New ranking system gets the green light
Despite some resistance, the Florida High School Athletic Association’s athletic directors advisory committee gave its stamp of approval for a new Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) ranking system to be used to decide football playoff qualifiers for the 2019 and 2020 seasons.
The committee endorsed the recommendation by a 10-4 vote at its meeting at FHSAA headquarters in Gainesville on Tuesday. That puts the concept on the table for the Jan. 28 board of directors meeting, where it could be approved and put into play in the fall.
Concerns over how the RPI is calculated and that programs have already made schedules based off the power points system used the past two years prompted lengthy discussion.
The football coaches committee unanimously approved the measure at its meeting last week in Daytona Beach.
“We had to stay focused on the fact that there’s going to be a ranking system the next two years [and find out] what they felt the best system was,” FHSAA director of athletics Frank Beasley told the committee. “This is what came out of it.”
The RPI ranking will consist of the winning percentage of a team (35 percent of the equation), along with the winning percentage of its opponents (35 percent) and its opponents’ opponents (30 percent).
The old format credited a team with points for wins and losses on a tiered system based on winning percentage of opponents. It also offered bonus points for playing teams that reached the postseason in previous years.
District champions in Classes 8A through 5A will continue to earn an automatic spot in the postseason and one of the top four seeds for region play. All playoff spots in Classes 4A through 1A will be decided by the RPI.
Also approved Wednesday was a recommendation to allow late additions to schedules to be counted toward postseason rankings and a concept to create a “dead period” after each sports season. The dead period would restrict coaches from asking players to participate in offseason training until three weeks after the season.
Athletic directors declined an endorsement from the coaches committee to allow football players to compete in up to six varsity and sub-varsity quarters per week, up from the current rule of one game per week. The recommendation would have allowed a player to compete in a freshman or junior varsity game early in the week and be eligible for playing time on a limited basis in a varsity game.
Concerns over player safety and policing the policy were cited as reasons for denial.
The committee also discussed a number of other topics involving golf, volleyball, swimming, bowling and cross country.
Unanimously approved was a recommendation to consolidate the number of districts and regions in boys and girls golf beginning with the 2019-20 school year. Districts will drop from 24 to 16 and regions will drop from eight to four. It was noted that more than 130 schools in the state have dropped the sport.
The committee was receptive to a proposal to sanction girls beach volleyball in the spring, as presented by coaches Juanita Hitt of Hagerty and Jen Darty of Oviedo. The topic will be discussed again in the fall. Adding a sanctioned sport at the FHSAA level typically takes two years.