Perspective

I had a thought. Yeah, I know it doesn't happen very often, but when it does, I feel compelled to write it down fast before it slips away. We've got a month before football practice can begin. Perhaps I should rephrase that to say we have "at least a month" before football starts up. Presumably, the FHSAA is hard at work trying to come up with plans and proposals for how football season (as well as the other fall sports) will work this year, whether there will be a state series for football this year or not, the minimum number of games a team must play in order to qualify for the state series, etc. Right now, we really don't know for sure when the first week of games will take place. All we know for sure is that it will take place after regular season games were originally scheduled to be played. In other words, with a August 24 start date, the first couple of games on every team's schedule essentially already has been canceled. There's also a chance that the start date could get pushed back again. This is where my thought comes into play. Once the FHSAA has figured out if there will be a state series and when that state series will begin, they will know the date of the final regular season game. They should direct all schools to then work backwards from that date to fill in all of their district games on a revised schedule. If there are five teams in the district, the team should work back and fill in district games in the final four weeks of their season. If there are six teams, work back five weeks. Four teams, work back three. Etc. The (rather obvious) thought behind this plan is simple: if the start date gets pushed back again, at least all (or most all, in the case of a really big district) of the district games will still be on the calendar and it won't be necessary to juggle more games and revise the schedules once again. I know we might run into problems if teams/counties opt out of the FHSAA and/or state series this year and, therefore, do not want to play a district game. That's OK. In short, a team's district should be comprised of those teams originally in the district who want to compete in the state series. And, at the end of the day (or, in this case, as of the last day of the regular season), there should be a whole bunch of district champions that can compete in the state series -- with or without any additional teams. Just a thought. Does anyone see any problems or issues with this approach?

You'd think someone would know who this persson is.

I watched most of the FHSAA meeting last night and kept getting American history flashbacks. It's really quite interesting: you've got the Federalists (don't worry, ColumbiaFan, that's not the name of a political party) who are focused on a strong federal government (or, in this case, a uniform state system). And then you've got the states rights groups who want to protect their little corners of the world (or, in this case, the interests of their respective counties). Neither side is wrong. On Monday night, there seemed to be a consensus that based on Florida's size and diversity, it would not be possible to come up with a 'one size fits all' solution. Last night, however, that's exactly what ended up passing: regardless of the current state of your county, football cannot start until August 24. Same for the other fall sports. The FHSAA took some heat after Monday's meeting from those who didn't think they gave the superintendents enough guidance. The FHSAA will take some heat now from those who feel like their counties are safe enough to start sports and they shouldn't be 'punished' because positive testing has spiked in south Florida. Damned if they do; damned if they don't. So, sit back and relax for the next couple of weeks to see what happens with the COVID virus in Florida (and particularly in the areas where the various Board members live). If we can get a significant downward trend before the Board meets again, there's a good chance we'll see football this fall in some form or fashion. Conversely, if positive test results and COVID deaths stay about the same (or, heaven forbid, start spiking up even more), we can probably kiss fall sports -- especially football -- goodbye for this fall, and perhaps for the school year.

Question to the current or former football coaches on this board: knowing that your kids have not put on helmets and pad since the end of the 2019 season, how much time, realistically, would you need to prepare your team to play a real game this fall? Put in other words, assuming that football is allowed to start on August 24th (the current 'start date' after last night's FHSAA Board meeting), but assuming that kids won't be able to put on all their gear until they've had five days of acclimation, when can/should the first games be played? Sept 4th? Sept. 11th? Sept. 18th? KO on the 11th, with real games on the 18th?

Badbird, not a bad plan. Before I comment further, please tell/remind me what part of the state you are from?

