aknenn

i was on chain crew for the muck bowl with the officials. that was one of the best games and best atmospheres of any game Ive ever been to. Only  to be topped by the 2017 muck bowl.

This is exactly what high school football is supposed to be about; playing for your neighborhood school against another neighborhood's high school football team. It's not supposed to be about who can assemble the best all-star team by raiding programs and recruiting their best players.  Rather than make a new conference for 30 or so schools that respect school boundaries, why not have the recruiting schools establish their own conference and leave the FHSAA state tournament to the traditional high school football programs? This way the kids would be playing each week against competition that they actually have a chance of beating, and the recruiting programs can play for the national ranking and play the IMGs and St Frances' of the football world.

Miami-Dade County high school football has its very own version of “A League of their Own” this season.  With county powers Northwestern, Central, Booker T. Washington and Columbus, to name a few, having taken over the landscape in terms of domination and stacking rosters with top talent on an annual basis, the likes of Reagan, Goleman Coral Park, Varela and other programs have been left in the dust.  Rather than get discouraged, the “little guys” who weren’t so little in terms of school size, went out and did something about it.
With Reagan coach John Lopez, assistant coach Jorge Rojas along with the GMAC leading the way, months of contacting other schools to get them on board, along with informing the FHSAA that they would not be participating in the state series when it came to football, eventually led to the berth of the Miami-Dade County Football Conference.  All 12 schools will still continue to be very much a part of the GMAC, they simply will not participate in the FHSAA state football playoffs come November.
“This gives us a chance to be competitive and to be honest a sense of fairness since the entire county has now kind of become an entire group of either ‘haves’ or ‘have-nots,’ ” said Lopez who is the only coach the Reagan program has ever known, starting it from scratch 12 years ago. “Speaking just for Reagan, being capped out enrollment-wise, we’ve always taken pride in just simply figuring out how to play with whatever comes in the doors. Obviously we weren’t the only ones with this problem. Other schools were in the same boat and that’s when we started to put together the idea of doing something like this.”
A total of 12 programs joined up to form the conference that is split into two divisions of six, a south division and a north. Forming the south are Braddock, Coral Park, Sunset, Reagan, Varela and Ferguson. Goleman, Hialeah-Miami Lakes, Mourning, Krop, Hialeah Gardens and Westland Hialeah are in the north.  Both out of the gate with 3-0 starts, Goleman and Krop would appear to be the two best teams in this group of a dozen.
“Our kids are excited for it, our coaches are excited for it I’m excited for it and our school is excited for it,” said Goleman head coach Ariel Cribiero. “I’d like to think that teams and programs that do it the right way and build with their own kids that this is our way of rewarding those kids. We’re a magnet school, our kids are smart, going to Ivy League schools, not necessarily to play football. We want to give them a great experience and going to this independent league will give them that opportunity.”
The set up will be relatively simple. Each team will play the other five in its own division and then four other games against teams from the opposite division for a total of nine games. The 10th game (including a bye week) will be played the final regular season week (Oct. 31-Nov. 2).  “We will pair up the two sixth-place teams against each other, then the fifth place and so on up to third place,” Rojas said. “Whoever finishes first and second will qualify for our playoffs on that weekend as well. The two semifinals will be first place from one division playing second from the other division and vice versa.”  The two semifinal winners will then meet in the championship game, scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 9 at a neutral site, possibly Milander Stadium.
“This new conference, it’s not going to be any different in that we’re going to come out with the same attitude every week play football the way we know how to play,” said Reagan senior quarterback Johnny Vega. “It’s a matter of knowing that we have to beat whoever is in front of us. But now we’ll shoot to win the championship in our conference and that’s going to be pretty cool.”

This is 100% the O'Bannon's brother fault. Had they never caused NCAA Football to be dropped by EA Sports, people wouldn't be forced to carry out their create-a-player and create-a-team dynasty mode in real life. 
 
Damn you Ed O'Bannon! 
 
