Perspective

This topic has been addressed multiple times in multiple threads.

There is no perfect system. But, as you point out, I've never been one of those who says the whole playoff system should be geared up in hopes of have the two "best" teams in each region playing in each of the four regional finals. There are just way too many factors to make that determination and way too many things happen along the road to a regional final game (upsets being just one of those things). How many times do the top 2 seeds in a tennis tournament end up matched up against each other in the finals? How often do you see four # 1 seeds make the NCAA Final Four in basketball or hockey? How often do you see the #1 seed in the AFC and the #1 seed in the NFC square off in the Super Bowl? More often than not, the cream ultimately rises to the top, but I just don't think it's worth the effort in high school football.

I understand your point. From my perspective, it just shows the fallacy of trying to determine who the "best" teams are before the playoff games have been played. Again, I see your point, but I'd have a tough time seeding a district runner-up over all the district winners except for one and giving a district runner-up the home-field advantage over all the district winners except for one. Winning a district ought to count for something and penalizing a district winner (with a lower RPI and, therefor, a seeding worse than a district runner-up) because the other teams in its district had a bad year just doesn't sit right with me.

Then, again, in theory, there's a pretty good chance that the #1 seed became the #1 seed, and the #5 seed became the #5 seed, because the #1 seed beat the #5 seed in the regular season to win the district.

Are the district winners still getting the top 4 seeds within each region? If so, it wouldn't surprise me one bit that, within each region, the 'best' district runner-up (who ends up with the 5th seed) will be better than the worst district winner (who ends up with the 4th seed). That said, I do believe that the four district winners within each region should get the top 4 seeds.

Badbird, where did all the Windemere kids come from? In other words, what school(s) would they have gone to had not Windemere been built? Demographically speaking, I'm guessing Windemere students play a lot of travel, AAU, and country club sports.

John Few retired. Over time, he had been the linebacker coach and (co) D-coordinator. The last couple of years, he was up in the press box for games. Prior to Weiner's announcement, I had heard that Bo Puckett also was stepping away . . . at least for a few years. I don't know if either Weiner's move or Brockmeier's hire impacted Puckett's final decision. There are a few more question marks we can discuss over lunch.

Not trying to make assumptions here, but a number of the kids on the football team receive financial assistance/scholarships in amounts which reduces, if not completely eliminates, that $17K price tag.

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.

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?

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.

This is just so sad and wrong on so many levels: https://www.yahoo.com/sports/deerfield-beach-high-school-terrance-jackson-045318488.html

I don't see the FHSAA getting away from the current RPI system any time soon. But the system is flawed and it will always be flawed. Too many variables and not near enough interaction between the teams in the north half of the state and the teams in the south half of the state to really determine how all the teams in the state compare with one another. That said, use the RPI to determine the 4 wildcard teams within each region, as well as the seeding within each region. Then, go back in time and alternate which regions get the home field advantage for state semi-final games. In odd years (like 2012), Regions 1 and 3 host; in even years (like 2020), Regions 2 and 4 host. Simply put, I prefer a 'luck of the draw' system over a flawed formula.

So, by definition, they recruited worse. The ones who know how to do it better don't get caught.

Got it. I'm saving this for the next time that Columbia is the 6-A Region 1 champ . . . and instead of making a two and a half hour trip down to Tampa or St. Pete to play the Region 2 winner, they have to travel six plus hours to play a top-seeded Miami school because the Region 2 and Region 3 schools' power rankings are both ever so slightly higher than Columbia's, thus knocking Columbia to the 4th seed . . . and some fan from say, the Lake City area, decides to complain about how it isn't fair to make make his boys travel on a bus for 6 hours before playing a game, I'm going to break this post out and point to it and remind them how happy they should be that they are just one game away from going to state. Or not.

Central locations work great for the finals. I'm more concerned with the semi-finals. I just see it now: instead of a team from the panhandle playing a team from somewhere else in north or north central Florida for the right to go to the finals, while a team from central Florida squares off against a South Florida team for the other finals spot, you could have the Panhandle team playing the team from South Florida and the north/north central Florida team playing the central Florida team. I don't know. I'll keep an open mind, but I've always like the idea of regions, knowing that the winner of 1 vs. 2 will play the winner of 3 vs. 4 in the finals.

Yeah, I get that. I guess my larger problem is with the relatively unproven, unscientific power ranking system that's being used to determine which of two teams has to make a 6 hour bus ride to play a semi-final game.

Isn't this likely to result in even greater travel distances?

Too bad Columbia didn't play Bolles in the 2019 Florida Tournament. If they had, we would have known for sure who would have prevailed in this I-10 match-up.

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.

This can be both a blessing and a curse.

What makes it even more strange is that, allegedly, supposedly, the QB (Kelly) transferred because Jesuit didn't throw the ball enough, so he wasn't able to showcase his skills. But if that's the case, the converse is true, meaning that they ran the ball too much. This means that the RB's (like Parks) were the focus of the offense, so they wouldn't have any football reason for wanting to move (unless they were sharing touches too much for their own selfish reasons). Here's the question I ask myself: were it not for football, what are the chances that Kelly, Parks and Young (the DB) would have chosen to go to school at Jesuit? Ostensibly, whatever financial aid package, if any, that was available to them when they were enrolled and playing football would have been available to them if they had chosen to attend Jesuit without playing football. An all-boys private school experience just isn't for everybody. It wouldn't surprise me if those guys just tired of the whole morning chapel/Jesuit experience and wanted a little more 'balance' or excitement their senior season. Short-sighted at best.

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.

Last week, I saw on social media that Armwood was looking for an out-of-state game. I don't know if they found one yet or not. This past season, Plant played at Gonzaga (in D.C.); this season, Gonzaga is supposed to play at Plant. I don't know whether Coach Weiner's departure will effect those plans.