PinellasFB

So how much exactly does a team get paid to travel up to GA and take their butt whoopin? It might be worth it for a few cash-strapped teams to take the L and the $$$.

I little birdie told me that Columbus is out buying players and gearing up for next year.

Zephyrhills Christian cheats so badly they got put on a post-season ban in ALL sports this year. It's really hard to get put on probation by the no-rules FHSAA anymore.

My opinion is any team that recruits talent from other teams should be in the open division. It doesn't matter if you are public or private. Once you start putting together all-star teams, your mission is different than the rest of us and you need to play against other teams with similar philosophies of acquiring players from other teams. If the First Academy, for example, recruits a completely new team of elite prospects every year, their mission is to showcase the talent for colleges. Great, go play against other like-minded teams like Venice, Chaminade, MNW, AHP, STA etc. Similarly, a team like West Boca, who is new money in this sport, doesn't have a *single starter* that actually attends WBHS. How is that possibly in the spirit of what HS fair play sports is about? Put them all in the same division and be done with it.

Gotta pay for those players some how.

Oh I thought about that. You confuse my statement of "fair play" with parity. Fair play is playing with kids from your zone against kids from their zone. Parity is forcing everyone to be equal. I am not banging the drum for parity. If your zone has more athletes and/or big guys than my zone, then we are not equal and you will beat my team by 50. This is fair play though, because you didn't go out and grab those kids from other schools. Not fair is Trinity Christian ripping the best talent from everyone and putting together an all-star team. I guarantee you TC would be absolutely one of the worst teams in the state if they just fielded a team from their rich-kid student body, even with the best coaching and facilities around.

FHSAA Independent League is actually a good idea as this is basically what the SSAA is. A pool of like-minded teams that are interested in fair play with strict rules on recruiting. Of course, the champion is not considered a state champion so that kind of takes something away from this but it's still a good idea. Now merging Rural and 1A into a single class is only going to make the problem worse. There are way too many private school powers in 1A and now poor rural teams have to compete against them?

You can still school choice all you want but sports has a different set of rules to avoid "transfer for athletics" which is not what school choice is about, which is academics/environment. Cap proposal is a hard 5. If you are already at the cap then some tough choices will have to be made. Everyone will agree to these rules because transfers generally only positively impact a handful of teams each year while hurting the overwhelming majority. The cap limit can be adjusted based upon actual data rather than an arbitrary "fair number" that popped into my head. Remember, this rule is the save the FHSAA because too many schools are punching out.

Even more fun fact. These public schools that take in transfers are always the same few schools. MNW, Central, Venice, and few newcomers like Booker and West Boca etc. There are wayyyyy more public schools than those few that you are referring to.

But what they do is to enforce strict recruiting and transfer rules. The only want fair play.

All the FHSAA has to do is lock down the transfer madness and it will fix everything. These teams are downtrodden because they continually get raided by the all star teams. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. I have said time and again, the easiest way to fix the transfer chaos is to auto-bump schools into the open division if they get 5+ transfers into their team. "What about the legitimate transfers for moves???" Yes, this is a challenge but there are ways around that. Coaches who worry about getting bumped into the open division can simply tell kids that move they have to sit out a year. A "non-traditional" student athlete also counts as a transfer in every year. That would take care of system abusers like West Boca that have literally 30+ players on their team that don't even go to West Boca.

No, a school can't control how many new kids transfer into the school. However, they can control how many they allow on the football team without sitting out a year. I have observed HS ball for dozens of years. The schools that aren't "high valued" football teams don't generally get more than a handful of new kids in. PHU never gets more than 1-2 transfers in due to a move each year. Even more desirable teams rarely get more than 5 from my count. Compare that to someone like TFA that gets 30+ transfers in. I could randomly choose a final four team from any classification and I'm guessing they all would have 5+. Clearly then, this rule would apply only to the usual suspects.