#bringbackncaafootball

Pb central @ PB lakes is next weekend in south florida

thank you I appreciate it. I am in Palm Beach county

Im a first year official doing jv and freshman games. This is not true. They tell us during our trainings not to call things that are on opposite side of the field, unless its unsportsmanlike, a saftey issue, or the played has been warned multiple times. 

appreciate it! loving it so far, just feels good to be back involved in the sport i love

I believe that is what most officials would say why they officiate. To give back to the sport, and stay involved with football.

Im a first year official doing jv and freshman games. This is not true. They tell us during our trainings not to call things that are on opposite side of the field, unless its unsportsmanlike, a saftey issue, or the played has been warned multiple times. 

ill be at their game friday. Will let ya know how they look against a chaminade

Atlantic and Lakes are head and shoulders above everyone else in the county, would be fun if they played this year. Gardens is pretty good too with the transfers from Dwyer, but not on Atlantic and PBL level. Atlantic with a chance to show they are big time this friday, home vs Chaminade

seriously??

Northwestern was 5-5 last year and won it all.... Pahokee has got to have one of the hardest schedules in the state. THere is a ton of talent on the team, hope the kids can stay focused through the tough losses and continue to get better and go get a ring. Yall deserve one for that bs in 2016. Should get a win this week against a way down dwyer team

IMG streams all of their games free on facebook live. So their game with northwestern will be on tomorrow night. I believe Columbus vs south dade, as well as MacArthur vs U SChool are on NFHS network. 3 big time games for south florida 

dwyer lost 6 or 7 guys in the last few weeks all to palm beach gardens, that plus a new coach and I think they struggle for first time in a long time

FOH you think they beating GC lol

and coaching... Pahokee is going to be very good with these transfers coming in. Hopefully they fix special teams, I know that cost them the seminole ridge game, and at least would've kept them in the atlantic game til the end and who knows what couldve happened. The schedule has to be one of the hardest in all of florida and probably the hardest 1a schedule ever. 2 defending state champs (raines and chaminade), 2 state semifinalists (trinity christian, u school), 2 quarter finalists (dwyer, glades central), a really talented dillard team, sem ridge is always solid and then clewiston should be an easy win. Their playoff run should feel like nothing compared to that.... and I think they win state this year 

I know, I wrote at top I am  really familiar with Palm beach County and only the real elite teams in broward and dade so Ill do a top ten for pbc. I think talent wise pahokee is up there, but that schedule is rough and their record may not show it. Ill throw a top 20 for all of south fl out there:
 
1 Miami central
2 deerfield 
3 carol city
4 st thomas
5 chaminade
6 northwestern
7 heritage plantation
8 columbus
9 gibbons
10 atlantic
11booker t 
12 western
13 mirimar
14 macarthur
15 dillard
16 u school
17 palm beach lakes
18 pahokee 
19 plantation
20southridge
 
 

I have always been against expanding the playoff. I love how important each regular season game is. It makes every week like a playoff and that is part of what is great about college football. However, with how we have seen the same teams year in and year out for the most part I do believe something needs to change. 8 or even 16 would is probably what is best for college football. With 8 or 16, there would be early upsets and we would finally see some new matchups in semi finals and finals. If there was autobids, which Im sure is how they would do it, I would like to see some changes with the conference title games. Many times one side of the division is so much weaker, and a 7-5 team gets in. If that 7-5 team was to pull an upset, there is no way they should be allowed in the 8 team playoff. I think to prevent this, conferences should get rid of divisions, and take top 2 teams. Yes scheduling would be a new issue, but Id rather have imbalanced schedules than imbalanced divisions and a team like 7-5 pitt this year even having a chance at a playoff spot on last weekof regular season. And to people saying it would be too many games or they would miss too much school, fcs does it, so does div 2 and 3. If they can pull it off, fbs sure can. One last thing, I hate the nearly month off between last game and playoff game, it makes no sense. The playoff would prevent that as well.

