and move the worst 16 teams down and the best 16 up. Does this potentially mean that a school with 750 would compete against a school with 2800 sure? But if those two schools are equal on the field than it should be considered fine. Nobody wants to see blowouts neither the winning or losing side. You want competitive games. Yes, coaches should be able to create schedules that allow to have fair competitions, but sometimes you have School Districts and FHSAA districts that force the haves and havenots to compete.

Maybe somebody can help me out... For FHSAA ranking purposes: 1)If you are calculating your opponent's winning percentage do you include your victory/loss in the calculation? Example: Team A: 3 Wins, 3 Losses, .500 winning percentage Your team beat Team A, do you use the .600 winning percentage (if you disregard their loss to you) or do you use the .500 winning percentage? 2) Same question, but with opponent opponent's winning percentage 3) do you average the winning percentages (of opponents and opponents opponent's) or do you take the total number of wins of opponents and divide by the total number of games played? I am sure the FHSAA will have this under control, but it is a lot more work than the previous system to get right.

I resent the fact that you think I would make fun of this amazingly awesome stupendous system. The FHSAA as always has run the numbers on things like this and shared that information completely with everyone to allow for complete and absolute trust in the system. Ok going to stop now.... Honestly, I am probably going to do that no matter what the situation is. The only difference is that I would like to be accurate when mocking rather than just shooting from the hip. I know they will release the information in 2-3 weeks from now, but I know the time it takes to set something like this up. To do ONE (1) region, it is going to take know the records of 276 teams, and of those 276 teams having to know who beat who for 87 of those teams (even though I just care about the 20-25 teams in a given region). I remember the first year of the "power" point system, every week I e-mailed the FHSAA with small errors, but I was only looking at one region in one Classification. Who knows if there were errors in other areas. By the 2nd year they had cleaned up the errors and I only sent one e-mail at the beginning for a small problem. On a complete different side note, if some coach would like to pay me in Buffalo Wild Wings, Beef O Brady, Hooters, or WingHouse gift cards next year so that I run the numbers for their region, please let me know. I will also accept straight cash.

Follow-Up Question and thank you for your help... Team A (10-0) Beats Team B (9-1) Team B has a win percentage of .900 (9-1), I understand based on what I read on the FHSAA Website that for team A that team B's win percentage would be 1.000 because you would not count that loss since the loss is to team A. Since Team B faced Team A, do you count Team A's Winning Percentage in Team B's opponent's opponent's winning Percentage when you are figuring this out for Team A, if so that is going to suck to try and do. Let Me Try an Example: St. Augustine is 2-0 (so win percentage would be 1.000) St. Augustine has beaten Yulee and Menendez. Yulee is 1 -2 (1-1 for the purposes of Opponent's Winning percentage since you remove the loss to St. Augustine) or .500 win percentage Menendez is 1-1 (1-0 for the purposes of Opponent's Winning percentage since you remove the loss to St. Augustine)or 1.000 win percentage So St. Augustine's Opponent's Winning Percentage is .750 ( 1.5 / 2 ) ___________ Opponent's Winning Percentage Yulee Schedule St. Augustine (2-0) (1-0 for the purposes of Opponent's Winning percentage or 1.000) Fernandina Beach (0-3) (0-2 for the purposes of Opponent's Winning Percentage or 0.000) West Nassau (2-1) (1-1 for the purposes of Opponent's Winning Percentage or 0.500) For Yulee's Opponent's Winning percentage of .500 Menendez Schedule Palatka (0-2) (0-1 for the purposes of Opponent's winning percentage or 0.000) St. Augustine (2-0) (1-0 for the purposes of Opponent's Winning percentage or 1.000) For Menendez's Opponent's Winning percentage of .500 So St. Augustine's Opponent's Opponent's Winning Percentage would be .500 (( .500+.500 ) / 2 ) My question is for the above, do I count St. Augustine's Winning Percentage in the Yulee and Menendez's Opponent's Winning Percentage when figuring out St. Augustine's Opponent's Opponent's Winning Percentage. If removed, both OOWP would shrink to 0.250 and 0.000, and thus overall average would shrink to .125 instead of .500. Thank you to the Florida HS football scoreboard with Score Steam, makes it much easier to look up the scores rather than maxpreps. Additionally, thank you to Laz for the Laz Index which helps me check the records. It is a great tool when trying to do this

Finebaum and Bianchi had this discussion about Willie Taggart. Yes, as a Gator fan, I want Willie to stay forever, but in reality, when Willie was hired, I did not think it was a bad hire at all. He had won at Western Kentucky, he had won at USF, he was rebuilding at Oregon and went to 7-5 during the regular season as he left. I don't know if FSU will recover, but I think it will. We are going to look back at the end of the season and see the Boise State loss as a "good" loss as Boise State will be Top 15 in the country. I would be willing to take a chance that FSU ends up with 6 wins and is bowl eligible. It won't be enough for FSU fans who want to challenge for national titles, but I do not know if anybody is ever truly going to unseat Clemson/Bama for dominance anytime soon. https://247sports.com/Article/Florida-State-Seminoles-football-Willie-Taggart-Paul-Finebaum-destination-job-133287572/

They could reschedule. Lots of teams have done it. I believe that is how the Mandarin/STA game is happening

I warned at the beginning of the year that Pahokee could be the next team that is Booker T Washington-ed due to schedule such a difficult schedule that they could end up not making the playoffs. This is what I was talking about.

Sadly, since the state legislature is out to destroy public education in the name of "choice" the answer for athletics is a promotion/relegation system that allows those all-star teams to play each other.

You are correct if a student is not enrolled at a school, but attending a school that doesn't offer athletics are supposed to count in the enrollment of that school for FHSAA purposes. The reality is that is generally doesn't matter because a school probably has less than 20 of those students in a given year, but yes they are supposed to count. If your guidance department doesn't know who these kids are, how is your AD doing GPA checks, age checks?

This was an ugly game. 16+ penalties, no consistent offense of any sort (especially with two offensive minded head coaches). Maybe it was just the defenses were really good.

I don't think I ever cared if games were cancelled before, but with trying to do playoff ranking points, you need every game, when games get changed to Monday or Saturday or you never find out if the game is canceled or rescheduled it becomes a HUGE mess.

@Joshua Wilson Do you have any advice for us numbers people on how the FHSAA might be handling the opponent's winning percentage and the opponent's opponent's winning percentage?

Many schools already lost a day due to Labor Day add in many schools losing Tuesday, I could see many school districts canceling/rescheduling games (even though that hadn't happened yet).

Josh, Am I missing something in that the links to the schedules seem to not be there.