FHSAA eyes 8-team Open Division for super powers such as Chaminade, Aquinas
Hollywood Chaminade-Madonna (14-0) pummeled previously undefeated Clearwater Central Catholic 56-0 in Thursday’s morning’s mismatched Class 1M (Metro) football state final in Tallahassee.
That championship rout in the first of this week’s nine state championship games at Florida A&M University emphatically illustrated why FHSAA executive director Craig Damon will ask the association’s board of directors in a Tuesday virtual meeting to approve a new classification format that would create Open Division championship brackets for the top eight teams in football and a number of other sports beginning with the 2024-25 and ’25-26 school years.
The Open playoffs would take the best of the best out of the traditional class brackets — leaving teams such as CCC (13-1) to play for those championships.
The great eight would be selected based on MaxPreps computerized rankings updated after district tournaments.
The FHSAA’s newly formed Classification Task Force recommended 32-team Open brackets in an October workshop with the 13-member board. There were immediate concerns about that number and Damon and his staff reduced it to eight.
“Being such a drastic change, our thought was let’s start small first,” Damon said in a phone interview with the Sentinel on Friday.
Chaminade, which has a 28-1 playoff record and six state titles in seven seasons since 2017, is destined to be elevated to Open if it continues to stockpile major college prospects. That’ll also be likely with other nationally ranked programs such as Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas, which plays for its fifth consecutive championship and 15th in all Saturday.
Chaminade-Madonna defeats four-time defending state champion Miami Central | PHOTOS
Damon has mentioned that Florida’s major Open division matchups could be targets for television and streaming coverage by the likes of ESPN and Bally Sports, the latter of which is broadcasting this week’s football finals.
“Nothing concrete yet,” he said Friday. “Some of those folks have told me it would be very intriguing. They would definitely be interested in getting those team matchups.”
The other team bracket sports will add the Open Division. That also will increase to eight the number of champions in basketball, baseball, girls softball, girls volleyball and soccer (which is also set to add a Rural division for the first time).
Lacrosse, girls beach volleyball, boys volleyball, girls flag football and water polo also would add the Open Division.
What else changes
In another groundbreaking move, the proposal would eliminate required district regular season football games while maintaining the tradition of district championships. That matches up with other sports where for five years schools have been constructing their own schedules without mandatory games until they participate in postseason district tournaments.
But the idea for football alters the traditional 10-game regular season. Teams would play eight games in the first nine weeks of the season. The four top-ranked teams in each district would play semifinals in Week 10 (1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 3) to set up a Week 11 district championship matchup.
That means that county or conference rivals, Seminole vs. Lake Mary or Edgewater vs. Jones, for instance, might or might not schedule each other in the regular season and then meet in a district tournament game.
Teams outside the top four will be permitted to schedule Week 10 and 11 games to fill out a 10-game schedule if they so desire.
The FHSAA power rankings, which have been generated by MaxPreps without margin of victory considered, will fall to the wayside in favor of the standard MaxPreps counts.
Florida high school football finals at FAMU precede FHSAA reclassification vote
Status quo
The traditional method for classifying teams based on student enrollment counts, grades 9-12, and assigning them to districts will continue. The proposal states that schools will be assigned to districts by the FHSAA “as evenly as practical” on a geographical basis.
The hope is that football district alignments will be finalized in late this month or early January.
Reclassification is done every two years.
There will again be nine football state finals, with 1A through 7A along with the Open and Rural divisions. That matches the 2022 expansion which was part of a two-year Metro and Suburban split that is likely to become history when the 13-person board convenes digitally Tuesday.
There were eight football finals for the previous 17 seasons (2005-21).
The practice continues of automatically advancing four district champions per region and filling out eight-team regional brackets with four at-large continues. If a team is sent to the Open division another at-large berth becomes available.
Competitive cheer and “individual” sports will not have Open divisions — at least not yet. Those are: bowling, cross country, golf, swimming & diving, track and field, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling.
Memo to FHSAA: Don’t go overboard on Open Division | Varsity Insider
What it looks like
Here’s a snapshot of what the football Open division might have looked like this year. This example is based on teams ranked highest in the updated Dec. 3 MaxPreps rankings without knowing what might have happened in district tournaments to change the pecking order.
It’s worth noting that CCC was No. 13 before being demolished by Chaminade-Madonna. Daytona Beach Mainland, which won the Class 3S (Suburban) championship with a last-second field goal on Thursday, was No. 9.
Chaminade
St. Thomas Aquinas
Cocoa
Miami Norland
Venice
Mandarin
Buchholz
Miami Central
The top six teams on that list are state finalists this week. No. 7 Gainesville Buchholz lost 21-20 to Lakeland last week. No. 8 Miami Central lost 31-28 in overtime to Norland in a region final two weeks ago.
Here’s a look at the Orlando area teams that likely would have been pulled to the Open Division if it was in play for other sports in the 2022-23 school year. Their seeding numbers are based on final MaxPreps rankings:
Girls volleyball
None
Note that Winter Park would have been an Open team this fall.
Boys basketball
4. Olympia
8. Orlando Christian Prep
Girls basketball
1. Dr. Phillips (7A champ)
2. Lake Highland Prep (4A champ)
Boys soccer
3. Trinity Prep (3A champ)
6. East Ridge (7A champ)
Girls soccer
2. Montverde (3A champ)
3. Bishop Moore (4A champ)
Baseball
None
Girls softball
5. Lake Brantley
Boys lacrosse
2. Lake Mary (2A champ)
4. Lake Highland Prep
Girls lacrosse
3. Lake Highland Prep
5. Hagerty
Beach volleyball
3. Hagerty
Boys volleyball
2. Winter Park
7. Lake Howell
8. Timber Creek
Girls water polo
2. West Orange
3. Lake Nona (state champ)
4. Seminole
6. Lake Mary
7. Winter Park
8. Olympia
Boys water polo
5. Winter Park
6. West Orange
8. Sanford Seminole
Girls flag football
None
Who can bring home elusive FHSAA state football titles?
Varsity Content Editor Buddy Collings can be reached by email at bcollings@orlandosentinel.com.
