AHSAA board approves expansion of 6A football playoff format

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WBRC) - The Alabama High School Athletic Association’s (AHSAA) Central Board of Control (CBOC) has approved the expansion of the 6A playoff format from 16 to 24 teams at their winter meeting Friday.

“We thank our coaches from the AHSAA’s largest classification for diligently working on this new playoff format. These changes will give more schools a chance to host playoff games in the future,” said AHSAA Executive Director Heath Harmon.

The AHSAA says the other five public school classifications will still have 32 teams advance to the playoffs.

The expansion of the 6A playoffs comes on the heels of the AHSAA overhauling the classification system in the state where they eliminated the 7A class and created a new classification system for private schools.

The restructuring, put into place after a 13-2 vote by the Central Board, will officially separate private and public schools for postseason and championship activities, while revamping the association’s classification system.

Private schools will still able to compete in regular season play with public schools but will now be split into Single A and Double A classifications.

Double A will feature the 17 biggest private schools in the state while Single A will feature the remaining private schools across Alabama.

For public schools, the AHSAA is moving back to a six classification, 1A-6A format, with 6A featuring the 32 biggest schools in the state while the remaining 1A-5A are given an even distribution of the remaining schools.

In addition to the changes of the 6A playoff format, the AHSAA says the CBOC also voted to add a sub-region round of competition in the state volleyball playoff, following a similar pattern in the basketball playoff format.

Officials say winners of the sub-regional will advance to super regionals, and four teams in each class will continue to advance from each super regional to the AHSAA Elite Eight State Volleyball Championships.

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