Dr. D

Florida is still a "Right to Work" state.  You can be fired for any reason or even no reason and you can choose to end employment by those same rules.  

They were a Lake County all star team because they were taking all of the Lake County players.  First Academy hired the Lake Minneola recruiter and he took a bunch of the players with him to First Academy.  Now Lake Minneola has a depleted roster with a tough schedule.  The coach wasn't aware of this until he arrived and saw the roster.    

They bring almost 80% of the roster which was 9th & 10th graders. They got a few transfers in but nothing crazy. Atleast not yet. 
 
from my sources it looks as if the the second year head coach for Dillard is trying to rack up some wins under his belt & not scheduling above the talent he actually has which will either A. Get him fired after this season or see more kids transfer out or both. 
 
if Dillard can go 8-2 or dare I say undefeated & have a deep playoff round (regional finals) that could One really put the program in a bright light for transfers & also instill a winning culture back in the storied program. 

Broward has a lot of under utilized public school space right now, they are talking about actually closing some schools at various levels. I think the charters and private schools are taking many of the kids these days.

Central (Milton) will field their first varsity team this year.  They are assigned to Rural, Region 1.

Okay, how about that STA vs. Ida Baker matchup in your first round?  Does your analogy extend to South Florida slappies?  My opinion is simply that no one (except CoachGraham, apparently) would be interested in the 1 vs. 512, 2 vs. 511, and 200 other mismatches such a format would produce, regardless of geography.  But I could be wrong.  And now I'm thinking I should have skipped college.  

First I want to express my apologies for my absence the last few months. Without going into much detail I have had some personal life struggles I have been dealing with on top of figuring out the direction to take FloridaHSFootball.com in. Things have finally settled out some over the last few weeks although I am not completely out of the woods just yet.
Some of the decisions about what direction to take FloridaHSFootball.com have been forming over this time while I went through things. Part of me wondered if it was time to go, but really it is not at all.
Thankfully, a loyal supporter near me in Gainesville decided to put their mouth where their money is and did a little investing and today FloridaHSFootball.com launched its first-ever Mobile App. With that said it comes with the sunset of the MVP Membership Subscriptions and thus FloridaHSFootball.com will be 100% free for the first time in a while. This comes as needing to get the clearances with Apple and Google and the current subscription platform we have is not syncing with Apple's system nor with the App itself. Its best we go in this direction to grow fans again and being able to put them facing forward with an app on their phone going forward.
Here are the download links for the apps:
iOS (Apple): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/floridahsfootball-com/id6477621728 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.floridahsfootball.app&hl=en_US&gl=US   For now the forums will not be available directly in the app. At some point I maybe looking at changing the whole forum software that could eventually integrate into the app. It will be a while before this happens so things will go on as they are here.   I also apologize for any of the spam and troll accounts that have managed to find their way around the security protocols in setting up new accounts. It seems every day these things find ways to pass through control systems. I am going to be looking at getting this solved and will keep an eye on things here as we go along.   Please feel free to reach out to me if you all need anything, want to chat or have any suggestions.   -- Josh  

I like the match. An entire COUNTY against a small little Catholic school. Toss up. 

And that first round matchup between Chaminade and Franklin County would be compelling. 

And that first round matchup between Chaminade and Franklin County would be compelling. 

And that first round matchup between Chaminade and Franklin County would be compelling. 

As it stands now, a team can afford to lose a game towards the middle-to-end of the regular season and still bounce back and win a state title.  The idea of "lose or go home" after Week 5 does not appeal to me at all. 
Additionally, what do all the teams who lose in Week 6 or 7 do for the rest of the season?  Try to find games to play the other teams that got bounced early?  Hard to schedule a "home and home" series with another team if you don't know who's going to be in the playoffs for how long both this year and next. 

The possibility of adding an "open" or "championship" bracket with the 8 highest ranked teams will be discussed at the upcoming FHSAA Board of Directors meeting.  The twist here is the proposal includes a double-elimination component.  Seems overly complicated to me, although it does open up the possibility for additional revenue from additional games.  The item is listed as a "discussion" item (as opposed to an "action" item), but it will be interesting to see where this leads.  The entire item can be reviewed here:
https://fhsaa.com/documents/2024/4/12/76_78.pdf

Or maybe he left because he values his integrity. 

