FIT Tournament

[Hwy17]

26 minutes ago, nolebull813 said:

Toho and Gateway just played a bowl game. It can be done. The crazy thing is you need to have at least 5 wins to play in a bowl, but you are allowed to have 2 wins to play in the FIT, or 4 wins to play in the FHSAA playoffs. 

Bowl games use to be prevalent and were something worth playing for because making the playoffs was harder.  

[nolebull813]

16 minutes ago, Hwy17 said:

Bowl games use to be prevalent and were something worth playing for because making the playoffs was harder.  

Yeah 8-2 and 9-1 teams would miss the playoffs. The playoffs was the conference they were in! 

[nolebull813]

14 hours ago, Hwy17 said:

Bowl games use to be prevalent and were something worth playing for because making the playoffs was harder.  

In 1976, Bolles and Bishop Kenny were 9-0 heading in the regular season finale which Bishop Kenny won 24-19. 
 

Kenny went to the playoffs at 10-0 and Bolles had to settle for the Meninak Bowl against New Smyrna Beach at 9-1.

their opponent NSB, was also 9-1 and knocked out of playoff contention. 

Thats how you know the world is turning to shit. When 1-9 make the playoff nowadays but back then 9-1 teams would miss the playoffs. Lol 

[nolebull813]

Imagine that. 2 teams with a combined record of 18-2 and both ranked in the top 5 of their class not in the playoffs.

nowadays you have 2-3 districts where you can go 0-10 or 1-9 and make the playoffs. 
 

can someone abolish the FHSAA please? 

[SoftballGuy]

1 hour ago, nolebull813 said:

Imagine that. 2 teams with a combined record of 18-2 and both ranked in the top 5 of their class not in the playoffs.

nowadays you have 2-3 districts where you can go 0-10 or 1-9 and make the playoffs. 
 

can someone abolish the FHSAA please? 

The fhsaa is basically just doing what the people in Tallahassee want at this point but I agree that I wish someone would make a new league and push the middle man out of the way 

[Dr. D]

19 hours ago, SoftballGuy said:

Rpi wasn't a bad system it just needed to get some of the formula tweaked to get the right balance. It was better than the current formula 

The RPI is a simplistic, arbitrary rating system that ignores margin of victory, ignores quality of opponents, and has no “right” balance.  What is the proper weighting of a team’s winning percentage, its opponents’ winning percentage, and its opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage?  25-50-25?  40-40-20?  Your “right” balance is likely different than someone else’s “right” balance, and there is no statistically valid method of assigning weights to those 3 variables; it is totally arbitrary.  And basic algebra demonstrates that one can get different results by changing the weighting of the variables when presented with the same data.  I am no fan of MaxPreps rankings, but the RPI is not the answer.  The one advantage the RPI has over MaxPreps is transparency, but that hardly makes up for its deficiencies

[SoftballGuy]

8 minutes ago, Dr. D said:

The RPI is a simplistic, arbitrary rating system that ignores margin of victory, ignores quality of opponents, and has no “right” balance.  What is the proper weighting of a team’s winning percentage, its opponents’ winning percentage, and its opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage?  25-50-25?  40-40-20?  Your “right” balance is likely different than someone else’s “right” balance, and there is no statistically valid method of assigning weights to those 3 variables; it is totally arbitrary.  And basic algebra demonstrates that one can get different results by changing the weighting of the variables when presented with the same data.  I am no fan of MaxPreps rankings, but the RPI is not the answer.  The one advantage the RPI has over MaxPreps is transparency, but that hardly makes up for its deficiencies

Margin of victory basically rewards teams who can schedule absolutely garbage opponents to pile on wins. If I had to guess that was what allowed Choctawhatchee to jump St Augustine a few weeks ago because Choctawhatchee ran up the score against terrible panhandle teams and since the formula isn't weighting sos enough they were rewarded for running it up 

And I would argue the current formula definitely isn't valuing quality of opponents at a high enough percentage to make a difference judging by how many teams made it to the 1 seed in some regions with awful sos ratings 

Plus you can always increase the weight of the percentages in an rpi to account for quality of opponents the only downside is it being too high results in teams advancing higher for losing to good teams over winning over average teams 

[Dr. D]

1)  I will defer to the mathematicians/statisticians on this board as to whether including margin of victory (up to a point; running clock – 35 points) provides more accuracy/validity in computer rankings

2)  I am not convinced that RPI can adequately differentiate between a 10-0 Armwood and a 10-0 Baker

3)  I am not convinced that anyone can establish the “right” weighting of the RPI variables, either statistically or by one’s own opinion.    

