gatorman-uf

We have to acknowledge certain things, our state legislature wants transfers. They want choice, whether it is for public schools, private schools, or charter schools. They have unequivocally stated they believe in parental/student choice even if that means transferring for athletic reasons. They will pull out the tired trope of not stopping the violinist or chorus member or auto mechanic student being able to choose so why stop the football or baseball player. Once, we acknowledge that, we have to move on from transfers to recruiting, which is technically different. The FHSAA should be able to work with the Department of Education to suspend people for a specific period of time for recruiting. Now, we have acknowledged transfers, we punish the coaches who recruit. We go with option 3. Option 3 says if transfers happen, so be it. Put those schools together into one classification and let them compete. Using the LAZINDEX, these are the top 48 teams over the past 20 years. If we did this for all classifications, now all of a sudden, population size doesn't matter, geography doesn't matter, but the ability to put a winning team on the field matters. Is 20 years a little too long, probably, but better than a one year snap shot. Imagine a classification of 8 districts/6 teams per district (only 9 game schedule with 10th game being play-in). All 48 make the playoffs, with district champion and runner-ups getting automatic byes. While we might quibble about certain teams being included and not being included, I think most of the teams that we consider to be state contenders year in and year out are on the list. 1 St. Thomas Aquinas (Fort Lauderdale) 2 Miami Central 3 Armwood (Seffner) 4 Miami Northwestern 5 Lakeland 6 Washington (Miami) 7 Bolles (Jacksonville) 8 Madison County (Madison) 9 Mainland (Daytona Beach) 10 Apopka 11 Lincoln (Tallahassee) 12 Manatee (Bradenton) 13 Naples 14 Christopher Columbus (Miami) 15 Venice 16 Columbia (Lake City) 17 Cocoa 18 Trinity Christian (Jacksonville) 19 Niceville 20 American Heritage (Plantation) 21 Miami Carol City 22 Glades Central (Belle Glade) 23 St. Augustine 24 Dwyer (Palm Beach Gardens) 25 Godby (Tallahassee) 26 Hillsborough (Tampa) 27 Plant (Tampa) 28 Deerfield Beach 29 Palm Bay (Melbourne) 30 Pine Forest (Pensacola) 31 Jefferson (Tampa) 32 Osceola (Kissimmee) 33 Lake Gibson (Lakeland) 34 Vero Beach 35 Dr. Phillips (Orlando) 36 Raines (Jacksonville) 37 Miramar 38 Plantation 39 Edgewater (Orlando) 40 Cardinal Gibbons (Fort Lauderdale) 41 Jesuit (Tampa) 42 Chaminade (Hollywood) 43 Miami Southridge 44 Fletcher (Neptune Beach) 45 Bartram Trail (St. Johns) 46 Pace 47 Dillard (Fort Lauderdale) 48 Atlantic (Delray Beach)

From a friend at the game: Tigers imploded. Gave up 3 safeties (1 botched snap on punt, 1 punt returner went backwards into endzone, 1 running play loss yards in endzone). The offensive line was manhandled all game. He couldn't recall a play that went for positive yards, no big plays. WRs were doubled/shaded on every play, QB didn't get enough time to set feet. RBs were consistently hit in the backfield, delay of games, holding calls. The defense did their best they could, but Bolles' O-Line was described as making CHS D-Line look small. He didn't think Bolles ever had to go more than 50 yards on any of their TD drives.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/highschool/os-sp-hs-fhsaa-survey-0902-20210901-ayishbqatngldcybxvhkucjvqy-story.html "Those choices were: Divide teams by student enrollment counts, the long-standing FHSAA method. Classify based on county population, which could mean a Metro division for schools in Orlando, Miami, Tampa, etc., and a Suburban division for teams in less populated areas. They would go along with the existing Rural division, which was created in 2011 for small-town schools with less than 600 students. Align teams based on their competitive level, utilizing a power ranking system." The FHSAA sent out a survey to athletic director and coaches and asked them which one of the above would they prefer when doing re-classification. I do not get a vote on this, but I really hope they choose method 3. I have long advocated for a promotion and relegation type system where good teams, no matter the size, move up, and poor teams move down. My idea would be that a 2A football would take 12 years to move up to 8A based on 2 year re-classifications. Sadly, I think the FHSAA will simply just put all the good teams move up all at once, which will be too big of a shock to the system. Other sports team I would be every year, so 6 years for a 2A basketball to end up in 8A. Individual sports (Track, Cross Country, Golf, Swimming, Wrestling, etc) should be done on participation (FACA survery asked about that) and power ranking. I am sure there are enough technical wizards who could look at a returning team of cross country and figure out how much they improve from year to year on average and figure out a ranking system. ______________________________ On a complete side note, a lot of newspapers have been running subscription services for $1 for 6 months, with a cancel anytime. Best couple of bucks I have spent. I was tired of being stuck behind paywalls or subscribers only.

