Columbiafan

But Venice and Lakeland aren't the same suburban as say a Buchholz, Columbia or Baker County That's the biggest issue with this system as this change was to help schools like the bottom 3 play on a more level playing field instead of being in brackets with metro teams that are recruiting from 1M+ people Sarasota and Polk counties (Venice and Lakeland respectively) are not too far behind some these metros in terms of talent pool but the change wasn't to help them but they indirectly got a much easier path to states but to be fair Lakeland and Venice I believe are both in 4S along with Osceola so 4S will have 3 top 10 FL teams with those 3

I know Duval county had to go to 6pm start time for all public schools after Raines vs Riverside (formally Robert E Lee High) had a shooting in the neighborhood in 2 consecutive years at their games and there has been incidents also involving I think Terry Parker, Ed White and games involving the northwest classic (Ribault vs Raines) All these schools are in the West or North side of Jacksonville The times have been in effect since the 2018 season when the incident involving Lee vs Raines happened in week 1 of that season

I think that's a good idea in theory but I have a feeling that some of the more "conservative" people on the advisory boards wouldn't want to implement it After all they fought like hell to stop metro/suburban, change from runner ups to wild cards and using an RPI/ranking system instead of flipping the brackets each year They just hate any form of change

No at least not the way they broke it down which is kinda what I meant by there is ways to go The way Florida did it was they took Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Seminole, Orange, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Duval county and split all those teams into 4 classifications and then took the remaining counties and set them into 4 classifications Currently Central, MNW and a few other Dade powers ended up in 2M while STA ended up in 3M Ideally I think that other counties like Polk (Lakeland), Lee (Fort Myers), and Brevard (Cocoa) should have gotten classed as metro as well but when you had 2 people on the voting board from Lee county they were able to get the board to go by 8 most dense counties instead of 8 highest population which put Seminole county in the place of Lee County The problem is the change I'm suggesting would never get passed because unfortunately the people on the advisory board will only vote to help their individual teams not the overall product of the state, we were lucky to get the 8 counties separated that we did because it was a tight vote to get passed The way it would improve playoff brackets is by having it where rural teams won't be having to face metro schools in the playoffs who under the current rules can basically recruit from a county of over 1M people when some these rural teams are from counties of 30-80k in some cases and don't have 1/20th the talent pool of these massive counties But I have some doubts because they chose to maintain the student enrollment numbers to make the split on the 4 suburban and 4 metro counties when winning percentage may have been a better method to accomplish what they really want to do with balancing the classifications

The idea of metro suburban is also being done to address the state championship blowouts because by definition if you put programs pulling from a similar talent pool size wise then you will have teams of similar ability on the field and better state championship games will also lead to better attendance for these games and that makes the product better Obviously though there's a long ways to go to correct the many problems surrounding Florida High School athletics

The problem is with how loose the transfer rules are a team like Columbia would need to get all the top players from the surrounding 8 counties just to get 1/3 the blue chippers of a Miami Central and that's not even including Central could easily get 10 more blue chippers in a single off-season to extend the gap further In the past when the transfer rules were better managed these teams could share a class together but now a days unless your in an area loaded with blue chippers you can't realistically compete with these teams The state of Florida legislature went and screwed over a lot of rural schools by this change which heavily favors metro schools

Technically though if the FHSAA were to pass it they could have metro vs suburban champs face off in an open division game but I think that would have to pass the advisory committee so it couldn't go into effect until next year at the earliest and it would need someone on the board to present that idea up for a vote

An idea similar to it was floated a few years ago but couldn't make it past the coaching advisory committee and it would likely get shut down by the state legislature anyway It's why they can't have a transfer or private school modifier, both would break Florida law on some education statute that I'm not gonna waste time digging up the specifics on

I never said Lakeland was scared of Miami Central but don't be saying Central ducked it They were willing to play but wouldn't leave Polk County to do it, Miami Central has no obligation to agree to that deal Miami Edison would play Columbia but only if Columbia covered ALL of Edison travel expenses then covered our own way to Miami next year That deal was a crap offer so Columbia told them no, it doesn't mean we ducked them but we aren't gonna take a crap deal out of desperation In this case Central would have taken it if the deal was more balanced but Lakeland wouldn't provide that so it fell through

