If the Florida High School Athletic Association’s Open Division existed for the 2025-26 school year, Buchholz High School football would’ve been competing for more than the Class 6A state championship. As the eighth-ranked team at the end of the regular season, the Bobcats would’ve had a shot at something bigger.
During the FHSAA’s Board of Directors meeting June 9, the committee approved an Open Division format that places the top eight teams, regardless of classification, into their own playoff bracket.
Buchholz football coach Mark Whittemore said the school wants to win its second state title in program history, but wouldn’t be opposed to playing for higher stakes during an interview with Steve Russell on Sports Scene Wednesday.
“We’ve also been ranked there at the tail end of that deal, which if you’re the seventh or eighth team it’s exciting to be able to go play in that competitive format, but you’re also foregoing a chance to maybe be that state champ,” Whittemore said.
The changes impact football, girls volleyball, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, baseball, softball, boys and girls lacrosse and flag football. For football, MaxPreps rankings at the end of the regular season determine the top-eight teams, while the postseason for all other sports will be based on rankings after the district tournament.
Under the previous format, schools competed within their class during the postseason, allowing programs like St. Thomas Aquinas football, who’s won seven straight state championships, to control the playoffs. The new format gives Florida high schools on the cusp of the playoffs a chance to make a postseason run.
Forest High School finds itself in the Bobcats’ division for all impacted sports after the FHSAA’s updated football classifications for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 seasons placed the two schools in together.
The rivalry between the two schools runs across sports. In 2026, the Buchholz baseball team, ranked No. 11 in the state, knocked the Forest out of the FHSAA Baseball 6A District 2 Tournament with a 5-0 win April 15.
Forest athletic director Paul Austin said the changes won’t impact how Forest coaches approach the season but appreciates what the new format might mean for his programs.
“We’ve always been right close to qualifying for the postseason and it may give us an opportunity to get in,” Austin said. “I don’t know if it’s going to, for us, do much one way or the other.”
Austin, who has been with Forest for seven years, thinks the Open Division adds excitement to the postseason.
“When it comes down to the teams in this open division coming down to the championship, I think there’s going to be a lot of excitement with it because you’re talking about the best players and the best teams in the state of Florida finally going against each other no matter what class,” Austin said.
With the changes going into effect next season, Austin said his teams will wait to see the impact. Regardless of how the format pans out, Whittemore said he likes the FHSAA’s willingness to adapt.
“Whether we turn around three years from now and say it was bad or good, I just like the fact that we’re being innovative and we’re trying to answer questions,” Whittemore said. “So I applaud the FHSAA for being proactive here.”
FHSAA executive director Craig Damon said the organization got the idea from the Arizona Interscholastic Association, which introduced an Open Division format for football in 2019. The FHSAA tweaked the Arizona model, which features a 12-team bracket, to include the top eight teams, divided into two pools between the one, four, five and eight seeds and the two, three, six and seven seeds.
To ensure each school gets a home game, each pool will play a round-robin format before the top two teams from each pool advance to the Final Four.
“We want our schools to still have an opportunity to bring and generate some funds and some revenue by hosting a home game, whether it’s through concessions or parking,” Damon said. “Everybody having that higher seed would probably get two home games out of the three games that they play.”
The Open Division also opens the door to include more teams in the postseason.
Because the rankings do not factor in classification, Damon said postseason may feature never-seen-before matchups and smaller schools going head-to-head against larger schools like Chaminade-Madonna (Class 2A District 7) versus St. Thomas (Class 5A District 15).
After Cardinal Newman ended Chaminade’s 4-year title streak with a 17-14 win Dec. 11, the Wildcats claimed the No. 9 spot in MaxPreps final Florida football rankings. Damon said Chaminade-Madonna football coach Dameon Jones welcomes the Open Division because of difficulties scheduling bigger schools against the Lions.
“Down in South Florida some of the top teams, the bigger schools won’t play them in the regular season and he’s tried to get them to play them and they won’t play them,” Damon said. “So he’s like, ‘Okay put me in the Open Division because we’ll play anybody any time.’ So it’s good to hear coaches of teams with that caliber that are small schools say, ‘Hey, we don’t care because we feel we can compete with anybody any given day.’”
For the teams that make the Open Division, the FHSAA will send them a banner or trophy that acknowledges the achievement of making the top eight.
The Open Division games will also align with the regular state championships in each of the affected sports. For football, the Final Four will likely take place at the Villages as the neutral site, but the organization hasn’t yet decided on neutral sites for the other sports.
The FHSAA board began discussing an Open Division concept about three years ago and approved the idea in 2024, but continued workshopping the format after initially picturing a double elimination tournament. The FHSAA will make adjustments based on how well the Open Division works next season, but hopes other states follow suit.
“I think everybody’s watching Florida because we tend to be the leader when it comes to not being afraid to try new things so I’m excited to see where we go with this,” Damon said. “Hopefully it could be a model that other states try to emulate moving forward.”
As the FHSAA continues trying to meet the wants of its athletes, creating a national league may be in the cards in the future.
“I’ve been told that if you don’t evolve, you become extinct,” Damon said. “So we’ve got to look at what our kids, our student athletes, our coaches and our families are asking or looking for and try to find a way within our system to provide some of those things.”
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