Gatorman's Promotion/Relegation

[gatorman-uf]

7 Classifications
6A - 32 teams
5A - 32 teams
4A - 64 teams
3A - 64 teams
21 - 125 teams (as new teams are added they will be added to 1A and teams move up until 1A and 2A are at 128)
1A - 126 teams (as new teams are added they will be added to 1A and teams move up until 1A and 2A are at 128)
Rural - 32 teams
Rankings based on previous 4 years of MaxPreps Points (not FHSAA's modified)

End of season, bottom 4 teams move down from 6A and 5A, 8 teams from 4A and 3A, 16 teams from 2A move down 1 class
End of season, top 4 teams move up from 5A , 8 teams from 4A and 3A, and 16 teams from 2A and 1A move up 1 class

6A and 5A (no districts, but teams are required to play minimum of 7 games against teams in classification), all teams make playoffs
4A and 3A (8 districts of 8 teams), top 4 teams in classification based on district standings into playoffs (similar to GA)
2A and 1A (16 districts of 7 or 8 teams), top 2 teams in classification based on district standings into playoffs

This acknowledges that there are good and bad teams and that they generally should not play each other. It acknowledges that certain teams have advantages and allows those teams to play against each other. It creates a really great state championship playoff in 6A where every team is competitive and those teams can beat on each other rather than the lesser teams. If you are one of the top teams, why are you are arguing against it? Because you want to play against lousy teams? Won't find games? (Maybe for Panhandle teams, and maybe we need the FHSAA/NFL teams to supplement)

Additionally, it allows the lesser teams to play against teams with a similar history which means we should have fewer blowouts and more competitive regular season games which encourages people to participate and attend.
6A

1. American Heritage (Plantation)
2. Apopka
3. Armwood (Seffner)
4. Bartram Trail (St. Johns)
5. Berkeley Prep (Tampa)
6. Bolles (Jacksonville)
7. Booker T. Washington (Miami)
8. Buchholz (Gainesville)
9. Cardinal Gibbons (Fort Lauderdale)
10. Central (Miami)
11. Chaminade-Madonna (Hollywood)
12. Clearwater Central Catholic (Clearwater)
13. Cocoa
14. Columbus (Miami)
15. Edgewater (Orlando)
16. Florida State University High School (Tallahassee)
17. Jesuit (Tampa)
18. Jones (Orlando)
19. Lake Mary
20. Lakeland
21. Mainland (Daytona Beach)
22. Naples
23. Niceville
24. Northwestern (Miami)
25. Osceola (Kissimmee)
26. Palmetto (Miami)
27. Seminole (Sanford)
28. St. Thomas Aquinas (Fort Lauderdale)
29. Tampa Bay Tech (Tampa)
30. Treasure Coast (Port St. Lucie)
31. Venice
32. Western (Davie 

5A

1. Atlantic (Delray Beach)
2. Bishop Verot (Fort Myers)
3. Cardinal Newman (West Palm Beach)
4. Creekside (St. Johns)
5. DeLand
6. Dillard (Fort Lauderdale)
7. Dunbar (Fort Myers)
8. Escambia (Pensacola)
9. Gulliver Prep (Miami)
10. Homestead
11. Lake Gibson (Lakeland)
12. Lake Minneola (Minneola)
13. Lake Wales
14. Lakewood (St. Petersburg)
15. Lincoln (Tallahassee)
16. Mandarin (Jacksonville)
17. Miramar
18. Norland (Miami)
19. Palm Beach Central (Wellington)
20. Palmetto
21. Pensacola Catholic (Pensacola)
22. Pine Forest (Pensacola)
23. Raines (Jacksonville)
24. Riverview Sarasota (Sarasota)
25. Rockledge
26. South Sumter (Bushnell)
27. Trinity Christian Academy (Jacksonville)
28. Vanguard (Ocala)
29. Vero Beach
30. Wakulla (Crawfordville)
31. West Orange (Winter Garden)
32. Winter Park
     

[DarterBlue2]

I like your set up a lot. We could quibble a bit about a few of the teams you currently have in 6A/5A, but for the most part, they seem accurate. And in any case, as there is active promotion/relegation, any discrepancies would be eliminated with the passage of time based on actual performance over the most recent years on a rolling basis. 

Teams on the rise and those falling off would also be promoted and relegated to reflect current form.

The only thing standing in the way is the fact that this is too rational/logical for those with an agenda. 

