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THREAD: I think it would be smart to avoid going down the rabbit hole of trying to project out conferences, which is why you haven't seen us do that on HSOT. NCHSAA has not said what criteria/priorities they will use to formulate conferences & there are many ways it could go.
For example: Are they leaning towards smaller conferences? Or bigger conferences? How does reducing football season by a game impact conference size? Or does it? Are we going to try to limit split confs like the last alignment? Or might we create more splits than ever before?
We also don't know what the NCHSAA is thinking about the playoff format going forward. Right now, conference setup is closely related to the playoff format. Does that continue? Or will we see a change in that process too? That could impact formation of conferences.
Given the financial impact of Covid on HS athletic depts, there are strong arguments to be made for radically changing the way conferences are created. @JMBpreps calls it "play your neighbor" -- where class is not as important as location, then go your separate ways for playoffs.
Of course, there are arguments for keeping conferences tied closely to classifications. Especially if we don't change the way the playoffs are setup. It would be hard to justify going the route of "play your neighbor" without changing the playoffs.
There are lots of questions we don't know the answers to when it comes to how conferences will be created. Don't assume the way things have been done before is how they will be done this time -- so far, this has been a complete overhaul to the process.
