Current and Future State Finals locations

[MarkECannon]

This may not be news to you but the state football finals location picture appears to be becoming clearer. The events have jumped around since the long time Orlando at Camping World Stadium to Tallahassee (twice), Daytona Beach (current administration has vowed to never return) and Ft. Lauderdale (great venue that priced itself out of contention).

The smaller classes old 1A to the old 3A played many years in Tallahassee at the city owned stadium, Gene Cox Stadium. The Rural classes will now play their 2 divisions at The Villages this year. The 1A-7A classes will be playing in Miami at Pitbull Stadium on the campus of FIU. With the music enthusiasts on this board no one needs to introduced to the artist Pitbull who has sponsored the stadium therefore Pitbull Stadium.

From my information the FHSAA has agreed to play the larger classes games at Pitbull for 3 years. The same for the Villages for the Rural classification at the Villages, H. G. Morse Stadium, which currently has a capacity of 6000 with the potential of adding 4000. Apparently, after the 3 years all the state finals will be played at The Villages. That’s right. The high school football finals will be played at a town that is predominantly a retirement community. Could anything be more old school Florida than that?! It makes a lot of since location wise. Personally, I cautiously think it is a decent idea. For the veteran posters on the board Neutral Observer would have a field day with this. His rants would have provided a lot of content but I digress.

My group of friends that I’ve made on this board have an attendance streak for the larger classes of over 20 years. Thanks to GoLincolnTrojansGo we have a similar streak with the smaller classes.

 

[gatorman001]

Im generally against these farest reaches of the state type venues, for the championships games. You have to go back to 2010 for the last time a Championship game had a attendance figure over 10,000, that being the 6A Championship game of 10,078, which also ended a nice run of over-all attendance going back to 2005 where over-all atendance exceeded 33,000 and/or a individual game exceeded 10,000. The 2005-2006 championship games were in Miami, and the 2007-2010 were in Orlando. The distance between Pensacola and Miami is 674 miles or 9 1/2 hours by if traveling by car. These games beyond all he money.....(which I'd love to do a deep dive into, but that's a whole other subject), I believe if I knew exacly what the FHSAA was prioritizing, I could do a much better job at locating venues to play these games, than what is being done. To me getting fanny's in seats what should be paramount......what's been done obviously isnt.

I can think immediately of three HS venues that are pretty close to being centrally located, 2 of which could house over 10,000, 2 of which have truf and 1 with natural grass. I believe what the FHSAA needs is a Elon Musk/ Vivak Ramasawmy DOGE type commintee, to review and do a deep dive into the over-all efficency of this organization. I dont believe the folks running this outfit are giving the schools that belong or the fans standing on the outside looking in.............. their best effort!