JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Florida High School Athletic Association put an exclamation point on its final board of directors meeting of the school year on Tuesday, voting to bring in a shot clock in playoff basketball next year, expanding a subset of the football playoffs and tinkering with the baseball postseason again.
The changes were notable all for their own reasons.
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The shot clock in basketball has been an ongoing discussion, often kicked down the road due to cost for schools. But the board passed a 35-second shot clock to start in the 2026-27 playoffs on a 9-3 vote. Another basketball-related vote, to allow teams to cut down the nets after playoff wins, was not passed.
Baseball, which moved to a best-of-three format this season for the first three rounds of regional play, saw a bit of a shift and a lot of discussion.
Instead of a best-of-three format in the playoff opener, that will be just one game now. The regional semifinal and regional final will both remain best of three. The state semifinals and final remain a one-game format. There was some discussion about the final four going back to home school sites if the state championship format eventually shifted to a best-of-three series.
The Football Invitational Tournament at the Rural level was well received last year, and the FHSAA voted 12-0 to expand that this year beyond just the smallest classification. The FIT gave the next 12-best teams who didn’t reach the playoffs an opportunity to compete in essentially their own bracket. It never fails that every year, numerous deserving teams are squeezed from the playoffs and the FIT helped address a few of those concerns last year.
The FIT will go from one Rural class to two additional classifications of 12 teams apiece. The breakdown of how those teams would be selected wasn’t discussed, but schools in Classes 1A through 7A would be split into two separate classes (likely teams in 1A to 3A or 4A composing one bracket and teams in 4A or 5A to 7A composing another). The goal in expanding the FIT is to give teams who didn’t qualify for the State Series playoffs an opportunity to battle it out in a separate postseason.
Due to officials, those games could be played on Thursday or Saturday nights.
