Agreed. SSAA does not look at population for the Atlantic League. 4 of the 5 largest schools didn't make it out of the 1st round. #9 vs #14 in enrollment out of 20 play for the State Championship this weekend. #10 and #15 made the semifinals
West Nassau
Oak Hall
Blountstown
Taylor County
Saint Andrew's
Bradford
Calvary Christian
Cardinal Gibbons
Jefferson
Choctaw
Zephyrhills
Port Charlotte
Mosley
Cape Coral
Edgewater
Mandarin
Osceola
West Broward
Buchholz
Lake Mary
Riverview
Dr. Phillips
The reality is you can drop a classification or two
But it will never make athletics more competitive because using student population is no longer an efficient way to determine the competitive level of programs and any change made will continue to fail because the foundation is rotting at the seams
Unfortunately that ended up being all the morons in Tallahassee saw and as a result we went back to a broken system that was failing for over a decade because they somehow thought undoing the only thing that actually made athletics competitive this century was somehow a good thing
We should all want competitiveness as well as fairness and no question those 2 metrics were better achieved with the Suburban/Metro formula and yes, I was in favor of that system as were many around the state. Some folks wanted to smear the achievement of teams in the Suburban part as not being real champions, but most of us weren't fazed by that characterization. In time, the necessary tweaks could have been made to make it even better but the Metro schools that clearly have the competitive advantage due to surrounding populations didn't want to limit the championships they could collect if they had to beat each other to do it. Sad that the solution from those loud voices returned us to the mess we are trying to make better. Dr. D, you might hold the view of the little guy in this universe but not the minority.