But I totally agree that it would lead to more competitive games both during the regular season and during the playoffs. Maybe you could adjust the mandatory number of games against teams in your class (5A and 6A) during the regular season from 7 to 6 or 5 instead to reduce travel costs and time as there will be significant distance at times among the teams in those classes. 

If people of good will with the best interest of the game in their hearts got together, I can't for the life of me see why this could not be done with minor modification. 

[gatorman-uf]

2 hours ago, DarterBlue2 said:

I like your set up a lot. We could quibble a bit about a few of the teams you currently have in 6A/5A, but for the most part, they seem accurate. And in any case, as there is active promotion/relegation, any discrepancies would be eliminated with the passage of time based on actual performance over the most recent years on a rolling basis. 

Teams on the rise and those falling off would also be promoted and relegated to reflect current form.

The only thing standing in the way is the fact that this is too rational/logical for those with an agenda. 

But I totally agree that it would lead to more competitive games both during the regular season and during the playoffs. Maybe you could adjust the mandatory number of games against teams in your class (5A and 6A) during the regular season from 7 to 6 or 5 instead to reduce travel costs and time as there will be significant distance at times among the teams in those classes. 

If people of good will with the best interest of the game in their hearts got together, I can't for the life of me see why this could not be done with minor modification. 

I should note that technically, this is based off the 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2019 school years. I skipped the 2020 school year due to the bedlam that COVID created, so that might have led to some discrepancies.  

[Dr. D]

Just curious.... were the MaxPreps rankings weighted evenly for each year (25%/25%/25%/25%), or were they weighted more heavily toward recent years (40%/30%/20%/10%), etc.?

[gatorman-uf]

5 hours ago, Dr. D said:

Just curious.... were the MaxPreps rankings weighted evenly for each year (25%/25%/25%/25%), or were they weighted more heavily toward recent years (40%/30%/20%/10%), etc.?

25%  across the board. Mostly due to the fact I didn't want a recency bias. A team has that one special year where they go 8-2 and make the 3rd round, but normally a 6-4 team that is barely competing for a wildcard spot to be the reason why they move up.

 

But if this type of promotion/relegation system was used, that kind of thing is a small detail that I would be more than willing to compromise on.

[Hwy17]

My way of do it would be to create 7 classes the traditional way using population.   Then create 4 regions, traditional method.  Then using a power ranking system (I prefer LAZ index over Maxpreps but that's me) rank each team in each region based on the prior 4 years. I would weigh it so that the more recent year is weighted more than the previous year.  The bottom team in each 7A region would go down to 6A. The top team in each 6A region moves up to 7A and the bottom team down to 5A; so on so forth. Nobody moves up or down more that 1 class. Likewise the 7 classes would all be around 75 schools apiece. 

[gatorman-uf]

On 12/17/2023 at 2:27 PM, Hwy17 said:

My way of do it would be to create 7 classes the traditional way using population.   Then create 4 regions, traditional method.  Then using a power ranking system (I prefer LAZ index over Maxpreps but that's me) rank each team in each region based on the prior 4 years. I would weigh it so that the more recent year is weighted more than the previous year.  The bottom team in each 7A region would go down to 6A. The top team in each 6A region moves up to 7A and the bottom team down to 5A; so on so forth. Nobody moves up or down more that 1 class. Likewise the 7 classes would all be around 75 schools apiece. 

That's essentially what I want to happen, but the problem with your place as a starting point is the a school like Chaminade-Madonna still is wrecking havoc in 3A instead of 2A and would take 3-4 more years to eventually get to the level that they should be at (assuming that you would allow a team to go to from 2A to 3A to 4A to etc). If not, all you really did is move the teams that most likely could beat a juggernaut 2A or 3A team out of the classification.

The other reason this system is imbalanced in terms of classification size is that the talent gap between 1-75 is too big vs the gap between say 320-448 (128 teams) is smaller because all of those teams struggle. Just to use my above classifications of a 1 vs 64 you are talking STA vs Dunbar (Ft Myers) vs if you shrink the gap it is STA vs Naples.

Your idea works if we didn't have years and years of data at our finger tips already, but we do and as such should use that data to make a better system.

[Floridaatlantic1]

The promotion/demotion idea was a way to handle recruiting and open enrollment cheating since the state cant do anything about it and did not want to have a private/public split. The open division handle some of it but it would be better at 16 teams or even 32. 

