​In 1963, Coral Gables downed Robinson (Tampa) for the first-ever FHSAA football state title and the only championship game played that year.Now 63 years later, Florida teams will take the field in hopes of claiming one of 11 different championships sanctioned by the FHSAA. The FHSAA introduced the Open Division for the 2026-27 season, a new championship series that will pull the top eight ranked teams in the state from the traditional state championship series and enter them into their own postseason.Teams will be seeded by their rankings, with seeds 1, 4, 5, and 8 placed in Pool A and seeds 2, 3, 6, and 7 in Pool B. After pool play, the top two teams from each pool (four teams total) will face off in a single elimination tournament to crown the Open Division championship.The new Open Division was created after a handful of teams from select parts of the state have largely dominated the State Series. St. Thomas Aquinas has won 11 state titles in the last 16 years, including seven straight since 2019. Chaminade-Madonna won seven championships in the last nine years. The five teams in Miami that share Traz Powell as a home stadium have accounted for 22 state championships since 2007.Just as a south Florida team claimed the first FHSAA title, the region is still influencing the championship landscape in 2026. Open Division a reminder of ever-changing championship formatWith the new format, there is a good chance most of south Florida’s premier teams programs will by vying for one of the top eight seeds in Florida and not a state championship. St. Thomas Aquinas, Chaminade-Madonna, Miami Central, and Carol City all began the year as top-8 seeds on MaxPreps, along with another traditional power in American Heritage. DeLand head coach Rick Darlington is a three-time state champion and is on the FHSAA Football Advisory committee, which offers guidance to the FHSAA on proposed rules and regulations. He likens the Open Division to the metro-suburban split in 2022, when the state separated schools in large metros like Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa, and Orlando into their own championship series in order to clear the way for the schools those large metros typically trounced in the playoffs.”The FHSAA changes things every two years,” Darlington said at a preseason media day. “Two years ago there was Suburban-Rural, and everybody loved it, then they got rid of it. And now they’ve got different power rankings, no one knows how they work. So who knows what they’re going to do.”The changes implemented by the FHSAA have always been geared toward parity in the postseason. As the Sunshine State Athletic Association began to siphon off member schools, the FHSAA began the Florida Invitational Tournament (FIT) for schools to get another shot at a banner. Now instead of switching athletic associations in order to hunt for a championship, the first 16 teams that do not make the State Series playoffs are entered into their own postseason. The FHSAA went one step further t