Sadly IMG is the future of sports and I hate it. Eventually, we will get a couple of schools in every region of the country that IMGs. We already are doing this in basketball, baseball/volleyball/soccer will be next. The only thing that keeps those sports from already having it, is that there are big "travel" ball programs that have invested into making those sports big outside of the school setting, football has never really had that. Once players/agents figure out how to get some of that NIL money for high school kids, just wait, there will be an IMG everywhere. The only difference is that IMG started for years as a tennis/golf academy school. Built up an infrastructure and then went all in on football. As for Bishop Sycamore, we have talked before that "new" school should start further down the classifications because they don't have a winning culture. An online-charter school with two years existence is not going to have a winning culture either. While IMG deserves some blame (fool me once, etc), ESPN should be taken out to the woodshed for this kind of tomfoolery. They are trying to do HS sports on the cheap. You want a marquee match-up pay for it. Paragon Marketing is also to play for this. They are one of those companies who put together the "National Championships" in basketball, but it really only ever includes the IMG type schools for basketball. If ESPN was for real about this for , then they should: Bring one of those North NJ Catholic teams to play Aquinas or IMG, or better yet, do a rivalry game. I don't even care the level of play. Pahokee vs Glades Central Dillard v Boyd Anderson Northwestern v Central/Jackson/BTW or whoever the Soul Bowl is considered to day Any game out in the panhandle with some of the mid-size rural schools. ESPN does this because they want stars, not teams. Senior Tim Tebow of Nease moves the TV needle, and a solid Bartram Trail/Raines team does not. ESPN should be showing the pageantry of high school football. Show me the 300 person marching band at a Texas High School, show me the BBQ, the tailgating. Take me to the hole in wall BBQ/hamburger place where the entire town eats before the game. Interview the graduate from 1968 who hasn't missed a game other than for his brother's wedding in California (which he cusses at him every time for missing that game). ESPN treats high school sports like they are filming for ESPN the Ocho. And I get it, LLWS has some sentimentality to it and it really is just a cool way to see kids experience athletic success. So they send big name announcers, they put on a high level production of it. But high school sports? ESPN mails it in, everytime. ESPN has a chance to improve this weekend on ESPN U, Friday Night at 8 pm Lake Gibson at Valdosta, while Valdosta is exactly the type of school that should be highlighted, Valdosta has not been in the news for anything good with the firing of Coach Probst. I am willing to bet that most of the pre-game conversations will focus on that.

Going down 10 early, you could feel the doubt creeping in the stands especially after that first drive went nowhere. The INT made it a game. The punt return gave the lead and CHS never looked back, but the INT seemed to relieve a lot of worry in the stands. Peterson's catch and run, was important because AH was scratching back into game and had pinned CHS deep. The 95 yard catch put AH on hold.

Good job by Columbia. Offense started slow with penalties on the first drive and team went down 10 quickly. 2 Momentum plays were the INT that got Columbia on the board and WR Marcus Peterson's 95 yard catch and run. I think Columbia scored 20 straight points without ever putting the offense on the field. Good job to Columbia.

Create a topic that will bring Madison County to talk about how great they are if you are being held hostage by your wife.

Most schools move the kids on to the next course no matter what they scored. They just will put them in a "Learning Lab" or a Recovery Credit Course. So a kid took Algebra I freshman year, they put them in Geometry sophomore and if they failed Algebra I they will put them in a credit recovery class. If they find out later that they failed due to late exams (I stand by the idea that Spring Exams scores were released in late July), they can pull them from an elective to put them in the lab.