[Hwy17]

19 hours ago, gatorman-uf said:

That's essentially what I want to happen, but the problem with your place as a starting point is the a school like Chaminade-Madonna still is wrecking havoc in 3A instead of 2A and would take 3-4 more years to eventually get to the level that they should be at (assuming that you would allow a team to go to from 2A to 3A to 4A to etc). If not, all you really did is move the teams that most likely could beat a juggernaut 2A or 3A team out of the classification.

The other reason this system is imbalanced in terms of classification size is that the talent gap between 1-75 is too big vs the gap between say 320-448 (128 teams) is smaller because all of those teams struggle. Just to use my above classifications of a 1 vs 64 you are talking STA vs Dunbar (Ft Myers) vs if you shrink the gap it is STA vs Naples.

Your idea works if we didn't have years and years of data at our finger tips already, but we do and as such should use that data to make a better system.

Do you have access to that data? I'd like to run a few different scenarios and see what it looks like.  The old way of creating classes actually was to create 6 classes then cut the bottom 2 classes in half giving us a total of 8. I say create 7 full classes.  Would Chaminade be 3a or 4a ? I don't know.  One of my concerns is not so much as who's moving up as who would be moving down. Would a larger school like Bradenton Southeast that has been struggling in recent year get classified with schools half their size like Lake Placid or Labelle?  Let's run the numbers and see. 

[gatorman-uf]

Again in my hypothetical: 6 classes (plus Rural)
I already posted in the original post, what would be 6A and 5A
Your specific question is about Southeast (Bradenton). They would be in Class 2A (16 districts of 8 teams, well a couple of districts with less as there only 125 teams). So yes, there would be schools with 2K plus and schools with less than 500, but again it is based on playing ability, not school size. School size has continually shown to not matter as much.

Below is an alphabetical list of the teams, but first here are the teams closest to Southeast

Alonso High School
Boca Ciega (Gulfport)
Booker High School
Chamberlain High School
Countryside (Clearwater)
Gibbs (St. Pete)
Hardee (Wauchula)
Jefferson High School
Lakewood Ranch
Lemon Bay (Englewood)
Lennard (Ruskin)
Northside Christian
Osceola (Seminole)
Palm Harbor University 
St. Petersburg
Sickles High School
Robinson High School
Seffner Christian Academy