I have a lot of respect for that great Venice program but having a coach of that team so heavily involved in the process pretty much ensures the rules will remain in favor of the all-star teams. I would just like to see some proper boundaries in place. For example, in-season transfers have to sit out the entire season under any circumstances. Even if you allow something that makes sense like a foster home kid, I can see how that exception could be abused too. I'm also in favor of an open division playoff but with one simple qualification category: If your team received 5+ transfers in one year, you are automatically bumped to this division. That simple rule would completely fix the transfer madness. A team like TFA, for example, would not care about getting bumped into that division because that is their mission to play a showcase schedule with their NIL mercenaries. However, a team like Lakeland with a lot of home-grown talent, might limit itself to 5 or less transfers in. Edit: Re-thinking the foster home kid exception, I would be cool with an exception for "ward of the state" kids. Their lives are hell enough so yeah, make them an exception. Anyone willing to abuse the rules by making their kid a ward of the state intentionally will probably find a way around any other rule. Cheaters are cheaters.

Maybe most people don't enjoy all-star teams full of transfers beat up on student body teams that make up the majority of FHSAA? It seems more fair to have these teams play each other as they obviously have a different mission/focus than the rest of us?

Did I miss something? There is an 8-team open playoff this year? That solves basically nothing since the rankings over-reward W-L record while the actual strongest teams in the state play national schedules and pile up out of state losses, hurting their rankings. Here's how I would determine open division with a much simpler formula. If you had 5+ transfers into your school then you are automatically promoted to open playoffs. Simple as that and it will fix the transfer portal issue all by itself with no other regulation.

Charlotte HS alumnus here (I went to PCHS for a year too) just catching up in this thread. If you follow youth football, it should not be a surprise that PCHS has grown into a beast with all that Port Charlotte Bandits youth football feeding into it. In fact, this has felt long overdue as that youth program has been great for years. I thought Mentzer did well enough to not get fired in a normal four-year stretch of CHS football but getting completely left in the dust by PCHS was probably the back breaker. To be fair, it's not that CHS has fallen to PCHS level but rather PCHS has really blown up. It is probably unfair to hold that against him but CHS doesn't like being in the shadow of a team it had dominated for 40 years.

Thats a bigger list than expected

He's been there for a while. He has his QB from his Plant days too.

West Broward was in the title game. I don't think it was about winning but about the $$$, rather. I think Columbus is making some good $$$ offers out there.

I saw today on social media the Rise Preparatory Academy owner complaining about a "certain private school in Miami" buying players to try and get back on top. West Broward and West Boca are loaded with RPA players so this can't be coincidence.

I wonder why it is so hard (seemingly) for the FHSAA to tighten up its too-loose transfer rules?

I like the SSAA but... I absolutely hate their website. I can't find 2025 SSAA member teams, conference standings or playoff brackets anywhere. Maybe they've moved to a different site since last year? Somebody help me out here.

If the open division doesn't contain AHP, Lakeland, Armwood, STA, Chaminade, MNW, Venice, West Boca and Miami Central then it is utterly useless. Basically, all of the NIL/recruiting teams need their own division. I'm still stunned that almost the entire West Boca team doesn't even attend the school. How are people okay with this? I can't blame the kids for doing what's best for them, but those schools should be playing each other since it is utterly unfair for a paid all-star team to play any team that does things the above-board way. One or two recruits can be difference makers so a team full of transfers is just stupid.

No public schools made it past the second round in 1A. It's completely unfair for a small public school to have to play in the same class as private schools. This got me wondering why they couldn't drop to Rural class? What's the difference/requirement for Rural classification?

I posted a summary of the current HS recruiting landscape on r/HSFootball and nobody there believed me. They were stuck in pre-portal, 2005 era recruiting. I got downvoted into oblivion with dumbass responses like "three-stars are still being recruited, etc." I'm like bro, you are stuck in a different era. Why would any D1 coach take a chance on a HS prospect when they can simply portal in a proven commodity? The reality now is you will get a D1 scholarship offer if your measurables are can't miss. Film doesn't matter anymore. Who you play for doesn't matter. You could be a stud for STA with great tape but if you haven't been to a camp where HT, WT, 40, etc. are measured and confirmed, you aren't getting a D1 scholarship offer. Not only that, all these HS kids that have multiple D1 "offers" will get a hard reality check when they actually try to cash that check in. That's when they will realize these verbals are non-binding and given out like candy at camps to keep kids on the radar. As the Rise Preparatory Academy owner/recruiting coordinator likes to post on social media, you better commit early to the team/coach that loves you rather than hold out for a better offer.