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🏈 The FHSAA determines football playoff seeding and classification based on student enrollment, with districts and regions laid out primarily by geography and size.
📊 Playoff teams include four district champions and four at-large bids per region, selected using adjusted MaxPreps rankings that remove predictive elements.
🆕 In 2026, FHSAA will introduce an “Open Division” for the top eight teams statewide, creating a new state championship tier separate from traditional classifications.
Most football fans in the state of Florida have heard of the Florida High School Athletic Association at some point. However, all of its different functions and the reasoning behind the decisions it makes are often uncertain to the typical Friday-night gamegoer.
The goal of this article is to explain:
What is the FHSAA?
To understand everything the FHSAA does, it is crucial to understand what exactly it is.
The Florida High School Athletic Association is a non-profit organization recognized by the Florida Legislature as the governing body for interscholastic athletics in Florida.
Established in 1920, it included just 29 member schools. Over a century later, more than 800 schools are members of the FHSAA.
The FHSAA consists of five departments under the executive staff, including eligibility and compliance, athletic services, officials services, administrative services, and financial services.
The group that holds authority in decision-making is the Association’s Board of Directors. The Board consists of 13 individuals, including Okaloosa County Schools Superintendent Marcus Chambers, who were either elected by membership or appointed by the Governor of Florida and confirmed by the Senate, per the FHSAA governance handbook.
The FHSAA is responsible for assigning schools to classifications, regions, and districts. The largest of the groupings and classifications varies by sport but ranges from Rural Classification to 7A in football. The student body population is the only factor in determining the classification of a school.
“Right now, the way classifications are broken down is strictly by school size,” said Associate Executive Director of Athletic Services at FHSAA Scott Jamison. “If it is a combination school, we do not take into account their middle school numbers. It is strictly their nine through 12 count.”
After schools provide their student body population statistics, the FHSAA works to distribute teams into a classification that most accurately represents their school’s student population.
Though this system pleases most, there are always a few schools that get the short end of the stick by being one of the smaller schools in a given classification. “Obviously, there has to be a team that’s the smallest and a team that’s the biggest,” said Jamison. “This causes issues with those schools, understandably, but we always work that out.”
Once the FHSAA assigns schools to classifications, the organization determines the school’s regions . Unlike classifications, regions are often mapped out geographically.
Well, for the most part.
There has to be a fairly similar number of schools in a region per classification, and for some sports, the number of schools in the region’s boundaries stretches the region.
“As far as regions go, we sit down, literally, with a map,” Jamison remarked. “We try to do it as unbiased as humanly possible, and then we try to put the teams into the regions as evenly as possible. It can be difficult depending on the sport, depending on the class and depending on where those teams are broken down. Sometimes, region one may be just the panhandle, and sometimes region one may stretch all the way down towards Orlando.”
Niceville football resides in 5A Region 1. This is a prime example of a region that is stretched across the state, as Region 1 also includes teams like Matanzas in Palm Coast and Mainland in Daytona Beach.
Following a school’s regional classification is its district placement. Similar to regions, they are laid out geographically. Districts are taken into extreme consideration with football – especially as it is the only sport that requires schools to play all of their district opponents in the regular season.
The oddity with districts is usually less about location and more about the number of teams per district instead. With that focus on proximity, some districts are left with only two teams that could possibly fit. Teams move or leave districts entirely fairly often as well, affecting these numbers.
“Some districts are smaller, and they could be smaller because that’s literally the only teams there in that area,” Jamison said. “It could be that it started with four or five teams, and some dropped out. A lot of times, when you’re seeing, you know, a two-team district, it may have started with three or four, and teams decided they didn’t want to continue.”
This whole process is repeated on a two-year cycle, as teams could see changes to their district, region and even classification based on their student population.
Many people’s most pressing questions every year seem to involve the playoffs, especially when it comes to football.
“How did that team make it?”
“Why is this team playing on the road?”
Thirty-two teams make the playoffs in any given classification, 1A-7A. Each regional tournament will have eight teams: the four district champions in that region and four at-large bids.
The district champions are determined solely based on standings. Whoever has the best record in district games from the regular season is given that automatic bid to the playoffs. For a tie-breaker, whichever team beat the other in the regular season advances as the district champion.
How does the FHSAA determine those four at-large teams that make the playoffs?
FHSAA uses the popular prep sports website MaxPreps to facilitate this process. MaxPreps has an in-depth ranking system for high school football that takes into account almost everything needed to properly seed teams. But, there is a slight issue, MaxPreps rankings use a predictive model, which would not work for FHSAA and postseason placements.
“If you go to the Florida rankings on MaxPreps, you’re going to be looking at something that’s predictive,” said Jamison. “They’re trying to show you a snapshot of what they think is going to be the last poll. The first poll is what they think it’s going to look like at the end of the year. We can’t use that. We have to have rankings based on what’s actually happening.”
That’s where FHSAA’s ranking formula comes in. Essentially, it is the same rankings taken from MaxPreps, but without the predictive feature and including forfeitures.
After eliminating the district champions, the four highest-ranked teams per region, according to these FHSAA rankings, will receive at-large bids to the playoffs.
Now that the FHSAA knows the eight teams in each regional tournament, they are all seeded 1-8, once again strictly based on the ranking system. This is where some confusion comes in in terms of hosting. Regardless of seeding, a district champion will always host in the first round.
“The Board of Directors wanted the district champions to have a bit of an incentive to win districts, which is getting to host that first round,” said Jamison. “We’ve had eight seeds host one seeds in the playoffs. It has happened where that one seed doesn’t win their district, but the rest of their schedule is so strong that they’re able to still maintain that number one seed, and they go on the road to play a team that maybe snuck in and won their district as the eight seed.”
From there, the games are played in a bracket-style, with higher seeds hosting until a state champion is crowned.
Everything you just read will be true for this upcoming football season, but in 2026, big changes are happening across the board in all team sports playoffs.
The Open Division, or Championship Division, is an interesting new addition that will be added to postseason play. What it entails is a true state championship. One winner across the whole state.
“The top eight teams, one through eight (in the FHSAA rankings), will be pulled into their own division. They will go into the Open Division to play for the Open Championship,” said Jamison. “They will be removed from their [classification’s playoffs], and then we’ll fill in those gaps with at-large teams.”
Classification playoffs won’t be going anywhere, as 1A-7A will still run playoffs, as mentioned in the previous section. Now, a whole new prize will be on the line, the magnitude of which FHSAA believes will motivate teams to strive for qualification in the Open Division.
“Maybe some schools won’t want to mess with it,” Jamison answered when asked if he foresees schools preferring their classifications playoffs instead of the Open Division. “But I’m thinking some coaches are going to say, ‘Listen, if we can go get one Open Division championship, that’s like winning five state championships at 5A or 6A.’ Now, with it only including eight teams, I don’t think it will diminish our other championships either.”
This fascinating add-on is set to feature in all team sports across the state of Florida and could provide cross-classification matchups that fans have never had the chance to see.
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