A lot to unravel here. First good on the AD for potentially catching a problem. I know it sucks, but he is right. You would rather not play the players, win the game then win the game and end up losing your win because of ineligible players. Second, is the AD saying the individual scores for students have not been released to the school districts from when they took the exams in the Spring? If so, he is wrong, scores were released to the schools on July 29th, which is much later than normal. So it could just be the school district is slow in entering and calculating the grades of the students. Now, could some of those students not taken the EoC (Biology, Algebra I, Geometry, US History) for subject, maybe. Every district is different on how a student who missed the exam is handled and how that would calculate into a student's overall grade. Third, If the AD isn't willing to look at the math, then they are in heavy "Cover Your Ass (CYA)" mode. Little can be done to fix them. If you show them the hypothetical of an F, and the GPA is still above 2.0, then how will the player become ineligible?

I don't think teams would leave. As noted earlier in this thread, Georgia schools already are required to make and submit their schedules much earlier. And honestly, making a schedule (even for a school like Columbia) is not hard. Yes, it is a shame that Buchholz, Gainesville, and Suwannee have all dropped Columbia. You could play more St Johns County schools (PV, Bartram, St. Augustine), you could skip Alachua County and play Marion County (Vanguard, North Marion, and Ocala Trinity Catholic), west (Lincoln, FSU High, Wakulla, Madison), Georgia (Valdosta, Lowndes, Brooks County, Camden County), Jax (Raines, Ribault, Riverside, Bolles, Trinity Christian, maybe Sandalwood and Fletcher). Yes, bad schools play good schools in Urban districts because most of the time, the school district makes them. It would be like Fort White playing Columbia. By the way, this is why the RPI system sucks. It makes teams too self-conscious about wins and losses rather than just playing. If it was simply champion and runner-up, non-district schedule doesn't matter. Suwannee could take that beating because it won't matter in determining who gets into the playoffs.

Does the average fan need to know more than when some rivalry games are, some big name match-ups, their alma mater, and maybe a local team? Probably not, but it just seems so unprofessional and disorganized (on the part of FHSAA). I would also think that since the FHSAA independently does their RPI ranking system that having the schedule/games in place would make life easier for them. Of course, the games might all be submitted to the FHSAA already, but we just don't know it because they don't share it.

If you need an assistant...

Is there a list of all the all-state teams for football? Basketball?

Meant more if you added every varsity athlete (boy and girl), what percent of them are 6-8th. The Kelvin Taylor, Anquan Boldin, and Natalie Land 's(Lafayette) of the world are few and far between. I think the bigger problem is that many of these schools are not actively recruiting their own hallways for players and then continuing to work with those players. Generally, no reason for middle schoolers to be on varsity if the coaches/schools are actually developing players, especially for boys who usually develop their physical abilities later.

How much of a benefit is it to the teams with them? How many Middle Schoolers are playing at a varsity level? I would bet that at even the school that that have middle schoolers on the varsity that it is less than 1% of their total participation.

Some of you that follow sports generally, probably know that some of the bigger names in European Soccer, tried to form their own Super League. Fans of the teams and the reaction by the governing bodies basically prevented the league from happening. In the US, high school basketball teams that are really more "college prep" teams than high school teams, are now forming their own "Super League." Honestly, never considered them to be high school teams to begin with, just national AAU teams. https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/31503278/high-school-basketball-powerhouses-form-national-league-set-begin-2021-22-season Do you think we could see the same thing eventually with football? I understand why basketball would be the first choice in doing this, as it is cheaper (less seats on a flight, less hotel rooms, less food) You can also schedule all 8 teams at one gym on one day or 4 teams and play games on one day. As for football... IMG (FL), St. Thomas Aquinas (FL), Mater Dei (CA), De La Salle (CA), Bishop Gorman (NV), Bergen Catholic/St Joes's/Don Bosco Prep (NJ). Are there others nationwide that could fit the bill?