Actually Miami Central didn't duck Lakeland Lakeland would only play Central if they came to Bryant Stadium and wouldn't go to Traz Powell Lakeland also made no attempt to schedule Miami Central until AFTER they raided all of Polk County all stars for a roster to rival IMG in talent

AHP WAS better, they aren't that powerhouse program they were in the past anymore And Lakeland didn't just pick up some transfers they practically have the entire Polk County all stars on one team, they easily have 3 times the blue chippers in their senior class than AHP does and aren't breaking in a new head coach like AHP I do agree Chaminade deserves to be seen as a big deal and could have a case for the best team in Florida

The thing is the rest of the position of Florida teams I can buy into (I have Lakeland higher in my state rankings but I understand their SOS will hurt them in national polls) I can name several FL teams who probably deserve top 25 heading into 2022 more than AHP

I'll be sure to send my FL poll over when we get into August as my aiding of the tier process #CrowdSourcing

Sammy just make the damn list 🤣🤣🤣 He's not asking you to make your own tiers, just tier the ones who are in GSB rankings

I currently have AHP as 13th in FL (this also includes not having IMG ranked so if you include them it's 14th) That's high enough for me to rank them top 100 nationally but I'm not sold on them yet and want to see how they handle the early gauntlet before I'm sold on them still being a top 10 FL team much less top 25 nationally Unless they get some significant transfers in the next month they will be outside my FL top 10 heading into the preseason

Actually yes they have lost a player or two this off-season to STA and their coach Patrick Surtain also left Plus AHP has not been dominant the last few years, they usually get by because of being well coached but coming off a Coaching change and having some down years as of late it's way too early to have them top 25 nationally and them being there is Ranking off their name only One stud receiver isn't going to make them top 25 in the nation, I would give them top 100 nationally but not top 25

We will see but I'll tell you this Unless you think AHP is going to massively be better despite losing their head coach than they were last year they are too high because last year AHP team wasn't top 25 in the nation

AHP is too high and will be in every major poll because of one player I will gladly address this when I release my poll, remember I was pointing out the same thing about Miami Northwestern last year and ended up being right while most thought me not having MNW in the top 10 for FL was idiotic Funny how things tend to work out including being the only ranking service to rank all 8 state champs in the preseason

Apopka could probably beat half the teams your buddy at MaxPreps always tries to sneak in for the rankings each year for the sunshine state 😂😂

They may win only 1 or 2 of the first 5 games then finish with 5 straight

That may be a fair point but I know when I rank that if a team won head to head and is undefeated that team will always be ranked higher in my rankings Head to head should always take precedent over SOS or strength of resume when said winner finishes undefeated Now if Jesuit lost in the season afterwards than by all means STA belongs higher because that head to head game holds less weight but that's just how I personally feel in that situation You have your own system and I think you have gotten better with the Florida teams and you usually do take my comments especially early in the season with the Florida teams into account so I usually think the tiers are overall in a good spot even if I have a different opinion on a few teams placement from time to time Overall good work on it though

Undefeated, smashed MNW in final 4 and won 6a is still a pretty good resume

I also have a hard time seeing Venice not at least being ranked on par with the other top FL teams They were playing very much lights out down the stretch including smashing a very talented West Orange team 49-7, smashed the two year champs (2019 8a champs and 2020 tri county champs) in Columbus 35-7, and blasted a strong Apopka team 35-7 on route to a state title IMG in contrast faced one team even close to their level and got beat convincingly I wouldn't have hesitated to rank Venice over IMG but they belong same tier

Jesuit beat STA head to head and went undefeated I have a hard time buying Jesuit not being same tier with that in mind, either STA should be tier 2 or Jesuit should be tier 1

No brainless trolls and all football There ain't a message board out there that can compete with the amazing one we have here