1. Alonso (Tampa)
2. American (Hialeah)
3. American Heritage (Delray Beach)
4. Andrew Jackson (Jacksonville)
5. Archbishop Carroll (Miami)
6. Atlantic (Port Orange)
7. Atlantic Coast (Jacksonville)
8. Avant Garde Academy (Hollywood)
9. Bayside (Palm Bay)
10. Boca Ciega (Gulfport)
11. Booker (Sarasota)
12. Booker T. Washington (Pensacola)
13. Boynton Beach
14. Central (Fort Pierce)
15. Chamberlain (Tampa)
16. Clay (Green Cove Springs)
17. Coral Gables
18. Countryside (Clearwater)
19. Cypress Bay (Weston)
20. Cypress Creek (Wesley Chapel)
21. Deltona
22. Dr. Krop (Miami)
23. Dwyer (Palm Beach Gardens)
24. East River (Orlando)
25. Eastside (Gainesville)
26. Englewood (Jacksonville)
27. Episcopal School of Jacksonville (Jacksonville)
28. Eustis
29. Evangelical Christian (Fort Myers)
30. Flanagan (Pembroke Pines)
31. Forest (Ocala)
32. Forest Hill (West Palm Beach)
33. Fort Meade
34. Fort Walton Beach
35. Foundation Academy (Winter Garden)
36. Frostproof
37. Gainesville
38. George Jenkins (Lakeland)
39. Gibbs (St. Petersburg)
40. Glades Central (Belle Glade)
41. Golden Gate (Naples)
42. Goleman (Miami)
43. Haines City
44. Hardee (Wauchula)
45. Harmony
46. Hernando (Brooksville)
47. Hialeah
48. Hudson
49. Immokalee
50. Jackson (Miami)
51. Jefferson (Tampa)
52. Jupiter
53. Kathleen (Lakeland)
54. Key West
55. Lakewood Ranch (Bradenton)
56. Land O' Lakes
57. LaSalle (Miami)
58. Lecanto
59. Leesburg
60. Lemon Bay (Englewood)
61. Lennard (Ruskin)
62. Leon (Tallahassee)
63. Lyman (Longwood)
64. Maclay (Tallahassee)
65. Marianna
66. Matanzas (Palm Coast)
67. Menendez (St. Augustine)
68. Miami
69. Middleburg
70. Moore Haven
71. Munroe (Quincy)
72. Nature Coast Tech (Brooksville)
73. New Smyrna Beach
74. North Florida Christian (Tallahassee)
75. North Miami
76. Northside Christian (St. Petersburg)
77. Orange Park
78. Osceola (Seminole)
79. P.K. Yonge (Gainesville)
80. Palatka
81. Palm Beach Lakes (West Palm Beach)
82. Palm Harbor University (Palm Harbor)
83. Palmetto Ridge (Naples)
84. Park Vista (Lake Worth)
85. Pine Crest (Fort Lauderdale)
86. Piper (Sunrise)
87. Port St. Lucie
88. Ribault (Jacksonville)
89. Ridge Community (Davenport)
90. River Ridge (New Port Richey)
91. Riverdale (Fort Myers)
92. Riverview
93. Robinson (Tampa)
94. Saint Andrew's (Boca Raton)
95. Santaluces (Lantana)
96. Seabreeze (Daytona Beach)
97. Seffner Christian (Seffner)
98. Seminole Ridge (Loxahatchee)
99. Sickles (Tampa)
100. Somerset Academy Silver Palms (Miami)
101. South Fork (Stuart)
102. South Fort Myers (Fort Myers)
103. South Miami (Miami)
104. South Walton (Santa Rosa Beach)
105. Southeast (Bradenton)
106. St. Brendan (Miami)
107. St. Cloud
108. St. John Paul II (Tallahassee)
109. St. Petersburg
110. Tate (Cantonment)
111. Taylor County (Perry)
112. The First Academy (Orlando)
113. The Villages Charter (The Villages)
114. Tocoi Creek (St. Augustine)
115. Tohopekaliga (Kissimmee)
116. True North Classical Academy (Miami)
117. Wellington
118. West Boca Raton (Boca Raton)
119. West Broward (Pembroke Pines)
120. West Nassau (Callahan)
121. West Port (Ocala)
122. Westside (Jacksonville)
123. Westwood (Fort Pierce)
124. Yulee
125. Zephyrhills Christian Academy (Zephyrhills)
      

[Floridaatlantic1]

Your idea makes wayyyyyyyy too much sense for FHSAA board. They will do nothing and just go back to old model and ignore the recruiting issue as always. Wild west boys, if you want to be great in Florida football, you have to be college recruiters. Go cheat like Winter Park did a few years ago ago and pay some rent and give some $100 handshakes coaches. They got to use the players for the playoffs and only had them suspended for 5 regular season games. That was an obvious cheating rewarded. So you think FHSAA is actually going to stop the transfer recruiting. What a farce. 

 

https://www.clickorlando.com/sports/2018/08/23/winter-park-high-school-football-players-ineligible-after-faked-documentation-uncovered/#:~:text=WINTER PARK%2C Fla.,High School this school year.

[Hwy17]

10 hours ago, gatorman-uf said:

Again in my hypothetical: 6 classes (plus Rural)
I already posted in the original post, what would be 6A and 5A
Your specific question is about Southeast (Bradenton). They would be in Class 2A (16 districts of 8 teams, well a couple of districts with less as there only 125 teams). So yes, there would be schools with 2K plus and schools with less than 500, but again it is based on playing ability, not school size. School size has continually shown to not matter as much.

Below is an alphabetical list of the teams, but first here are the teams closest to Southeast

Alonso High School
Boca Ciega (Gulfport)
Booker High School
Chamberlain High School
Countryside (Clearwater)
Gibbs (St. Pete)
Hardee (Wauchula)
Jefferson High School
Lakewood Ranch
Lemon Bay (Englewood)
Lennard (Ruskin)
Northside Christian
Osceola (Seminole)
Palm Harbor University 
St. Petersburg
Sickles High School
Robinson High School
Seffner Christian Academy