[Hwy17]

8 hours ago, SoftballGuy said:

The fhsaa is basically just doing what the people in Tallahassee want at this point but I agree that I wish someone would make a new league and push the middle man out of the way 

We have SSAA but it hasn't gotten large enough yet.  Because of that,  SSAA still has some of the same issues as FHSAA.  I'm told the SSAA director is on this message board.  I would like to see SSAA take some of these ideas and put them in practice. 

[Hwy17]

7 hours ago, SoftballGuy said:

Margin of victory basically rewards teams who can schedule absolutely garbage opponents to pile on wins. If I had to guess that was what allowed Choctawhatchee to jump St Augustine a few weeks ago because Choctawhatchee ran up the score against terrible panhandle teams and since the formula isn't weighting sos enough they were rewarded for running it up 

And I would argue the current formula definitely isn't valuing quality of opponents at a high enough percentage to make a difference judging by how many teams made it to the 1 seed in some regions with awful sos ratings 

Plus you can always increase the weight of the percentages in an rpi to account for quality of opponents the only downside is it being too high results in teams advancing higher for losing to good teams over winning over average teams 

 

6 hours ago, Dr. D said:

1)  I will defer to the mathematicians/statisticians on this board as to whether including margin of victory (up to a point; running clock – 35 points) provides more accuracy/validity in computer rankings

2)  I am not convinced that RPI can adequately differentiate between a 10-0 Armwood and a 10-0 Baker

3)  I am not convinced that anyone can establish the “right” weighting of the RPI variables, either statistically or by one’s own opinion.    

I seem to recall a school making the playoffs that year we used RPI with an 0-10 record.  Maybe they were 1-9? Its hard to think that far back. Anyway,  the RPI was rewarding bad teams that played opponents who they had no business playing.  

[SoftballGuy]

2 hours ago, Hwy17 said:

We have SSAA but it hasn't gotten large enough yet.  Because of that,  SSAA still has some of the same issues as FHSAA.  I'm told the SSAA director is on this message board.  I would like to see SSAA take some of these ideas and put them in practice. 

The problem is the ssaa isn't gonna let top level teams join the conference so the elite teams are currently stuck with the fhsaa leadership which has not shown they have the best interest of the athletes coaches or programs in mind

[SoftballGuy]

1 hour ago, Hwy17 said:

 

I seem to recall a school making the playoffs that year we used RPI with an 0-10 record.  Maybe they were 1-9? Its hard to think that far back. Anyway,  the RPI was rewarding bad teams that played opponents who they had no business playing.  

Yeah I remember that but part of that happened because the regions were too small and filled with a lot of bad teams 

[nolebull813]

What happened to Fletcher? They were the number one seed set to host Land O Lakes, and now they disappeared from the bracket.

[SoftballGuy]

57 minutes ago, nolebull813 said:

What happened to Fletcher? They were the number one seed set to host Land O Lakes, and now they disappeared from the bracket.

They dropped out I believe 

[Hwy17]

11 hours ago, SoftballGuy said:

The problem is the ssaa isn't gonna let top level teams join the conference so the elite teams are currently stuck with the fhsaa leadership which has not shown they have the best interest of the athletes coaches or programs in mind

Some of better teams in SSAA were or would be playoff teams in FHSAA. A lot of teams still in FHSAA need to join SSAA,  they just haven't figured it out yet, or won't admit it. 

[Hwy17]

11 hours ago, SoftballGuy said:

Yeah I remember that but part of that happened because the regions were too small and filled with a lot of bad teams 

Combine districts, 3 per region.  A district needs to be 6 teams minimum.  District Champs only make the playoffs. Otherwise you're left using a computer formula. 

[Perspective]

On 11/15/2025 at 11:21 AM, Hwy17 said:

Combine districts, 3 per region.  A district needs to be 6 teams minimum.  District Champs only make the playoffs. Otherwise you're left using a computer formula. 

