FHSAA Board of Directors approves new football playoff proposal

The Florida High School Athletic Association Board of Directors voted Monday to approve a new football playoff format at its meeting in Gainesville. The proposal passed by an overwhelming 14-2 vote after an amendment to unify the playoff system across all eight classifications was shot down by the same margin.

“This is a landmark day for high school football in the state of Florida,” FHSAA director of athletics Frank Beasley said during a press conference Monday in Gainesville. “I’d like to thank our Board of Directors for believing in and vetting the proposal. I’d like to thank our athletic directors for doing the same thing. Most importantly I’d like to thank our member schools for being part of the process. It’s been a long, long process.”

The new playoff format, which has been in development since Beasley joined the FHSAA last August as the football administrator, will affect Classes 1A-4A and 5A-8A differently, but centers upon an emphasis of schedule strength for both. Florida will begin using the system for the 2017 season.

For the four smallest classifications, this means an elimination of districts entirely. Teams will be free to put together an eight-, nine- or 10-game schedule of their own or create conferences on their own. Theoretically, Saint Stephen’s, Bradenton Christian and Out-of-Door Academy could continue playing in the Sunshine State Athletic Conference to alleviate scheduling concerns while remaining eligible for the FHSAA postseason in their respective classifications.

The four largest classifications will continue using districts, although only the champions will be guaranteed a playoff berth. The four other playoff spots in each four-district region will be determined through a point system, incorporating strength of schedule and on-field results. The system will allow teams from more competitive districts, such as Class 7A-District 11, to send more than two teams to the postseason, while less competitive districts can be held to one playoff team.

“It’s going to create a more exciting playoff by going to a seeding system,” Beasley said. “It’s going to reward teams who play a strong schedule. There’s a lot of positives. There’s going to be some negatives along the road. We fully know that and are aware of that, and we’re going to continue to work and tweak as we move forward.”

Implementation of the new playoff system will begin in December, when updated districts and regions are announced. After a brief appeals process, they will be finalized in January. Schedules are due to be submitted to C2Cschools.com in May. Region and district meetings will still be held in February to present schools an opportunity to figure out some scheduling in person.

The approved point system assigns values to four different levels of wins and losses based on opponents’ end-of-season win percentage. A win against a team with an .800 win percentage is worth 50 points, a win against a team with a .600 win percentage is worth 45, a win against a team with a .400 win percentage is worth 40 and a win against all other teams is worth 35. Losses to such teams are each worth 15 points fewer.

For now, the new postseason system will only apply to football, but Beasley acknowledged a successful implementation could mean a similar system spreading to other sports.

“We’ve had lengthy conversation in our office about how this will affect or trickle down to other sports,” Beasley said, “and we’re excited about the future and where that may take us.”

The proposed system has remained mostly intact since its original proposal, with the only significant change being the removal of bonus points awarded for playing teams from a larger classification. Ultimately, these miniscule awards would have simply served as a tiebreaker, so ties will now be broken by head-to-head results, total wins or wins against teams from the top two tiers.

Bonus points could again enter the equation at some point. Beasley and his staff plan to continue tinkering with adjustments during the coming years as the FHSAA searches for the most perfect system.

“Is any system perfect? No,” Beasley said. “But we feel like we’ve created a better system than what we have now.”

This story was originally published September 26, 2016 at 12:51 PM with the headline "FHSAA Board of Directors approves new football playoff proposal."