Columbia, you raise some good questions, but they are questions that I think have answers. If you go to the FHSAA website and hold your cursor over "About FHSAA" and then click on "Governance," you will see how the Board is comprised and what the Board's responsibilities are. Remember, the FHSAA is a creature of statute. That is to say, the state legislature created the organization (at least in its current form) and, conceivably, could legislate the entity out of existence at any time (which they have threatened to do a time or two in the past). Long story short, the Board is comprised of various individuals from across the state who, in theory, act or should be acting in a representative capacity. It has 16 members, 5 of whom are school athletic directors. (For what it is worth, there are also 18 different sports advisory committees, including one for football). From a practical standpoint, if you wanted to add a coach for football to the FHSAA Board, all the other sports would want a seat at the table, too. And the size of the Board would more than double. If you think it's hard getting through a meeting with 16 people (plus staff), try doing it with 40 people. Ms. Otero did indeed raise the issue of taking questions and comments from the audience. She raised this issue at the beginning of the meeting and it was agreed that an email address would be provided for people to send in their questions and comments. At that time, I think everyone anticipated that questions would be addressed prior to any votes being taken. But, as they got into the discussion of the items, and as motions were made, seconded, withdrawn and voted on, it just didn't happen that way. Candidly, I don't really know how they thought it was going to happen. When the Fall Sports Advisory Committee (which had more "football coach representation, as I recall) had its last of three meetings, a staff member did read out a handful of questions that viewers had submitted. For the most part, no answers were provided, but at least the questions were raised. The audience for those meetings was much smaller than the audience was Monday afternoon/evening. I did a little math and figured that if only 5% of those watching Monday night wanted to ask a question, you would have ended up with 200 questions. Just reading the questions could easily have taken another hour . . . and that doesn't even consider the amount of additional time that would have been taken had members tried to answer any of those questions. In sum, I really don't know how the Board is going to be able to address public input/questions, as much as some of them want that to take place. Maybe we'll know more tonight. In the meantime, if people have questions, they should reach out the Board member(s) from their area. Or, simply email each and every one of them. It's what they signed up for. And to the extent football coaches want more of a say, they should reach out the board members -- especially the athletic directors.

Trying to govern - hard. Trying to govern in the sunshine - harder. Trying to govern in the sunshine during a pandemic that has affected different geographic areas differently - hardest. By the way, also remember the various levels of responsibility: the FHSAA Board of Directors is supposed to make policy decisions; the FHSAA staff is then supposed to carry out those policy decisions. This is set up similar to public companies where the board sets policy and the officers carry it out. I think this is why Ms. Otero made some of the comments that she made regarding leadership. Mr. Tomyn is starting to remind me of Aaron Burr ("Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for"). Someone needs to get in the room where it happens and find a solution.

Everyone wants leadership until the leadership starts laying out rules that they disagree with. In many respects, the FHSAA Board was/is in a no-win situation, largely because our state is so big and so diverse. As I've said before, what works for a small, rural county private school may not work for a large Miami-Dade public school. And vice-versa. Understand, at the end of the day, all the FHSAA did was to keep the dates where they were and to essentially allow local districts/counties to decide when and what is best for them. Admittedly, there are some logical flaws in trying to maintain consistency, while simultaneously being flexible. I think what the FHSAA needs to do now is to openly acknowledge and encourage these regional clusters for the 2020-2021 school year. Let counties that are similarly situated come up with their own practice start date, game schedule and playoff/bowl game formats. Do away with the state series this year. If the FHSAA needs to rake 10% off the top of post-season games as an administrative fee to make up for the operating deficit created by a lack of state championship games, I'd probably be OK with that. Time to start thinking outside the box before the box collapses under its own weight.

Hey, that's the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser. Before he entered that field, he was on the field coaching football at Tampa Catholic. That's Bob Henriquez.

The entire 7-page SMAC Report was read by the Chairman of the SMAC during the first part of the meeting. As I recall, and while the committee recognized that ultimately it would be a "local decision," they recommended that games take place without fans, bands or cheerleaders. The report was referenced several more times over the course of the meeting. At one point, during the discussion of possibly delaying the start and pushing everything back, there was discussion that teams might lose that early-season gate money. Someone replied that wasn't an issue, as there weren't going to be any fans at the games anyway. Immediate past president/current member Bobby Johns, AD at Wewahitchka High School (small school in the panhandle) was quick to jump in and state that his county's superintendent has already said they will allow fans at games. In short, the SMAC report was authored by folks in the medical field and contained several recommendations. As you might suspect, the report recommended a very cautious and conservative return to sports, especially for football and volleyball. Those board members from south Florida could relate to the recommendations; others could not. And, thus, they decided to stick with the status quo . . . at least until the end of this week/beginning of next when the Board meets again, having had a few days to digest the report (which they apparently received sometime yesterday shortly before the meeting began). On the one hand, this should make you nervous (if you like the outcome of last night's meeting). On the other hand, when the new chairman tried to get the Board to adopt one of the least cautious recommendations (requiring the schools to adopt a uniform questionnaire and require daily temperature checks), it got shot down. It wouldn't surprise me if some elements of what SMAC recommended eventually get adopted when the Board reconvenes.