As Joshua Wilson's article reported, a first draft of an FHSAA NIL policy has been published.  The next step is a FHSAA Board of Directors' workshop on April 21 regarding the NIL policy.  How long it will take this process to come up with an actual NIL policy is anyone's guess.  The FHSAA would seemingly want to develop its own policy before the Florida state legislature gets involved.  Since the legislature does not meet again until March 2025 (barring a special session called by the governor), the FHSAA has almost a year to work with.  One other possibility is an NIL lawsuit being brought by a student-athlete (and his lawyer/agent) against the FHSAA (similar to past lawsuits against the NCAA).  Again, an incentive for the FHSAA to develop a policy in a timely manner (with all the good and bad aspects it will likely bring).
https://floridahsfootball.com/2024/02/26/fhsaa-board-of-directors-drafted-nil-language-discussed-while-rural-classification-sees-more-changes/ 

The same argument for teachers/coaches can be made for nurses, law enforcement, and other first responders, etc.  None of them are paid what they are "worth".  From an economic standpoint, no one would willingly pay someone more to do a job when someone will do the same job for less (i.e. supply and demand).  As long as enough people are willing to work for current wages in these fields, in many cases out of the goodness of their heart or at significant personal financial sacrifice, the government and corporations see no need to raise wages.  Unfortunately, the nonmonetary, societal benefit that individuals in these fields provide is often not recognized (coming from the spouse of a 35+ year educator).  When we wake up one day and have a drastic shortage of workers in these fields, our society will be in big trouble, let alone high school football.

So far these are the starters/shared positions....
QB Zackary Katz class of 27
RB Arwin Jackson class of 27
RB/ATH Derrek Cooper class of 26
ATH Jaquari Lewis class of 25
WR Kyle Washington class of 25
WR Denairius Gray class of 26
WR/ATH Jabari Brady class of 26
WR Koby Howard class of 25
WR Jaden Lopez class of 27 
Not gonna lie this a crazy line up right here, I believe right now, they could beat alotta state and national ranked teams if they wanted to and these guys haven't even suited up yet for spring lol.
 

No doubt they are working to "GET" kids to transfer in as we lost a couple of very good players to them in the last couple of months.  The change came when they brought the 1 year HC down from Leesburg where he put them on the map and into the playoffs somehow managing to "GET" players from some of the surrounding schools.  No doubt it is happening. 

Not me. I don’t call teams that for NOT playing the games. I will never call a bad team a name for refusing to play a good team. It’s the opposite. The elite teams who play garbage are the punks. 

Everyone, well a lot of programs want the instant notoriety that comes with of playing OOS.  There was a time when those games happened between neighboring states that were close in proximity OR perennial powerhouses that had something to prove against other powerhouses.  Now it's a free-for-all and it severely diminishes the worth of those games.  I can respect Coach Castle for knowing when to risk it and when to sit his ass down, lol.

Or the check your athletic department cashed?

Added a bunch vs Georgia today since the GHSA released the schedules for all their member schools. A great feature that the FHSAA refuses to do 

Hey, why can't we just have the FHSAA and MaxPreps come up with a secret formula to rate all the teachers and then pay them based on that? 

Too bad we can't find a way to install a merit based system into these type of municipal/state employees pay plan as some teachers should be making six figures while sadly others are overpaid; same disparity is evident in firefighters, law enforcement, etc... regarding job performance.  The private sector as a general rule is merit based and while I believed the same could be done at school, most administrators had the same lame excuse.  It was too subjective to determine good teachers from bad, yet the students can tell you but the administrator can not? .....  PITIFULL!!   Earlier comments about starting teachers pay in FL getting a bump is correct as they earn more than those in adjoining states, but the pay is pretty much the same at 15 and 30 years for FL, GA, AL, SC, etc...  Coaching stipends is a whole nother issue when compared with other states.   This pretty much sums up why I left the teaching/coaching profession after 7 years and joined the private sector.  Merit (job performance) should mean something. 

The same argument for teachers/coaches can be made for nurses, law enforcement, and other first responders, etc.  None of them are paid what they are "worth".  From an economic standpoint, no one would willingly pay someone more to do a job when someone will do the same job for less (i.e. supply and demand).  As long as enough people are willing to work for current wages in these fields, in many cases out of the goodness of their heart or at significant personal financial sacrifice, the government and corporations see no need to raise wages.  Unfortunately, the nonmonetary, societal benefit that individuals in these fields provide is often not recognized (coming from the spouse of a 35+ year educator).  When we wake up one day and have a drastic shortage of workers in these fields, our society will be in big trouble, let alone high school football.