FHSAA presents football reclassification proposal in virtual meeting

The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) held a Wednesday afternoon virtual informational meeting amongst its board members on a football reclassification proposal that would implement district tournaments at the end of the regular season.

According to FHSAA Executive Director Craig Damon at the beginning of the meeting, the proposal was just for football as schools were needing to begin scheduling regular season games for 2026, thus needing to discuss and vote at their board meeting scheduled for Nov. 2-3 (Sunday, Monday) in Gainesville.

Damon provided results from surveys given to member schools, with 85 percent of members wanting to keep districts and 78 percent wanting some form of required games.

Damon’s proposal would reduce the number of classifications from eight to six, with football going from 1A-7A, Rural to 1A-5A, Rural. Teams would be placed in districts, but would not be required to play teams within their district and allowing them to ability to schedule eight games with whomever they’d like for their regular season slate.

Football programs would be able to schedule eight games, from Week 1 to Week 9, with Weeks 10-11 being left for a district tournament at the end. The top four teams, according to the FHSAA rankings, would compete in the district tourney. There would be a district semifinal in Week 10 followed by a district title and the losing teams from the previous week would play each other for a 10th game.

Enrollment would still dictate schools for classifications which would be determined by the following numbers provided in the presentation:

Class 5A: 2,102-4,627

Class 4A: 1,503-2,085

Class 3A: 1,000-1,492

Class 2A: 508-996

Class 1A: 44-492

Rural: 111-693

FHSAA board member Thomas Kenna, who is the athletic director for Cape Coral, made the suggestion to run the classifications through artificial intelligence to see what the results would produce. Kenna said to Damon that he thought the proposal, taking the classes from eight to six, would provide less district champions and produce essentially the same state champions.

Damon pointed out that the new Open Division, which is slated to begin with the 2026-27 season, should alleviate producing the same state championship teams and allow for new title holders to be had in the future.

Also in the final slide in the presentation said that the proposal would give Damon the authority to assign member school(s) to a next classification, lower or higher, than the class to which it would be assigned if the program is geographically isolated from other schools in the classification it would have been assigned to. Damon would also be given the ability to create sub-regions to assist schools with traveling issues, if necessary.

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