JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – In a winding and confusing two-hour virtual meeting on Tuesday afternoon, the Florida High School Athletic Association’s board of directors voted to get rid of the Suburban-Metro playoff system and go back to an eight-classification, enrollment-based format for the coming years, the latest shift in the ever-changing landscape of sports here.
The biggest proposal — an eight-team open division for the top eight seeds in major team sports — didn’t come up for a vote. The open division was crafted by the FHSAA and executive director Craig Damon after months of information gathering and poring over survey results. Damon’s draft would have put the top eight teams in Florida into their own playoff bracket, but that didn’t make it to floor for a vote during the emergency meeting.
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And that’s probably a good thing. There was no consensus on anything Tuesday, and it’s fair to say more questions remain now than before the day began. The meeting was a bit all over the place, the first major test for an FHSAA board that was overhauled, with the bulk of the 13-member board appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this year.
Niceville principal and FHSAA board member Charlie Marello put the day’s process bluntly:
“This feels rushed.”
“This feels disorganized.”
“This feels discombobulated.”
Too many questions remained to comb through and get answers on in the abbreviated session. Several board members expressed frustration that a vote of such magnitude still faced so many unanswered questions and hadn’t been vetted enough.
At the end of the day and a pair of 9-4 votes, the FHSAA wound the clock back to eight classifications (Class 1A to 7A and rural) with no Suburban-Metro separation and locked in required district games. Those classifications will be based on enrollment numbers alone, something opponents of that metric is outdated in the era of open enrollment and school choice in Florida.
Marello wasn’t the only one who felt like the board was being forced to rush into significant vote with still so much unknown. Two hours of back and forth left numerous members of the board split, and even attempting to put other motions on the floor as the meeting was winding down. Some members asked why the FHSAA was basing things on MaxPreps rankings points when that criteria remains proprietary and unknown. Damon said the MaxPreps algorithm was more equitable than a previously employed, FHSAA-derived postseason method.
Board president Monica Colucci, a Miami-Dade Public Schools board member, continued to drive home the point to those on the call that the only two topics up for a vote Tuesday were that of a district games requirement and going back to eight classifications (Class 1A to 7A and the rural division). Colucci’s constant reminders were also a point of just how many varying viewpoints there were on the board.
Benjamin School athletic director Ryan Smith pointed out how dissatisfied schools in his area were about the Suburban-Metro setup. Under that format, schools in the state’s largest eight counties (Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach, Pinellas and Seminole) were group in the Metro division. Smith said on two occasions that schools in the South Florida region have explored leaving the FHSAA if that setup were to continue.
The FHSAA now will focus on reclassification and district assignments so that teams can start working on 2024-25 schedules. It also ends the Suburban-Metro experiment after just two years, and, according to data presented Tuesday, a far better and more balanced playoff system than in the past.