High School class systems in your state

http://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/content/shared/oh/fbnation/

 

I cover 2 states, one of them with a screwy system.

In Vermont, Division I football has 7 teams. 7. There should be at least 11, but the 4 biggest schools beg to play in D-II because they don't like to lose. When you lose, participation wanes and you lose even more. Pathetic. I have the utmost respect for Mount St. Joseph, a private school with 150 kids in the school. About 75 boys. And it has played D-I forever. It's in the by-laws of the school. They won the D-I title this year. It's a sham that D-I sized schools can "choose" to play D-II.

In Vermont's other sports, schools are broken down into D-I, D-II, D-III and D-IV. There used to be an open format, meaning you could go 0-20 during the season and still get into the playoffs. But D-I changed, and only the top 16 get in based on an index.

In New Hampshire, football is broken down strictly by enrollment. No fucking around. There are 5 divisions. You can petition up, but cannot petition down. Pretty much the same for the other sports.

 

Bingo. That takes care of this entire thread.

 

Thankya. Thankyaverymuch. (fake elvis)

But I want to throw in my personal experiences about the Arkansas playoffs. Before 1991, it was a mess. That was because before then they took a set enrollment for 4 classes (i.e. 0-200, 200-400, 400-800, 800+). Then before you knew it, enrollment inflation took over and there were 10 conferences for 2A, and they were taking 10 district champs and 6 runners-up based on point differential in their districts. meanwhile 3A was 6 districts and half the number of teams.

Eventually the AAA came up with the 32-32-64-64 format that worked great for years and years — until they decided to dick with it further last year. Now it's 6 classes for FB and seven for BB.

The only thing that makes it better than Oklahoma is that in Arkansas, you have everyone playing real (11-man) football.

 

Arkansas has seven classes for basketball? Are you shitting me? What, then, only five schools in the state don't get trophies every March?

 

That is right, Class A schools in Arkansas are basketball only. (i.e. non-football)

But 6 footy championships in Arkansas (7A thru 2A) beats the shite out of Texas (12 public school football, at least 7 private school).

 

True, that's too many titles in Texas. But Texas also has 20 million people, and Arkansas has ... what, maybe 2.5 million?

 

A few more details on Texas public schools:
The University Interscholastic League realigns every two years with a school's classification based on enrollment. Districts within a classification are determined by geography and the playoff brackets follow suit (District 1 plays District 2 in the first round, district 3 plays District 4, etc.).

The problem with this setup is that highly ranked teams often meet in early rounds.

Schools participate in the same class in all sports. In the larger classes (5A and 4A), all of a school's programs compete in the same district. Smaller schools are placed in different districts for sports like volleyball, baseball and softball based on which schools in the area are participating.

There are 1,137 schools listed as playing football and another 109 (mostly in Class 1A) that plays basketball, but not football. Then there are a few schools that don't even have enough kids to play basketball (one out in FAR FAR West Texas turned in an average daily enrollment of 15 students) that participate in individual sports like cross country or track.

The current realignment came out in February and covers the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years. The next alignment process begins in October 2007 with schools reporting their average daily enrollment and the new alignments will be released in February 2008. One of the guiding principals is to have the top end of a class be roughly twice the size of the bottom end.

The current alignment numbers are: Class 5A, 1,985 students and up; Class 4A, 950 to 1,984; Class 3A, 415 to 949; Class 2A, 195 to 414; Class 1A, 194 and below. Class 1A chools with an average daily enrollment of 99.9 and below have the option of playing 11-man or six-man football. Class 1A basketball is also split into two divisions with 100 and up being Division I and 99.9 and below being Division II. Six-man football is split into two divisions with the break coming at 60 students.

Playoff brackets for all sports are based on a 32-district alignment. Each class is divided into four regions (Districts 1 through 8 in Region I, Districts 9 through 16 in Region II, etc.). The playoff structure for football is different from other sports because of the two-division format that was first implemented in 1990 in Class 5A. In all cases where byes are employed, they are based on district assignment. District designations are changed with each realignment to move the byes around in the bracket.

FOOTBALL
Class 5A: 246 schools in 32 districts; top four in each district make playoffs; the two qualifiers from each district with the largest enrollment go into the Division I bracket and the others go into Division II; teams from the same district would meet in the state quarterfinals (fourth round)

Class 4A: 229 schools in 32 districts; top three in each district make playoffs; the qualifier from each district with the largest enrollment goes into the 32-team Division I bracket and the others go into the 64-team Division II bracket; Division II teams from the same district would meet in the state quarterfinals (fourth round)

Class 3A: 174 schools in 31 district (this forces a first-round bye for three teams); other than the byes, the playoff format is the same as Class 4A

Class 2A: 221 schools in 32 disitricts; playoff format is the same as Class 4A

Class 1A: 149 schools in 24 districts (two districts in each region have first-round byes); other than the byes, the playoff format is the same as Class 4A

Six-Man Division I: 60 schools in 12 districts; two teams per district make the playoffs; four districts will have first-round byes; teams from the same district would meet in the state quarterfinals (third round)

Six-Man Division II: 58 schools in 12 districts; the playoff format is the same as Division I

Six-man schools are locked into their divisions for the two-year alignment period, while teams in the other classes could play in either division in consecutive years.

OTHER TEAM SPORTS (Volleyball, basketball, soccer, baseball, softball)
Class 5A: The top four teams from each district advance to a 128-team bracket; a 1-4 or 2-3 matchup of district opponents would come in the third round, while district opponents on opposite sides of the regional bracket would come in the regional finals (fifth round).

Class 4A-2A: The top three teams from each district advance to a 96-team bracket with district champions getting a first-round bye; a 1-3 matchup of district opponents would come in the third round, while the No. 2 seed wouldn't meet a district opponent until the regional finals.

Class 1A: Two teams from each district advance to the playoffs; basketball has two divisions of 32 districts (64 teams in each bracket) that play to separate state championships, Division I has 170 schools in 32 districts and Division II has 185 schools in 32 districts (that's 185 schools with less than 100 students); the other sports have one 64-team bracket, but the low number of schools playing these sports usually leads to a number of first-round byes.

Soccer is played almost exclusively by 5A and 4A schools; any smaller schools that play are assigned to Class 4A.

 

When the UIL expanded Class A playoff teams to 3 per district starting this year, didn't they do it for all sports? Or was it for football only?