1. Alonso (Tampa)
2. American (Hialeah)
3. American Heritage (Delray Beach)
4. Andrew Jackson (Jacksonville)
5. Archbishop Carroll (Miami)
6. Atlantic (Port Orange)
7. Atlantic Coast (Jacksonville)
8. Avant Garde Academy (Hollywood)
9. Bayside (Palm Bay)
10. Boca Ciega (Gulfport)
11. Booker (Sarasota)
12. Booker T. Washington (Pensacola)
13. Boynton Beach
14. Central (Fort Pierce)
15. Chamberlain (Tampa)
16. Clay (Green Cove Springs)
17. Coral Gables
18. Countryside (Clearwater)
19. Cypress Bay (Weston)
20. Cypress Creek (Wesley Chapel)
21. Deltona
22. Dr. Krop (Miami)
23. Dwyer (Palm Beach Gardens)
24. East River (Orlando)
25. Eastside (Gainesville)
26. Englewood (Jacksonville)
27. Episcopal School of Jacksonville (Jacksonville)
28. Eustis
29. Evangelical Christian (Fort Myers)
30. Flanagan (Pembroke Pines)
31. Forest (Ocala)
32. Forest Hill (West Palm Beach)
33. Fort Meade
34. Fort Walton Beach
35. Foundation Academy (Winter Garden)
36. Frostproof
37. Gainesville
38. George Jenkins (Lakeland)
39. Gibbs (St. Petersburg)
40. Glades Central (Belle Glade)
41. Golden Gate (Naples)
42. Goleman (Miami)
43. Haines City
44. Hardee (Wauchula)
45. Harmony
46. Hernando (Brooksville)
47. Hialeah
48. Hudson
49. Immokalee
50. Jackson (Miami)
51. Jefferson (Tampa)
52. Jupiter
53. Kathleen (Lakeland)
54. Key West
55. Lakewood Ranch (Bradenton)
56. Land O' Lakes
57. LaSalle (Miami)
58. Lecanto
59. Leesburg
60. Lemon Bay (Englewood)
61. Lennard (Ruskin)
62. Leon (Tallahassee)
63. Lyman (Longwood)
64. Maclay (Tallahassee)
65. Marianna
66. Matanzas (Palm Coast)
67. Menendez (St. Augustine)
68. Miami
69. Middleburg
70. Moore Haven
71. Munroe (Quincy)
72. Nature Coast Tech (Brooksville)
73. New Smyrna Beach
74. North Florida Christian (Tallahassee)
75. North Miami
76. Northside Christian (St. Petersburg)
77. Orange Park
78. Osceola (Seminole)
79. P.K. Yonge (Gainesville)
80. Palatka
81. Palm Beach Lakes (West Palm Beach)
82. Palm Harbor University (Palm Harbor)
83. Palmetto Ridge (Naples)
84. Park Vista (Lake Worth)
85. Pine Crest (Fort Lauderdale)
86. Piper (Sunrise)
87. Port St. Lucie
88. Ribault (Jacksonville)
89. Ridge Community (Davenport)
90. River Ridge (New Port Richey)
91. Riverdale (Fort Myers)
92. Riverview
93. Robinson (Tampa)
94. Saint Andrew's (Boca Raton)
95. Santaluces (Lantana)
96. Seabreeze (Daytona Beach)
97. Seffner Christian (Seffner)
98. Seminole Ridge (Loxahatchee)
99. Sickles (Tampa)
100. Somerset Academy Silver Palms (Miami)
101. South Fork (Stuart)
102. South Fort Myers (Fort Myers)
103. South Miami (Miami)
104. South Walton (Santa Rosa Beach)
105. Southeast (Bradenton)
106. St. Brendan (Miami)
107. St. Cloud
108. St. John Paul II (Tallahassee)
109. St. Petersburg
110. Tate (Cantonment)
111. Taylor County (Perry)
112. The First Academy (Orlando)
113. The Villages Charter (The Villages)
114. Tocoi Creek (St. Augustine)
115. Tohopekaliga (Kissimmee)
116. True North Classical Academy (Miami)
117. Wellington
118. West Boca Raton (Boca Raton)
119. West Broward (Pembroke Pines)
120. West Nassau (Callahan)
121. West Port (Ocala)
122. Westside (Jacksonville)
123. Westwood (Fort Pierce)
124. Yulee
125. Zephyrhills Christian Academy (Zephyrhills)
      

This is one of my concerns with the relegation system.  I school with a larger population has an advantage over a smaller school. That's a fact that was determined years ago and why we had classes based on population. I don't know the situation going on at Southeast, whether it be poor coaching or kids leaving the program, but I'm sure they have way more talent walking the halls than say Moore Haven or Frostproof. Bartow for example is a larger school that was struggling and a coaching change turned around the program so that they are competitive now.  They didn't have to drop a class to do it. And of course there is always the option of going independent or scheduling easier teams without dropping down.  Most schools go through a cycle of bad year, decent year, good year, repeat.  We just want a level playing field like existed for before.  However the only way I see that happening would be 400+ schools to go independent all at once.

