The Florida High School Athletic Association’s board of directors shook up the high school football landscape on Monday by approving a historic reclassification plan that divides schools into separate Metro and Suburban divisions for championship play.
The 9-7 vote means big changes will be made starting with the 2022 season.
The Metro division will have four championships classes for teams in the state’s most densely populated counties: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Duval and Central Florida’s Orange and Seminole.
Suburban schools from 59 counties, including those in Osceola, Volusia and Lake, will have their own playoff paths — also with four championship classes.
Metro and Suburban teams can continue to play each other in regular season games but they’ll go down separate paths in the playoffs.
It is a seismic shift for the FHSAA, which has used one primary factor — student enrollment — to align teams since it created a second classification in its second year of football playoffs in 1964.
What remains to be seen is exactly what the alignment will look like. FHSAA staffers now must rewrite the policy and then use the new formula to assign schools to classifications. That could mean another 3-4 weeks before classifications and districts are set. That means more waiting for football coaches who have been screaming for the green light to finalize their fall schedules.
“We’ll get on the white board and have some sleepless nights,” outgoing FHSAA executive director George Tomyn said after passage of a proposal that he was against. “We’re going to follow the board’s direction and look forward to the challenge.
“I know football coaches are anxious for something yesterday.”
Dunnellon High School coach Price Harris, who authored the plan with input from many, acknowledged that the time frame isn’t ideal. But he said leveling the playing field had to happen to revive suburban programs that have struggled to compete against powerhouses from big cities.
“Having a new plan is so important for our state,” he said after the vote. “A lot of coaches are happy this passed.”
Teams from the Metro counties have won 90% of the football state title above 1A since 2012 (63 of 70). That includes 20 of 21 in the past three seasons.
The majority of those championships have been collected by a small number of Miami-Dade and Broward juggernauts, headed by Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas and Miami Central — eight titles each since 2010. Jacksonville Trinity Christian has won seven titles in that 12-year span and Plantation American Heritage has five.
On Sunday, the association’s operations committee voted 3-2 to endorse the plan, going against Tomyn’s recommendation. The proposal was previously endorsed by the FHSAA’s Football Coaches Advisory Committee by a 9-0 vote in 2021 and 2022, and it was backed by the athletic directors committee by an 8-7 vote in January.
“I see what the coaches have said. And I have to agree that there is a disparity,” said board member Ralph Arza, who was formerly a Miami Senior High School head football coach and then a state legislator (2000-06). “I believe [the proposal] takes into account to try to interject some equity into the formula.”
A rough draft breakdown generated by FHSAA administrator Justin Harrison, who oversees reclassification of all sports, showed 228 schools on the Metro list and 222 on the Suburban side.
Enrollment counts from the fall of 2021 will again be used to line schools up in into classes, regions and districts.
The number of state championship games increases from eight to nine, with four on each side of the Metro-Suburban split. The ninth class is the 1A “rural” division, reserved for small-town teams with 600 or fewer students. It stays intact with 33 small-town schools.
Last week, in the board agenda, Tomyn recommended that the board deny the proposal to allow a longer look at the concerns and potential unintended consequences. One of his concerns was how the measure will impact other sports.
Board member Charlie Ward, the former FSU quarterback and NBA basketball player who now coaches the FSU High School boys basketball team, voted in favor of the Metro-Suburban football split and said coaches of his sport will watch closely as it develops.
“This gives other schools a chance to win a state championship, which I think is a positive,” Ward said. “This gives us two years to see if it’s a good fit and how it works out.”
Tomyn again expressed his reservations during the meeting.
“I think that this decision deserves more time. More data collection,” he said during almost two hours of debate. Afterward, he said his staff will do what it takes to make the revision work.
“We’re going to do that with a positive attitude and get after it,” Tomyn said.
The board also voted unanimously to change the football rankings method so it matches up with the FHSAA power rankings used for all other team sports to determine at-large playoff berths and seed pairings for the state tournaments. Football had been the only sport that was using an RPI formula rather than computerized ratings generated by MaxPreps for the FHSAA.
Proponents of that change said the FHSAA power rankings do a better job of factoring in strength of schedule. Those against the move said the RPI index was more transparent because the mathematics of the power rankings version is based on a proprietary program not shared by Maxpreps.
This story was first published at OrlandoSentinel.com. Varsity Content Editor Buddy Collings can be reached by email at bcollings@orlandosentinel.com.
