Regional Parity or Disparity

[LAZ]

If you have a kid currently playing, forget this post. But if you're like many fans with no dog in the hunt, you want to go see nice competitive high school games each week. Unfortunately, with the current structure in Florida, only rarely do we get to see close contests. Heading into week nine, there have been 1,994 in-state games. The average margin of victory/defeat in those nearly 2000 games has been 25.6 points. Basically, in the average game, one team is more than 3 1/2 touchdowns better than the other. For the common neutral observer (no pun intended), these games are usually not very exciting to watch. History tells us it will be worse come playoff time. I've been getting into Mean Average Deviation's this week to check on parity of certain groups. I have sorted this list by Class and Region in order of most competitive to least. Class/Regions with the lowest MAD are the most "balanced" and are more likely to produce closer games. Again, this does not represent strength. This reflects parity.

CL	R	MAD
2A	R4	8.76
7A	R3	9.19
6A	R1	9.53
5A	R1	9.79
6A	R3	10.26
3A	R1	10.45
6A	R2	10.53
7A	R1	11.85
4A	R3	12.13
6A	R4	12.74
7A	R2	12.87
5A	R3	13.05
4A	R1	13.45
2A	R1	13.72
5A	R4	13.83
7A	R4	14.15
1A	R1	14.23
3A	R2	14.74
4A	R2	14.95
2A	R2	15.65
5A	R2	15.98
2A	R3	16.07
1A	R3	16.32
3A	R3	16.38
1A	R2	16.42
3A	R4	16.81
4A	R4	17.30
1A	R4	19.55

 

 

[Mike E]

Interesting to look at. 7A and 6A, based on my quick look, appear to be the most competitive top to bottom. It would be interesting, at least to me, to know the percentage of private schools in each of those groupings. My assumption is that the biggest discrepancies are in the groups with the most private schools. But, you all know about assumptions....

[PinellasFB]

The root cause is all of the talent concentrates on a few teams in each region.  Now, some of these teams are even getting in-season transfers to fill weaknesses or replace injuries.  There's a few in this forum who like seeing these super teams because they enjoy seeing high level football with great athletes.  While I can appreciate their reasoning, this is not how HS sports is supposed to work.  Everyone is supposed to have holes and weaknesses.  A great season is defined by those who have the least holes or better yet, schemes around their weaknesses.  You are supposed to rise and ebb with the talent running through your program in any given four year period.  You are NOT supposed to simply reload every year, never experiencing the ebb.  The problem with all of the talent accumulating on just a few teams is exactly what this thread is complaining about, no competitive games.  I mean anyone can win at HS with a super team.  You don't even have to coach, so what's the point?  Do you *really* need to win that badly?

Anyway, I'm not changing anything by bitching about it here so I guess I'm just venting.  I would not buy players... oops I meant recruit players... oops I meant accept "academic transfers", even if I had spare money to waste on stupid shit.  My value system just doesn't value a high school football win to justify wasting money on it.  I love watching my sons teams win but I want to win the right way.