[gatorman-uf]

Unfortunately, those years where school size mattered are in the past. Look at Chaminade-Madonna, who are they losing to in any classification? Even a school like Berkley Prep or Cardinal Newman or Miami Norland, all relatively small schools that can compete with the big schools. 

I would say if a big school (7A or 8A under old classifications) is class 2A or 1A that probably means there is lots of unrealized potential at the school. Maybe it will take the right coach, administration, and a little bit of luck, but until that happens let the big schools that can barely line-up correctly play against small schools who also can barely line-up correctly. If the big schools prove to be too good, well that is the point of the promotion system, they will progress out of it. If they are only so-so, then they won't. That is the beauty of the system, it fixes itself. We don't need FHSAA administrators fixing it (other than re-doing districts after re-classification every year) as the good teams will move up. And since it isn't based on one good year, but a series of good years than we know that team has had to made progress on and off the field. 

To give another example: Victory Christian (Lakeland) is in 3A, but barely. It is mostly due to a good season that they had in 2019 (I skipped 2020 season). If they had another season like they have had for the past 3, the 2019 season fades off the ratings and the "new" season comes on, well they would probably be the lowest scoring 3A school and be dropped to 2A. 

If you only allow teams to move up 1 classification, we still end up with Chaminade-Madonna dominating, just not 2A, but 3A and you removed any team that probably could have stopped them up to 4A.

When I do a quick look at the 125 teams, what teams jump out as the surefire championships? If there isn't one, then we already have improved the system. I see some historically good teams like Glades Central, Dwyer, American Heritage (Delray Beach), maybe Immokalee, but when was the last time those teams were consistent winners? And probably this past year, you have Booker and West Boca Raton competing for the championship. But if I am coach of those 125 teams, I feel like we have a real chance vs when I look at my normal classification, we can already pencil in 6 of the final 8. 

[Hwy17]

All I can see as really occurring is that some really fine programs that aren't "elite" but having success in their current class becoming the new bottom feeders in a different class. So they move back down only to have those who replace them become the next group of bottom feeders. To be honest, the vast majority of schools are classified correctly, it's just a handful of offenders who have built their program around transfers who are controlling the system.  FHSAA implementation a point system that was supposed to work. It didn't.  Then we tried RPI. Then Metro/Suburban. Now they want to go back to traditional.  All because of they are too afraid to implement a reasonable transfer policy for fear that the state legislature wouldn't like it. 

[gatorman-uf]

10 hours ago, Hwy17 said:

All I can see as really occurring is that some really fine programs that aren't "elite" but having success in their current class becoming the new bottom feeders in a different class. So they move back down only to have those who replace them become the next group of bottom feeders. To be honest, the vast majority of schools are classified correctly, it's just a handful of offenders who have built their program around transfers who are controlling the system.  FHSAA implementation a point system that was supposed to work. It didn't.  Then we tried RPI. Then Metro/Suburban. Now they want to go back to traditional.  All because of they are too afraid to implement a reasonable transfer policy for fear that the state legislature wouldn't like it. 

 

The FHSAA is dealing with a political system that they should never have to deal with and yes that is a major problem, but there is little we, as high school sports fans/coaches/administrators, can do. While the promotion relegation might see some teams yo-yo up and down, I don't think it would be as much as you think as it is based on 4 years of data and not just one good year.

As for good teams becoming bottom feeders in the next, no I would expect a good 2A team to be good in 3A immediately, they increased the level of their competition. At the same time, those same teams will have years where their coaches move on, a new school opens, and a couple of 3* kids graduate. So maybe that team that got promoted from 2A has gotten some stability as they move up to 3A, but there are still going to be a couple of teams struggling.

I don't know, I just understand why a Chaminade, STA, Venice, Lakeland would want to play in the easy class when they can play in the tough class. Why do they think that 80% of the teams they face in their classification don't want to play them. My problem with an open division playoff, is that occasionally you have a special team that is 2-3 years in the making. You knew it when you watched them that they were going to be good in a couple of years. Now, that teams goes 10-0 and is ready to compete for the first time for a state championship and gets put into the open division playoff despite never being "that" team. I would rather the "open" division be something that you earn over an extended period of time.