Whoop, I hear what you are saying. Sounds like you're a high school football coach. Let me ask you a serious question -- not one to start an argument or take a side, but simply to make a point. What have your kids (and by "your kids," I mean the ones you coach) been doing lately? Here's why I'm asking. I keep seeing pictures on social media of 7 on 7's and camps where literally hundreds of kids are coming together and playing games and doing drills that involve close contact. My hunch is that the longer they wait to start "real" football, the more these things will continue. Again, don't take this as a defense of what the FHSAA 'decided' last night. Instead, it's more of a recognition that the kids are going to be interacting with each other in close quarters no matter what they decided. Last point: I see a lot of parallels with how the county has handled this whole Covid thing: everyone wants to push the hard decisions onto someone else's plate so that they won't get blamed with the repercussions. National government shifts the burden to the state government who then shifts the burden to the cities and counties . . . at least until the cities or counties start taking a more restrictive approach than the state (see, for example, Georgia/Atlanta). Ultimately, what the FHSAA did last night was to say, "hey, if your county thinks it's safe, then go for it." Some will; some won't. Some have already said they're going to push back the start date (Orange Co. for example). By the way, the Board is going to meet again end of this week/first of next week. I'm not sure this issue is completely over with yet.

Actually, the boss did catch on. He noticed that the work was getting done when I showed up. (I'll just sit over here in the corner and wait for Peezy to drop in and smack me back).

(Using my Siri voice) "Here's what I've found:" This is a portion of Section 1006.20, Florida Statutes: "However, membership in the FHSAA is not mandatory for any school. The FHSAA must allow a private school the option of maintaining full membership in the association or joining by sport and may not discourage a private school from simultaneously maintaining membership in another athletic association. The FHSAA may allow a public school the option to apply for consideration to join another athletic association." I suspect the vast majority of public schools in Florida are members of the FHSAA and the vast majority are members in all sports. That said, and while I, admittedly, did not look long or hard, I did not see language in the statute that requires a public school to be a member of the FHSAA.

Some states have canceled fall sports; some states are keeping things the way they are; some states are pushing the start times for fall sports back a little and some are pushing the start times back to January of 2021 (I think this is what California just did today). Here's the biggest issue facing the Florida high school football world right now: there are multiple solutions to this problem and it may be impossible to get a board with members who represent different parts of the state and various viewpoints to agree on anything. The proposal that is selected (probably this afternoon) is not necessarily going to be the one that makes the most sense. At the end of the day, the FHSAA is a political body and this isn't a "yes or no" vote on a specific issue. What gets adopted may simply be the last proposal that gets made at the end of the day, after all the other proposals have failed and when all the directors are tired and hungry and ready to be done with the issue, the meeting and the call. By the way, the fact that the medical task force is recommended an indefinite suspension of all activities does not bode well for those who want to see football start any time in the near future. My last question is purely rhetorical: who, if anyone, at this afternoon's meeting represents the voice of the players?

I think if the FHSAA scraps the football playoffs for this year, it (hopefully) will be a one-year, isolated event. And, for that one year, they will allow teams to play one (possibly two) additional post-regular season games. A conference championship (2- or 4-team format), a county championship (2- or 4-team format), or a 'bowl' game (2-team format), so that the kids have some sort of title (beyond regular season championship) to shoot for. Personally, I don't see a huge defection (or even a small one, for that matter) from the FHSAA, unless the FHSAA just closes the door shut on everything.

