How many high school classifications does your state have?

I think Louisiana has to do it that way because it has an odd number of districts (that is, not the bracket-friendly number of eight districts, but nine and sometimes 10 districts per class) in every classification except Class B.

Also, Louisiana is a little funky in that it reclassifies during odd years, while Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas all reclassify in even years. (Arkansas used to reclassify in odd years, but changed it in 1996.) As a result you don't see a lot of Louisiana schools getting home-and-home games with out-of-state schools.

 

Louisiana does it this way completely by choice. It could have an even number of districts if it wants. It prefers to seed. One thing it allows is to not have to be forced to have an even number of districts. Now, if it makes more sense to add a ninth or 11th district, they can.

There were a lot of built in advantages for certain teams with the old regional pairings. For example, in the highest class, the Catholic League from New Orleans (usually, numerically, the last of the 5A districts) always dominated the New Orleans area in baseball. They would routinely run-rule the area public schools that were notoriously weak. And because of the regional nature of the playof bracket, they would get these public schools in the first couple of rounds of the playoffs and some of these Catholic League teams would score close to 50 runs in two playoff games.

So you could count on two, maybe three Catholic League teams in the quarterfinals based on draw. Meanwhile, teams that were comparable to the Catholic League powers from Lafayette, Lake Charles, Shreveport and surburban Baton Rouge were having to go through a grueling post-season run to get to the Final 8.

That was a big incentive to change the bracket.

And just the opposite was true too. In the 80s and most of the 90s, the Monroe schools absolutely owned high school football. Well, the Shreveport schools would have to face the Monroe schools in the first and second round. The result? All Shreveport (large school) teams were toast after week two. Every year. Shreveport felt it had teams as good as the south Louisiana teams that were getting to the quarterfinals and beyond (they couldn't beat the Monroe teams either).

So that was a big motivation. It has worked too. I noticed this year that two of the three Catholic League teams in the playoffs lost in the first round. One was beat 19-0 by one of the Baton Rouge schools. The Catholic League is still good though. Jesuit's in the semifinals.

I don't think there are many people in Louisiana who desire to go back to the fixed, regional brackets.

 

In Georgia, the state just voted down a 4/8 classification for 6 classes. All the Atlanta members wanted the 6 classes (unanimous) while the rest voted against.