Longtime Observer

They definitely would have been competitive. They had a really good and really young OL coming back. They also had settled into a pattern of getting plenty of transfers.

Yeah, I think seeing the game disappear from maxpreps caused me to overreact. I know the Tornadoes are coming and they're coming to win. I just hope we don't let 'em

Idea: make recruiting legal for all schools AND enforce a full year of sitting out for transfers. So, you can recruit the middle school kids-ok, the parents- all you want. But, transfers aren't worth sweating over because they'll have to sit a year out, effectively ending senior year transfers.

shocking if true. Just goes to show you that, in an era of unlimited transferring with instant eligibility, ANY program could go from great to awful- and vice versa- in the blink of an eye. There almost aren't any real PROGRAMS left. No one is sticking around long enough to be developed in the specific ways of a program. It's terribly sad.

Football isn't the kind of sport where you can just walk the halls and assemble a team. You can get a couple decent kids maximum that way. The rest of the student body would be putting their health at risk if they decided to "go out" for football.

Lakeland is still hosting BTW I'm told. They only have three home games at the moment, looking for a fourth.

looks like they've lost some good players in this offseason, though. The new-ish private school looks like it's taking some good players from area schools.

Lakeland will have one of the toughest early schedules in the state. At Miami Central, at Sumner, At Lake Mary, hosting Miami BTW. Sumner is much better than their (lack of) history suggests. Lake Mary has a top Qb prospect and a solid program. And we know- despite the predictable sandbagging- that the Miami schools are going to be fierce.

I think the more likely explanation is that the powerhouses who gets loads of transfers are now struggling mightily to fill out their schedules without scheduling similar programs. They sort of have to play each other...

Have to see how the transfer class comes together. Probably underdogs at Traz vs. the Rockets and favorites at home vs. BTW. Of course, both games could go either way.

Is playing Central at Traz Powell and hosting Booker T an example of dodging Dade's best? Are those Dade pushovers?

What is the feeling on the upcoming season? (I figure I better ask this question NOW, as the answer figures to change in a few days )

What this means is we will soon see one of two scenarios play out in the coming years: 1) A subset of students will eventually not be able to attend a "good" school because there is simply no space for them due to there being a scarcity of "good" schools 2) Assuming compulsory attendance remains a thing, we will see longtime elite private high schools nosedive in performance. The schools can not perform magic: unmotivated, unprepared often defiant students will NOT be good students no matter what the school does/doesn't do. And oftentimes these sorts of students do have parents who will do the absolute bare minimum needed to get the kid into a private school through the new rules. Anyone who genuinely believes that the schools with higher test scores automatically do a better job of teaching the kids than schools with lower scores is an imbecile.

As great as an Open division COULD be, it is likely to be very poor given the grotesque incompetence of the ranking systems they've used previously.

That claim requires evidence. It may or may not happen in some places. You can be certain that a school like St. Frances in Baltimore pays good money. Why else would kids pack up and leave somewhere like Central Florida to live and play in the 'hood of Baltimore for a "school" that doesn't have a home stadium?