High School class systems in your state

I'm working on an article about a playoff change our state association is getting ready to go through for this season and was wondering how your state does its classes for sports. Next year (2007) we're switching to a six-class format which will make the current playoff system make a lot more sense.

Also, a few questions.

How does your state do football playoffs? The way ours is now teams will play within their own districts instead of playing a team in the other district. All this does is create a true district championship much like baseball, softball and basketball has now. But many coaches and athletes feel this format takes away from having a true region champion.

Has your state ever gone through such a change and how do they break the system down? I'd like to see our association have classes 1-4 be public schools and 5 and 6 be private, but I know that won't happen.

Any help you guys can offer is greatly appreciated.

 

Shut your mouth Shawn Hunter. If the public schools can't hang with the privates, then they shouldn't compete.

That being said, I have no problem with our state going to six classes. The only thing that irritates me is that all but five or six schools from each division would make the playoffs, pretty much making the regular season meaningless.

If you're going to do that, then do what Indiana does and have everyone make the playoffs.

Have they released the proposed alignments yet?

 

In Georgia there are 5 classes.

32 teams make the playoffs in each class -- 4 from each region.

Teams from the same region can't play until they reach the semifinals.

 

F_H, yes they have released the tentative alignment for 07. I'll have to find a link later on when I'm not stuck at the office. I do know two 1-A teams, Danville and Newport Central Catholic, are moving up to 2-A, and Western Hills is moving down a class to 2-A. Lexington Catholic may be moving up to 5-A, which will be good for Franklin County.

Thanks for the info, Jerseykid.

 

In Michigan, most sports are broken into four divisions, with each division getting an equal number of teams, based on enrollment.


In football, they have eight divisions. If you win six games, you're in. Some teams with five wins could also get in (if they only play an eight game schedule OR not enough teams win six games).

32 teams in each division. Once they determine all the playoff teams, top 32 go into division 1, next 32 to division 2, etc, etc.



Broken down into four team geographical districts, two team regionals, state semifinals and state finals. Seeding is determined by playoff points (fairly complex formula, but you get points for beating teams above you and you also get points for teams you beat that beat other teams).

Semis are at neutral sites around the state while the finals are at Ford Field. They try to get all the semi sites on artificial turf or fieldturf stadiums (which is definitely possible with the amount of colleges and high schools that have switched over).


Finals are always on Thanksgiving weekend. Four games on Friday and four games on Saturday.

Hopefully that makes sense.

 

Texas:

5 Classes....with the lowest class in football  broken into 11-man and 6man.
32 districts in each class.
In highest class, starting this year 4 teams make playoffs from each district, in all others 3 teams make playoffs (except 6-man football which goes 2).
Playoffs have top division for large schools and small division. School with highest enrollment goest to top division, other two lower division. In highest class they split it 2 and 2.

 

Mississippi is a little weird. See if you can follow this...

The public schools are broken down into five classes (1A through 5A). For football, each class has either eight regions (1A through 4A) or four (for Class 5A). In 1A through 4A, four teams from each region make the playoffs for a total of 32, and same district teams don't play in the first round. For Class 5A, there are only 32 teams in the whole classification, so the top four from each region make it. Teams from the same region could play each other in the second round.

Pretty straightforward. But wait, there's more. We also have something called the Mississippi Private School Association, which was basically a bunch of private schools that banded together in the late 60s to fight off integration for a few more years. They have their own association, entirely separate from the public schools, with a Class A, AA and two separate AAA divisions. Class A and AA are split into eight divisions, with the top two from each division going to the playoffs. No same-division matchups until at least the second round. Class AAA sends six or eight teams, I believe, out of 12 and crowns two separate champions. Kind of like a 3A and 4A, except they're both called Class AAA for some reason.

 

We also cover schools in Louisiana, and they use a power points system. All of the district champions get in (anywhere from eight to 11, I think, depending on the classification), and the rest of the 32-team field is seeded based on power points. The district champions get a home game in the first round, and then the higher seed hosts after that. The finals used to be played in the Superdome, but moved to Shreveport last year because of Katrina.
Not sure exactly how the system works, but apparently you get some points for playing bigger schools -- win or lose -- and a few more if you beat them.

 

And, while it's not football, we did have a little brouhaha in Mississippi with the same-district playoff thing for baseball. There are 32 teams in Class 5A and they decided to expand the baseball playoffs to 24 teams. To accomplish this, they played the first round as a three-team regional hosted by the eight district champs. Where it got sticky was teams Nos. 2 and 3 -- they came from the same district.
So you had two teams from the same area -- in our district's case, from the same town -- driving 3 hours to play each other at 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. Then, the winner of the first game turned around and played the rested hosts on Friday night. Between the travel, the format and having to play the same team five or six times in one year, the coaches were none too happy.

 

South Carolina is a complete clusterfuck now.

We have four classes. Roughly 48 schools in each class. Simple enough, until we talk football.

Our classes are AAAA, AAA, AA and A. In AAAA, in year's past, there has been what is called the Big 16 (16 biggest schools automatically make the playoffs in a separate format) and Little 32 (The remaining 32 schools in AAAA have 16 playoff slots). Two different state champions (one for Big 16 and one for Little 32). Then there's football playoffs for AAA, AA and A. Eight regions each classification, four teams from each region make the playoffs (Which means, you could lose every game all year but one region game and make the playoffs, while a region team could lose all its region games and win all its non-region games and not make it).

But this year, we're getting even more complicated. People complained that the Big 16 playoffs were a joke, because there were some teams that could post a 1-10 record and make the playoffs. So now, they're going to do the entire AAAA by points system and then they'll take the top 32 teams by points and subtract the 16 largest schools and put them in their own playoff. So if you're on the bubble, you don't know what state title you're competing for.

Plus, they're doing the same thing for all the small schools. 32 teams make the playoffs and they'll split the field in half and make a Class A, Division I playoff and a Class A, Division II playoff. So we have four classifications, but we'll crown six state champions in football.

Don't get me started on private schools, which has decided that three classifications isn't enough. They've gone to four, which means one classification -- which includes nine schools -- will have their own state title.

We're dead last in everything education-wise for a reason.

 

Alabama's main governing body (all public and many private schools) - six classes, eight regions for football, top four in each region qualify. (Other sports, it's the top two out of 16 areas in each class). Finals at Legion Field. Particulars stolen from the Web site.

AISA has three classes, eight teams from each class make the playoffs.

Florida's system has permutated beyond all comprehension. Somebody still on the ground can explain it better.

 

Here's what Kentucky is considering:

Switching from four to six classes with one of two alternatives:

Alternative A -- each class has roughly 37-38 teams (ranked by school size -- all-male high schools have enrollment figures doubled)

Alternative B -- Group the 20 largest schools together in one class, the smallest 42 in another, and have the remaining four classes with 37-38 teams (again, separated by school size)

I don't really care one way or the other. I just think having 32 of 37 teams advance to a playoff is greedy ridiculous.

No more than half the teams should ever qualify for the playoffs in any league, preps on up.