It’s a new football season, and with it being an even year – that means reclassification! This year is a bit different in Class 7A as the playoff format has been changed up to mix together all regions in the playoffs to try and get a better sense of the best two teams in the state.
The past six years have seen Thompson represent the North in the championship game while Central-Phenix City (4) and Auburn (2) have represented the south. Before that, Hoover represented in three of the first four championships with their sister school Spain Park in the only other game. Only a total of 7 schools have played in the Super 7 since 7A began play in 2014.
Some of the complaints of this system has been the domination of Regions 2 and 3. Region 3 has represented every single Super 7 and Region 2 has represented all but 3, in which McGill-Toolen was the lone Region 1 representative (and lone private school to play in 7A…and they aren’t in 7A anymore). Region 4 hasn’t won a first round playoff game since 2019 and Region 1 has only won 5 total playoff games in that span (with Mary Montgomery winning the lone second round match-up last season).
The AHSAA has presented a solution now to seed teams across the bracket and eliminate “North” and “South” from the bracket like in 1A-6A that has 32 teams make the bracket across 8 regions instead of 16 teams across 4 regions. Regions will rotate first round match-ups, and this season is Region 2 vs. Region 4 and Region 1 vs. Region 3.
Here is what the bracket looks like this year:
While this spreads the games out, this also means that by the semi-finals – we theoretically could have all teams from one region. While this ultimately may end up allowing the two actual best teams to face each other, it also could alienate teams even more than before.
Here is how the bracket would have looked last season with this seeding:
While we ultimately may have ended up with the same two teams, a few interesting match-ups could have changed things:
– Hewitt-Trussville at Central-Phenix City in the second round
– Central potentially going through Hewitt-Trussville at home, Vestavia on the road AND Thompson at a neutral site to win a title
– Vestavia having to travel to Mobile and then potentially Madison back to back weeks instead of Decatur then Alabaster (Hoover would have also had a difficult traveling schedule)
– Thompson having to travel to either Mobile (Mary Montgomery) or Auburn in the semi’s instead of hosting another Region 3 team (unless Hoover pulled two upsets)
It will be interesting to see how it plays out for sure, especially with a move like Prattville to Region 3 (if they can work their way back into the playoff hunt in a tough region).
As we near the season, we will be getting things up to date here at ALPreps.com and on X @ALPreps. Make sure to make this your homepage during the season for live scores and updates and of course our bracketology starting after Week 6!