I was on the sideline chatting with a local HS coach and he was complaining about a certain Tampa Bay area undefeated private school paying players. I was just wondering, is paying players above board now? It wouldn't surprise me with the anything goes environment that's going on currently.
I am in Florida this weekend. I will go to my alma mater Cocoa HS, to watch them play. They're not currently playing to their usual standard, but I'll still go and cheer for them.
Thank you (again) for the very interesting data. I would like to offer some statistical context, with two caveats: 1) I don’t know how the “Power” rankings are calculated, and 2) analyzing with a “mean of means” is tricky.
Nevertheless, basic statistical analysis indicates that the Rural, SSAA, and Independent values are statistically significant outliers from the 1A-7A values (which have no statistically different variation among them). In other words, the 1A-7A values are essentially the same, while the Rural, SSAA, and Independent values are “weaker” than those 7 classes.
This finding suggests that classes 1A-7A have comparable numbers of “strong”, “average”, and “weak” teams, and are essentially “equal” in overall strength when using “Power” rankings. It also indicates that school enrollment is not correlated with overall strength. Additionally, there may be statistical validation for the existence of a Rural class. Once again, competitive equity would be best served by sorting the “strong” teams into their own classes(es), the “average” teams into their own class(es), and the “weak” teams into their own class(es) and foregoing classification based on school enrollment.