I have always been against expanding the playoff. I love how important each regular season game is. It makes every week like a playoff and that is part of what is great about college football. However, with how we have seen the same teams year in and year out for the most part I do believe something needs to change. 8 or even 16 would is probably what is best for college football. With 8 or 16, there would be early upsets and we would finally see some new matchups in semi finals and finals. If there was autobids, which Im sure is how they would do it, I would like to see some changes with the conference title games. Many times one side of the division is so much weaker, and a 7-5 team gets in. If that 7-5 team was to pull an upset, there is no way they should be allowed in the 8 team playoff. I think to prevent this, conferences should get rid of divisions, and take top 2 teams. Yes scheduling would be a new issue, but Id rather have imbalanced schedules than imbalanced divisions and a team like 7-5 pitt this year even having a chance at a playoff spot on last weekof regular season. And to people saying it would be too many games or they would miss too much school, fcs does it, so does div 2 and 3. If they can pull it off, fbs sure can. One last thing, I hate the nearly month off between last game and playoff game, it makes no sense. The playoff would prevent that as well.

what a freaking game. thanks for the tip on the stream!

scalzo for cardinal gibbons is out for year with an acl

It's trash. Josh needs to use his influence to voice a loud opinion to the FHSAA 

Here are two homer examples, but they are two of MANY, MANY such examples based on the "playoff brackets"
1.  Jefferson gets in over Robinson? Both 5-5. Robinson beats them straight up at their place. Robinson ahead of Jefferson in the district. Robinson had 9-1 Plant, Jesuit, and Bloomingdale on their schedule. Jefferson had 9-1 Armwood and Plant City. Neither team had a victory over their 9-1 foes. Jefferson beat Steinbrenner, Brandon, Middleton, Wharton, and Spoto. Robinson beat JEFFERSON, Leto, Spoto, Blake, and Brandon. Neither team was on a victory tour this year, but they both had similar mediocre results. I'm not even saying a 5-5 team really deserves to be in, but when there are two of them in the same district and the team that won head to head and finished higher in the district on almost identical schedules, the results are complete garbage. Is this what the FHSAA intended? Take away head to head results when otherwise everything else is the same, with a "razor thin" schedule advantage to Jefferson, and only based on the bonus points nonsense, not from actual results of the schedule this year? 
2.   How is 7-3  Viera, who lost to everyone they played that had a pulse (except Cocoa), the #2 seed over 9-1 Plant, the #3 seed? Plant played several playoff teams this year, including Armwood (their only L in a super close game), Sickles, Gaither, and Wiregrass. They also played a very tough Hillsborough team that missed the playoffs because it played the hardest schedules in the area.  Wins have to count for something. Viera is a decent team, but 3 losses to non-national power type teams should not rate a higher seed. They lost to Osceola badly, who was dominated by Tampa Jesuit. They lost to a good Rockledge team (but that team is not Armwood) and they lost an close OOS game to Fort Dorchester, who is a decent team at 8-2 and who has a similar national rank to Viera in the very flawed and innacurate Max Prep rankings (424 and 430).

This system is very, very flawed and something has to be done about it. Taxpayer dollars fund a lot of this sport and it cannot be decided on arbitrary garbage like biased point systems and F*IN MAX PREP RANKINGS (look how the FHSAA just destroyed a half dozen sports last week by going to such a screwed up system where it relies on Max Preps rankings).
Been saying this for YEARS, but the FHSAA needs to be disbanded by statute and a new organization put in place. Clean house. Logic dictates that we should do as follows for football playoffs:
Reduce to 5 classes by simply going from largest to smallest and counting backwards. If there is a big gap here and there, those teams can go up or down accordingly:
Each class needs 16 districts with 8 teams each. Top 2 make playoffs. Reseed by section based on points after the first round (not regions; so reseed the entire North and South sections after the first round). Point system can be very simple. Points would just be wins, losses, and strength of schedule. 1 point each win. No points for losses. SOS bonus rated 1-4 points based on your opponents record at the conclusion of the season and on how many of these teams made playoffs the year before. That would satisfy everyone. Takes into account SOS but also awards you for being the first or second best team in a large district.
Outside of that, you can have the very tiny rural schools and sunshine state conference/independent types in their own deal.