THOMASTON — Educators from across Georgia gathered at the GHSA offices Friday morning to discuss an objective that would seem difficult to oppose — arranging the association’s seven classifications to ensure competitiveness for all of its member schools.
Good luck to the 18 members of the reclassification committee, which is taking on the GHSA’s most substantive change in perhaps a generation and possibly longer as it considers moving from a classification model based on enrollment size to one that is determined by on-field performance. Among other facets, it is seen as an equitable way to include private schools, many of which were sequestered into private-only state playoffs in the current model.
Under the proposed model, the five schools in each classification with the strongest overall sports programs would move up while the five weakest would move down. At the earliest, the model would start in the 2026-27 school year, with schools initially separated by enrollment size along with the initial schools to be moved up or down. No votes were taken Friday.
Different members of the committee offered reasons for supporting the concept, perhaps none more convincingly than Brian Robinson, senior coordinator of athletics for the DeKalb County School District. While the attention of the debate has been on the reluctance of high-performing schools to move up to more competitive classifications, he pointed out the benefit available to the weaker schools.
Robinson brought up examples of a DeKalb school that has struggled across the board, including its football team that finished the season with 13 players. The team hasn’t played a region schedule in more than a decade, meaning it has given up the chance to play in the state playoffs even before the first game in order to play a more competitive schedule.
“(Low-performing schools) are the schools that we need to look at and see how we help them in bringing them down,” he said. “Because nobody wants to play a softball game against them (when) the only way you’re going to get out is tell your kid to walk off the base. No one’s benefiting from that, the team’s that beating them or them.”
Todd Holcomb of Georgia High School Football Daily, a contributor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a foremost voice in Georgia high school athletics, provided a telling statistic about why a classification system based on results could be better than one determined by enrollment size: Of the 1,300 region football games this past fall — contests between schools organized by classification and proximity — there were 524 (40.3%) decided by 30 points or more.
It speaks to a proliferation of games in which many teams had virtually no chance, either that Friday night or in their season-long pursuit of a state playoff berth. Surely, the same pattern is repeated throughout the school year in different sports.
It’s not without reason that GHSA executive director Tim Scott is in support of the competitive-balance model.
However, the association has faced pushback. In December, when Scott reached out to the GHSA’s 456 member schools with an explanation of the model, 18% supported it, 25% opposed, 20% was unsure and 6% had not heard of it. He did not hear back from the rest.
Beyond that, Friday’s meeting, the committee’s first in this cycle, further revealed the hurdles that stand before it. There are numerous policy questions, such as what would be the methodology by which schools are initially judged?
In the current format, the private schools in Class 3A and below have competed in their own state playoffs because of their dominance of those classifications. A Class 3A public school that faced promotion to 4A for the initial classification system reasonably could contend that it shouldn’t be moved up based on its state tournament performance as it probably wouldn’t have fared as well if it had competed against private schools. The private-public split in state tournaments has created an apples-oranges conundrum. (GHSA president Jim Finch, the superintendent of Monroe County Schools, proposed to The AJC that schools be placed in classifications by enrollment for four years to collect data before making any promotions/relegations.)
Beyond that, there were questions about how schools that are strong in some sports but not others should be treated. Would it be fair to elevate a school that is promoted on the strength of state titles in cheerleading, tennis and track and field but has a weak football team? Or what about a school in which the girls teams far outperform the boys teams? How would an elevation impact athletic department revenues?
And if a classification is fairly competitive top to bottom, would moving the top and bottom five schools be the right thing for those 10 schools? Likewise, if another classification is extremely unbalanced, would readjusting 10 schools be enough?
Another scenario presented was a school that has a talented core of athletes that wins enough during its four years to earn promotion for its school only for a weaker group to follow and find itself struggling in a higher classification through no fault of its own.
Further, Monroe Area High athletic director Eli Connell presented two alternative proposals, both of which would reduce the number of classifications but increase the number of regions in each to 10-12 (compared to the current eight) and determine playoff participants by power rankings as opposed to region finish. Fewer classifications would enable more schools that are geographically closer to be in the same regions.
“What I was trying to caution everybody in is, the devil is in the details of this thing,” Finch said after the meeting.
The competitive-balance model proponents face an uphill climb. For example, Finch said that he had not heard from one person who supported it. One option that would seem more equitable would be to promote/relegate for individual sports. However, that would be more logistically challenging.
Regardless, it makes all the sense in the world to group schools by how competitive they are as opposed to the size of their enrollments. About half the state high school federations in the country have adopted some form of it. Whatever system is proposed, it will have flaws and kinks to be worked out, and it’s on the reclassification committee to produce a model that works for as much of the membership as possible.
And to turn down such a proposal because it’s not the way it’s always been done would be irresponsible.