[Perspective]

14 hours ago, gatorman-uf said:

 My problem with an open division playoff, is that occasionally you have a special team that is 2-3 years in the making. You knew it when you watched them that they were going to be good in a couple of years. Now, that teams goes 10-0 and is ready to compete for the first time for a state championship and gets put into the open division playoff despite never being "that" team. I would rather the "open" division be something that you earn over an extended period of time.

THIS.  ^^^

This is the exact same reason I think the open division should be voluntary and not mandatory.   Let the big dogs compete against each other for the ultimate state title (and perhaps a shot at a mythical national championship), but let the other teams have their moment of glory.  

[Hwy17]

14 hours ago, gatorman-uf said:

 

The FHSAA is dealing with a political system that they should never have to deal with and yes that is a major problem, but there is little we, as high school sports fans/coaches/administrators, can do. While the promotion relegation might see some teams yo-yo up and down, I don't think it would be as much as you think as it is based on 4 years of data and not just one good year.

As for good teams becoming bottom feeders in the next, no I would expect a good 2A team to be good in 3A immediately, they increased the level of their competition. At the same time, those same teams will have years where their coaches move on, a new school opens, and a couple of 3* kids graduate. So maybe that team that got promoted from 2A has gotten some stability as they move up to 3A, but there are still going to be a couple of teams struggling.

I don't know, I just understand why a Chaminade, STA, Venice, Lakeland would want to play in the easy class when they can play in the tough class. Why do they think that 80% of the teams they face in their classification don't want to play them. My problem with an open division playoff, is that occasionally you have a special team that is 2-3 years in the making. You knew it when you watched them that they were going to be good in a couple of years. Now, that teams goes 10-0 and is ready to compete for the first time for a state championship and gets put into the open division playoff despite never being "that" team. I would rather the "open" division be something that you earn over an extended period of time.

That's why I wouldn't move the top team up more than just one class than what they would be otherwise.  Nor would I move the bottom team down more than one class than they would have been otherwise.  Too bad you and I aren't having this conversation in person as I can offer you some good examples for where I'm seeing this at. 

For the life of me why  can't FHSAA  adopt a policy that says a transfer would only be allowed to play JV their first year, exception for a senior, would be viewed as unreasonable or violation of state law? 

[gatorman-uf]

1 hour ago, Hwy17 said:

That's why I wouldn't move the top team up more than just one class than what they would be otherwise.  Nor would I move the bottom team down more than one class than they would have been otherwise.  Too bad you and I aren't having this conversation in person as I can offer you some good examples for where I'm seeing this at. 

For the life of me why  can't FHSAA  adopt a policy that says a transfer would only be allowed to play JV their first year, exception for a senior, would be viewed as unreasonable or violation of state law? 

My understanding is that the state legislature/government has made it clear that they believe in parental choice and that for those educational choice there should no restrictions. I am by no means an expert, but I am willing to bet if you asked the majority party this, they would give some sort of answer along those lines. 
_____________ 
So the reason why I think we need a more radical change (than just one level) is a school like Freedom (Tampa). They are currently on a 28 game losing streak, MaxPreps says since 2004 they have had 3 6-win seasons, and 1 7 win season. In the Metro/Suburban, they are playing in 3S. In the new classifications they are 4A. Are they going to be competitive? Absolutely Not. So why have them compete at that level. Let them continue to move down until the expectation is that they are a .500 team year in and year out. 

I would say that every area has at least one team like Freedom (Tampa), some metro areas have 10 or more. Teams that their coaches are truly doing good work, because most likely not a single one of those kids will play on the next level and every coach knows that they are heading into a losing season.

____________ 
Look at  a school like Chaminade-Madonna in the current FHSAA reclassification, they will be in 1A!!! Cardinal Newman a top 25 school, lost by 40 to them. Is there a single school in 1A that could compete with them? Heck, if you took every good player in 1A and made an all-star team and competed against Chaminade, would the all-star team win? So if you are those other 60 teams, what end goal do you have?
___________ 
As for the optional Open division, no team that we all know should be in the Open division will choose to be in the Open division. I doubt teams would be willing to be that self-sacrificing, which is why the Open Division should be based not a single season of success, but constant success and should be mandatory.