I'm not taking issue with your proposal, but I do have a couple of questions.   How do you resolve these situations:

1.  OK, so you've got 6 teams in the district.  Team A beats Team B; B beats C and C beats A.  A, B and C all beat all the other teams in the district and all three teams finish 4-1 in district play. Classic three-team tie for the district title.   How do you break the tie and determine the District Champ who then goes into the playoffs while the other two teams stay home?  A three-team playoff (one quarter each)?  When does this playoff get played - the Monday before the playoffs are supposed to start?  

2. If there are only 3 districts in each region, how do you set up the regional playoffs?  Does one of the three teams get a bye?  If so, how do you determine which team?  

3.  Let's say District 1 has two really, really good teams and District 2 has six crappy teams.   Are you OK with the District 2 Champion going to the playoffs while the District 1 runner-up stays home because they happened to lose a close game to the eventual District 1 champion early in the season on a questionable call?  

 

Personally, I like the idea of 6 teams in a district.   But, I'd stick with 4 districts in each region.   If that means reducing the number of classes, so be it.  The 4 district champs (using whatever formula or playoff system works best to determine the district champ in the event of ties) host the first round of the playoffs.  I don't care if everyone in the world knows that a runner-up from one district is better than the champion of another district -- if you win your district, you deserve to host at least one playoff game.  Period.  The top remaining four teams fill out the field of 8 teams in each region.  I'll leave for another time the discussion of how those remaining four (non-district champ) teams are selected, but it would likely be through some sort of power ranking.  Same system would determine the seeding of the top 4 district champs.  Yeah, I know this system looks a little familiar, but assuming you have a decent power-ranking formula, it should work.  

[PinellasFB]

Mathematician here.  There is no greater measure of strength than margin of victory/loss.  Now there are some valid criticisms people have posted here about big margins vs weak competition.  Any statistician would put in dampening factors such that running it up vs a weak opponent does not give you any more strength beyond a cutoff point, with a logical cutoff beginning at the running clock margin.  On the other side of coin, there should be significant bonus for a win or close loss to a strongly ranked opponent.  The one challenge to a power index like this is the small sample size (10 game season) makes it hard to drive out the preseason biases (i.e. initial weighting needed to start the season) which can be wildly incorrect due to teams changing strength one year to the next.  Nothing is perfect so I would adjust the algorithm to remove early season weighting once a significant number of teams have played each other, usually mid season.  

Anyway, I work with statisticians who any single one of them could come up with something better, including myself.  That being said, I think the rankings are much better this year so it would appear to me that they did in fact include some sort of MoV into the algorithm.

[SoftballGuy]

1 hour ago, Perspective said:

I'm not taking issue with your proposal, but I do have a couple of questions.   How do you resolve these situations:

1.  OK, so you've got 6 teams in the district.  Team A beats Team B; B beats C and C beats A.  A, B and C all beat all the other teams in the district and all three teams finish 4-1 in district play. Classic three-team tie for the district title.   How do you break the tie and determine the District Champ who then goes into the playoffs while the other two teams stay home?  A three-team playoff (one quarter each)?  When does this playoff get played - the Monday before the playoffs are supposed to start?  

2. If there are only 3 districts in each region, how do you set up the regional playoffs?  Does one of the three teams get a bye?  If so, how do you determine which team?  

3.  Let's say District 1 has two really, really good teams and District 2 has six crappy teams.   Are you OK with the District 2 Champion going to the playoffs while the District 1 runner-up stays home because they happened to lose a close game to the eventual District 1 champion early in the season on a questionable call?  

 

Personally, I like the idea of 6 teams in a district.   But, I'd stick with 4 districts in each region.   If that means reducing the number of classes, so be it.  The 4 district champs (using whatever formula or playoff system works best to determine the district champ in the event of ties) host the first round of the playoffs.  I don't care if everyone in the world knows that a runner-up from one district is better than the champion of another district -- if you win your district, you deserve to host at least one playoff game.  Period.  The top remaining four teams fill out the field of 8 teams in each region.  I'll leave for another time the discussion of how those remaining four (non-district champ) teams are selected, but it would likely be through some sort of power ranking.  Same system would determine the seeding of the top 4 district champs.  Yeah, I know this system looks a little familiar, but assuming you have a decent power-ranking formula, it should work.  