Hornet, I'll start this with the proverbial "I could be wrong, but" just to make it clear that I haven't done the research. But here's what I think: for schools that have chosen to be FHSAA members (so that they can complete in state championship series, like the vast majority of the schools, or so that they are properly "sanctioned" and can compete in out-of-state games, like IMG), those schools have agreed to abide by the rules promulgated by the FHSAA. These rules would include football start dates. From the FHSAA's standpoint, they want all schools on an equal playing field -- thus, they set dates for when practice can begin and when games can be played. Individual counties can do whatever they want and for non-FHSAA schools, what the county says goes. But, for example, if a county were to say football practice for schools in our county can start July 21st and the FHSAA says football can't start until August 21st, teams in that county who belong to the FHSAA and who start before August 21st would face sanctions from the FHSAA for violating FHSAA rules. Personally, I think the FHSAA is struggling with their overall philosophy of keeping things fair and consistent throughout the state with the practical realization that COVID has impacted different parts of the state in dramatically different ways. In many respects, the "Justin/Plan B" proposal tried to reconcile these two competing interests. The thing to keep in mind is that the FHSAA is not a cohesive group when it comes to may sports issues. Same goes for the Fall Sports Task Force. All of the members of the overall organization and the task force will use the right words, like "our primary concern is the health and safety of the student-athletes." But, if you listen to their comments, it's clear that the private school administrator from south Florida has a totally different outlook on this situation from the athletic director from the panhandle. In the end, it may be difficult to get the Board to agree on anything this afternoon. I could see them agreeing to allow schools/counties to start up whenever they think it's safe to do so (putting that decision solely in the hands of the individual counties), but no sooner than July 27 (or August 10, or some other random date). Then, they'll either establish some (stricter?) parameters for any teams wanting to compete in a state championship series that will make it fair for most, if not all schools and counties or, alternatively, they'll simply punt on a state championship series altogether this year. As for your last question, I don't think you're going to see a lot of difference between neighboring counties. The differences will be between various parts of the state. Thus, I don't think you'll see the migration. Just my two cents.

If you read the document behind the document, you'll notice that it says the Executive Director does not "recommend adoption of the proposal as attached." So, you can read that one of at least two ways: (1) that Tomyn doesn't support the concept set forth in the proposal (prepared by his staff, mind you); or (2) that Tomyn supports concepts like pushing back dates and reclassifying schools based on their start dates, but just doesn't like the specific language contained in the proposal. I'm guessing we'll learn more this afternoon.

People confuse me and Peezy all the time because we look so much alike, right Peezy? No worries, Jambun. All's good.

Now I'm confused. I've read Rule #6, including the part that says: "The only exception to this rule will be if talking politics relates to something going on with high school football or high school sports in general -- like a bill that is being heard or passed in a state, for example. " While some of the politics mentioned in this thread doesn't have anything to do with high school football, a lot does. And with a few exceptions, most of the comments in this thread relate to the single most important topic on the minds of high school football players, coaches and fans right now: will there be football this season and if so, under what circumstances. A few final thoughts: 1. If we want to start up a new "status of high school football" thread, I assume we can, right? 2. If we ever want to shut down a thread (or move it to a part of the site that most of us do not regularly check), all we have to do is start interjecting politics into the discussion? 3. Prior to moving a thread to the site equivalent of Siberia, perhaps it would be better to first post a reminder (or two) on the threatened thread to remind everyone of the 'no politics' rule. OK, when I jump up, can someone slide my soapbox out from underneath me?

As long as we're passing out hints, and for anyone who may have recently subscribed to Disney Plus . . . "Now, turns out we have a secret weapon! An immigrant you know and love who’s unafraid to step in! He’s constantly confusin’, confoundin’ the British henchmen Ev’ryone give it up for America’s favorite fighting Frenchman! _______________________________!"

And I'm guessing the crew that ref'ed that game hasn't been back to Bryant Stadium since then.

Adjacent?

the county in which the championship game was being played?

My prediction: (1) The Board will accept the recommendation of the Task Force to move the start of fall sports from July 27th to August 10th; (2) The Board will get somewhat confused by "Plan B" (a/k/a, Justin's Plan), but ultimately will adopt it because no one else will have the time to present a comprehensive plan that can be hashed out in a couple of hours; and (3) after saying a dozen times that the most important thing is the health and safety of the kids, the Board will stay away from enacting any mandates or guidelines that relate to the COVID issue for fear of future litigation.

So, why are you telling me this?