Every other story on my social media feed is about the number of jobs that are available and that businesses are reducing hours/services in order to make due with the workers they have. Many people claim that the answer is pay those workers more and they will come back. Most bring the idea of the $15 minimum wage. I bring this up, because every year, we seem to lose coaches to other states or seem to lose coaches as they give up coaching. Even young promising coaches seem to give up on assistant coaching after 4-6 years because on some level the pay is not equal to the commitment. So my question is how do you keep coaches in your program? There are two "types" of coaches: School-Based coach... A coach who is at the high/middle/elementary school. They receive their pay based on being a teacher first and a coach second. If we go by the Governor's goal of 47.5K, how much more than that should a Head Coach receive in terms of a stipend? How much more than that should an assistant coach receive? Just as football coaches? We are not counting if they are the Weightlifting or Track Coach. The other type of coach is the community coach, who coaches, but has another job, not related to the school that provides for most of their bills. This could be construction, realtor, florist, landscaper, social worker. They are coaches (usually assistants, but not exclusively), how much should they be paid to be coaches?

I didn't know that about Lowndes, maybe with Florida going to the same schedule cycle as Georgia that could be corrected, still Lowndes/Valdosta would be gate games for Columbia. As for Suwannee, I disagree with them canceling the series. Yes, Suwannee lost for numerous straight years, who cares? You play the game because it is the game that all the alumni/communities look forward to it. I went to a Suwanee/Columbia in one of the last times they played. It was a blowout, but the crowd was still a good crowd. Heck, Suwanee should want to keep it if only because it brings them a good gate as well, but yes Madison is better competition and probably nearly as good as a gate. I would say the same for Fort White and Santa Fe canceling their series because Santa Fe kept losing. ----- I don't think the only the way to gain respect is to play a tough schedule. I think you gain respect by winning in the playoffs. Yes, having a winning record against good competition helps, but ultimately, elite teams are teams that you pencil into the regional finals because they have been there before repeatedly.

Balance is the key, but what are you emphasizing? For me personally, it is gate games. Games that I know are going to bring crowds (even if I might get my butt kicked or is against inferior competitors). If I am Columbia, I am scheduling Madison County, Suwannee, Fort White, Baker County, Valdosta, Lowndes, Gainesville, and Buchholz, but I am not necessarily scheduling Trinity Christian or Bolles or Lincoln. Based on what you are saying, you want a Madison, Lowndes, Valdosta, Trinity Christian, Bolles, IMG, Lakeland, Apopka type schedule.

The head coach/AD/County AD gives you the power to schedule non-district games for your 5A-8A public school. Your team could easily be a 4-6 team or 3rd round playoff team (3% chance of a state title). Assume 4 district games (1 below average, 2 average, 1 very good, and you). What factors go into your scheduling? And Why? Local Rivalries? Gate Games? Cupcake Games? Games against teams beyond your teams' expected success? Only teams your size? Against coaches you are friends with?

Tebow missed his calling... should of done a Wide World of Sports, where he goes from sport to sport for a week or two and plays with professionals... Rugby, gymastics, hockey, cricket, roller derby, wrestling, team handball, etc.

Does anybody know if FHSAA is using the RPI formula again to determine football rankings?

Edward Waters College announced a new coach... former Dillard Coach Toriano Morgan https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/sports/ewc-introduces-new-football-coach/77-9dd8c223-97a6-4453-8ced-6a275935c4cb

Problem is that even if they go to a JUCO, it doesn't solve the back log. Sure, some kids who would have petered out drop during those 1 or 2 years, but that is generally always true. Generally, I would say it would many years for this fix itself, but the transfer portal will make this solved easier after 1 or 2 years. Basically, a whole bunch of kids who are attending a school are going to enter the transfer portal and then realize nobody wants them and they will quit. Thus freeing up spots for the high school players.

So I did some research, here are Bradford County students are 9-12. I don't think that Bradford County has any other school other than Bradford, so this should be accurate. The first four numbers are based off the Final Calculation FTE and the bottom two are based of the July 31st, 2020 FTE Forecast and the January 27, 2021 FTE Forecasts. So it looks like the numbers are possible to get below 600. 2016-2017 Bradford 766.54 2017-2018 Bradford 735.21 2018-2019 Bradford 666.59 2019-2020 Bradford 662.49 FTE Forecast July 31, 2020 - Bradford 701.99 FTE Forecast January 27 2021 Bradford 589.37