Most who use 3 districts in a region typically seed 1-3 as district champions and the rest of the field would be wild cards so theoretically in that scenario you would have 1-3 be district champions and 4-8 would be wild cards 

[Ray Icaza]

36 minutes ago, PinellasFB said:

Mathematician here.  There is no greater measure of strength than margin of victory/loss.  Now there are some valid criticisms people have posted here about big margins vs weak competition.  Any statistician would put in dampening factors such that running it up vs a weak opponent does not give you any more strength beyond a cutoff point, with a logical cutoff beginning at the running clock margin.  On the other side of coin, there should be significant bonus for a win or close loss to a strongly ranked opponent.  The one challenge to a power index like this is the small sample size (10 game season) makes it hard to drive out the preseason biases (i.e. initial weighting needed to start the season) which can be wildly incorrect due to teams changing strength one year to the next.  Nothing is perfect so I would adjust the algorithm to remove early season weighting once a significant number of teams have played each other, usually mid season.  

Anyway, I work with statisticians who any single one of them could come up with something better, including myself.  That being said, I think the rankings are much better this year so it would appear to me that they did in fact include some sort of MoV into the algorithm.

Regarding home field advantage, I always like the old system of alternating that benefit every other year.  Top of the bracket gets it on odd numbered years while bottom of the bracket has it on even numbered years.  Removes all conspiracy speculation as that protocol is laid out up front. 

[SoftballGuy]

1 minute ago, Ray Icaza said:

Regarding home field advantage, I always like the old system of alternating that benefit every other year.  Top of the bracket gets it on odd numbered years while bottom of the bracket has it on even numbered years.  Removes all conspiracy speculation as that protocol is laid out up front. 

Home field should always be earned and in that system you would have sub .500 teams hosting undefeated and 1 loss teams 

The seeding has never been an issue, what has been the issue is the lack of a transparent and GOOD formula to use 

[Perspective]

12 minutes ago, SoftballGuy said:

Most who use 3 districts in a region typically seed 1-3 as district champions and the rest of the field would be wild cards so theoretically in that scenario you would have 1-3 be district champions and 4-8 would be wild cards 

That would make sense, but I understood the original poster (HWY 17) was suggesting that only district champs would make the playoffs.  

[SoftballGuy]

30 minutes ago, Perspective said:

That would make sense, but I understood the original poster (HWY 17) was suggesting that only district champs would make the playoffs.  

Yeah I hate that aspect of it. It basically rewards teams who can poach all the local talent and punishes teams in strong regions 

[Ray Icaza]

1 hour ago, SoftballGuy said:

Home field should always be earned and in that system you would have sub .500 teams hosting undefeated and 1 loss teams 

The seeding has never been an issue, what has been the issue is the lack of a transparent and GOOD formula to use 

I respect your opinion, but my experience with seeding with regards to our team has been an issue for years and I believe it was also this year.  Take out my biased opinion and look at any ranking service (MaxPrep, LAZ, etc.) and we are ranked ahead of South Lake again intending no criticism of them.  Yet, the FHSAA seeding has us flipped.  One could make the argument it was that way last year not so much with Armwood as I believe as it should have been with Buchholz, two teams we beat on the way to the championship.  It was clearly obvious in 2022 when they had Vero ranked ahead of us forcing us to travel to only dominate them at their place 31-7 and the score could have been much worse.  Even in 2021 having to travel to Tampa to play Newsome where again we won.  It you were in my seat you would start wondering why regardless of transparency as it seems to be a pattern making me suspicious.  

[SoftballGuy]

38 minutes ago, Ray Icaza said:

I respect your opinion, but my experience with seeding with regards to our team has been an issue for years and I believe it was also this year.  Take out my biased opinion and look at any ranking service (MaxPrep, LAZ, etc.) and we are ranked ahead of South Lake again intending no criticism of them.  Yet, the FHSAA seeding has us flipped.  One could make the argument it was that way last year not so much with Armwood as I believe as it should have been with Buchholz, two teams we beat on the way to the championship.  It was clearly obvious in 2022 when they had Vero ranked ahead of us forcing us to travel to only dominate them at their place 31-7 and the score could have been much worse.  Even in 2021 having to travel to Tampa to play Newsome where again we won.  It you were in my seat you would start wondering why regardless of transparency as it seems to be a pattern making me suspicious.  

Now what you're arguing here is separate from the issue of seeding 

What your arguing is that any system for sending should have transparency and that I agree with which is why I have been publicly critical of the current fhsaa postseason rankings system as it lacks transparency and doesn't add up with the results