New Georgia HS football seeding model has coaches calling for bigger regions

The race for high school football playoff seeding won’t officially start until August, but the jockeying has already begun.

The game changed last October when the GHSA voted to select and seed every playoff team next season with its Post Season Ranking (PSR) formula, which takes the top 32 teams in each classification regardless of the region they compete in. It’s a stark difference from the GHSA’s former primary model, which simply selected the top four teams in all eight regions’ standings.

In simpler terms, non-region games matter for playoff seeding now. Ideally, it will more accurately select the top 32 teams in each classification since some regions have more playoff-caliber teams than others.

But in the same way that not all regions are equal in talent, they’re also not equal in size. Some coaches, like Worth County’s Jeff Hammond, would like to see their regions grow with the shift to PSR.

“In the past, people were against larger regions because you only get four teams into the playoffs,” Hammond said. “Now, you can have a large region and get seven or eight teams (in the playoffs), so the fifth or sixth team that’s really good doesn’t get left out.”

Worth County struggled to fill out its non-region schedule this year. The Rams only have six other teams in their region, and few schools around its size wanted to risk a loss to the reigning Class A Division-I champions.

In a former era, losing a non-region game to a state championship contender wasn’t all bad. Losing teams could measure themselves against the state’s best without harming their future playoff seeding.

Hammond echoed several coaches’ desire for bigger regions, putting more guaranteed games on the schedule and less empty weeks that need non-region opponents.

“I would prefer to have a (minimum number of teams per region) that are playing all sports, so you don’t run into (a situation where) most teams only have to pick up three or four non-region games and you have to pick up six, and the dates don’t coincide,” Hammond said.

He isn’t alone. Milton coach Ben Reaves, whose team won consecutive Class 5A state titles in 2023 and 2024, also struggled to fill out a 10-game schedule due to a lack of willing non-region competitors.

“I’d be in favor of bigger regions, or if nothing else, just equal regions across the classifications to where we’re all kind of in the same boat, looking for the same amount of games,” Reaves said. “I think that would help things work out a little bit better.”

The Eagles had to leave the state to find their 10th game at Battle Ground Academy in Tennessee. Milton plays in a seven-team region, so Reaves also had to find four non-region opponents willing to face one of Georgia’s most dominant programs over the last decade.

“Whenever you really start getting into the nuts and bolts of it, there’s only a handful of teams statewide that’s going to need non-region games in mid-September, right?” Reaves said. “Some of the bigger regions, they need one or two, and boom, they’re good.”

Reaves considered playing nine regular season games — the minimum required to be playoff-eligible — because he struggled so much to find a 10th.

“I think, if the regions don’t even out numbers-wise and there’s still teams that are having to find five or six non-region games, those are not going to be easy to find,” Reaves said.

Perhaps no coaches have experienced that struggle more than those in the talent-dense Region 1-7A, home to South Georgia powers Valdosta, Colquitt County, Lowndes and Camden County.

Colquitt County coach Sean Calhoun could have used the PSR model last year when his team finished third in the region on a three-way tiebreaker. The lower-seeded Packers didn’t get a single home playoff game and got eliminated by then-No. 1 Grayson in the second round.

Had the PSR model been in place, Calhoun’s team would have earned the No. 7 spot and the opportunity to play multiple games at home.

Calhoun might have plenty to gain from the switch to PSR seeding, but he’d like to see his region’s size change, too. The 10th-year coach doesn’t mind scheduling tough opponents — Colquitt County opens the season at reigning Class 5A champion Thomas County Central — but he’d like a few more guaranteed games.

“Perfect world, I think, is if you could have seven or eight region games and go out and play two to three non-region games,” Calhoun said.

Colquitt County’s five-team region is relatively small, but it has a higher percentage of powerhouses than most regions. So, while Calhoun is happy to play elite non-region competition, he also likes the ability to schedule games he knows he can win.

“I definitely like the flexibility because you play all those teams, and they’re really, really good,” Calhoun said. “You look at what big-time college football teams do.

“They’ll pay those schools to come in, and they’re really paying for a win, and you’re paying for a week to where your starters hopefully don’t have to play the whole game because you’ve got to find a rest every once in a while.”

Flexibility remains important, even as non-region scheduling becomes more difficult. Prince Avenue Christian coach Jon Richt is content with the size of his six-team region even though his team will only play nine regular season games this season.

Richt said he didn’t want to play nine, but he also wouldn’t want an 11-team region that locked in all of his games. Richt wants a 10-game schedule with a handful of non-region opponents that he chose for his team.

“If we just got stuck playing the same 10 teams every year, year in and year out, I could see where that could be monotonous a little bit and probably create some issues on the field, if that makes sense,” Richt said. “At the end of the day, I think having a region schedule and a non-region schedule is good because you do have the familiarity of those teams that are in your region, but you still get to go build your schedule out at the beginning of the year.”

Richt also pointed out that non-region flexibility allows for experiences that players wouldn’t get by only playing games in their geographical area.