Dunnellon High football coach Price Harris freely acknowledged that the bold reclassification plan he pitched to a statewide committee of athletic directors on Wednesday will not fix every one of the competitive balance problems the Florida High School Athletic Association is facing.
Big-city squads teeming with talent, like St. Thomas Aquinas of Fort Lauderdale and Miami Central, could continue to dominate their classifications.
But what Harris promised is that his push to separate suburban squads from those urban juggernauts can resuscitate state championship hopes for communities that in decades past were galvanized each time they had a football team capable of making a deep playoff run.
He’s looking out for schools like his own, and those like the Pensacola Escambia, Lake Minneola and Merritt Island teams that were disintegrated by the Central Rockets in the past three Class 6A state championship mismatches. Those three teams advanced to state finals with gaudy records of 14-0, 11-1 and 13-1, respectively, and got run out of town.
Central routed Escambia 62-27, Lake Minneola 46-0 and Merritt Island 49-14 in games that were over before they started.
Harris’ proposal, endorsed in a 9-0 vote by the FHSAA’s football coaches advisory committee, would create Metro divisions for schools in Florida’s eight most densely populated counties — including Orange and Seminole — and Suburban divisions for schools in the other 59 counties. Both halves would include private schools. Teams could cross over to play each other in the regular season but would go separate ways for playoffs.
As written, there would be nine playoff brackets, up from eight, with four Metro classifications, four Suburban and the existing 1A rural class — all based on school enrollment numbers with bigger schools in the higher classes.
The mock-up Harris distributed to coaches and presented to the A.D. committee shows an even split, with about 270 schools on each side.
The share of state championships in recent years has not been even. Far from it.
Since the 2011 season 68 of 77 state championships played above 1A have been won by teams on the Metro list. That’s 88.3%.
The Metro side, which includes Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Duval, won six of the seven available titles this season. Venice’s victory against Apopka was the one Suburban victory. In 2019 and 2020 all seven championships were won by Metro squads.
Most of those Metro victories were by a select group of powerhouse programs.
Aquinas and Central both won eight championships in the past 12 seasons and both are on three-peat runs (2019-21). Jacksonville Trinity Christian has claimed seven, including two in a row.
Miami-Dade’s multi-time champs since 2010 include Hialeah Champagnat Catholic (4), Booker T. Washington (4) and Northwestern (3).
Broward County’s haul includes Plantation American Heritage (5) and Cardinal Gibbons (3 in the past 4 years).
Duval’s count includes University Christian (3) and Jacksonville Raines (2).
The recent Orlando area champs on the Metro list are Apopka’s 2012 and 2014 title teams along with Bishop Moore (2015), Dr. Phillips (2017) and Sanford Seminole (2020).
The Suburban side as proposed would include Osceola, Volusia and Lake. No one in those counties has won a state championship since Daytona Beach Mainland in 2003.
“There has to be some kind of parity,” Harris said. “It can’t be the same schools winning state championship over and over again.
“We went by population density because that’s what makes it a whole lot easier to transfer. Kids in the metro areas can go three or four miles down the road to get to another school. I’m 28 miles from any other school. I don’t get transfers. I don’t lose kids, either. I’m just saying, ‘We’re not all the same’.”
The Metro/Suburban plan is modeled after the rural division, which provided a state championship path for small public schools — mostly in North Florida — that for years struggled to compete against private school powers. Harris said that corrected an inequity and has greatly increased attendance for the 1A championship games.
The Metro/Suburban formula, he said, can do the same for larger community-based schools.
Harris said two out of every three head coaches who responded to his survey favored the plan (68%). But fewer than 50% of South Florida coaches liked the idea, not surprising considering that section has dominated.
The proposal would reduce the number of titles Metro teams could win from seven to four.
Chaminade, Champagnat, Trinity Christian and University Christian would all be lumped into a stacked Metro 1A division that would include strong Central Florida programs such as Foundation Academy and Orlando Christian Prep.
Miami Central would be joined by Cardinal Gibbons in Metro 2A, which includes Bishop Moore and Lake Highland Prep as presented.
Aquinas would be in Metro 3A alongside Miami Columbus, Northwestern and Plantation American Heritage. That rugged class also would hold Orlando powers Edgewater and Jones.
Metro 4A would have larger area schools such as Apopka, Seminole, West Orange and Dr. Phillips in a wide-open division. That list would not include perennial contender Kissimmee Osceola, which sits on Orlando’s doorstep but is labeled as Suburban.
The Kowboys’ 4A division would include Venice, Lake Minneola, DeLand and Orange City University, among others.
By a slim 8-7 vote the measure was endorsed by the A.D. advisory panel. Harris counts that as a “huge” victory ahead of the FHSAA’s Feb. 27-28 Board of Directors meeting in Gainesville. His proposal will be heard again and considered for approval by the board, which has the final say.
But there are major concerns — one being whether the FHSAA should even be contemplating a classification model for football that would not be used for other sports.
Winter Park High athletic director Andy Chiles, speaking on behalf of the Florida Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, said that group voted against the proposal by a large margin.
“This will affect other sports no matter what happens,” Chiles said. “There are too many unanswered questions.”
Including this: Is it even possible for the Suburban proposal to be fast-tracked into effect for the 2022 season as Harris hopes?
FHSAA administrator Justin Harrison said last month that the plan was to roll out new football class and district alignments for the 2022 and 2023 seasons this month so schools can finalize future schedules.
Following the meeting, FHSAA executive director George Tomyn told the Orlando Sentinel he was impressed with Harris’ presentation but still sees the need for a longer look at the concept.
“It was an exciting meeting, but I certainly did not sense any element of closure in our discussion. I saw a committee that was absolutely split,” Tomyn said.
A sensible path, he added, would be to seek answers to the concerns and see if a consensus could be built to adopt the Metro/Suburban concept for 2024 and 2025.
“This has been in talks for years. Shelving it again is not going to solve anything,” Harris said. “We don’t want to wait. We truly set out to do this with everybody in the state of Florida in mind. I absolutely believe we brought a good plan to the FHSAA.”
This report was first published at Orlandosentinel.com. Varsity Content Editor Buddy Collings can be reached by email at bcollings@orlandosentinel.com.
