2024 MN High School Football thread

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State of Football said:
I know coaches wanted seeding and one year is a small sample size, but last year’s games were more competitive than in 2024? It will be interesting how it plays moving forward.
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It was two years and comparing last year to this year is difficult when teams lose a whole class of kids each year.

This year had 1 dominant team in my opinion and a handful of other quality teams, that depended a lot on matchups each week.

In the end MG beat Tonka X2, Shakopee, Edina, Eden Prairie, Anoka, and Blaine.

There is a ton of D1 talent across the board.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
It was two years and comparing last year to this year is difficult when teams lose a whole class of kids each year.

This year had 1 dominant team in my opinion and a handful of other quality teams, that depended a lot on matchups each week.

In the end MG beat Tonka X2, Shakopee, Edina, Eden Prairie, Anoka, and Blaine.

There is a ton of D1 talent across the board.
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I think he's talking about all classes as there wasn't a close competitive game except for 5A and nine-person
 

MaxyJR1 said:
It was two years and comparing last year to this year is difficult when teams lose a whole class of kids each year.

This year had 1 dominant team in my opinion and a handful of other quality teams, that depended a lot on matchups each week.

In the end MG beat Tonka X2, Shakopee, Edina, Eden Prairie, Anoka, and Blaine.

There is a ton of D1 talent across the board.
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6A’s bracket hasn’t changed. I’m referring to the other classes. As an example, I was hoping Minnesota v Springfield would have been a better game.
 

State of Football said:
6A’s bracket hasn’t changed. I’m referring to the other classes. As an example, I was hoping Minnesota v Springfield would have been a better game.
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I think it’s hard sometimes due to geography to get perfect seeding. Add to it that these teams aren’t always familiar with each other and a bad matchup can happen.

Sections usually end up being rematches from the season. Coaches are familiar with the opponents.

Minneota’s toughest games were to a section team Bold

MG and Tonka saw each other
Alexandria and Elk River Saw each other
9-player was a good match up with teams scoring way under their season averages

Sometimes championship games can go bad for teams and feel like 41- doughnut.

Jackson, Stewartville and Becker are really good.
 

State of Football said:
I know coaches wanted seeding and one year is a small sample size, but last year’s games were more competitive than in 2024? It will be interesting how it plays moving forward.
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I feel like that’s more true this year because maple grove had a huge chasm between teams 2-3-4-5 and in retrospect 2-5 might have all been from same section (Tonka, shakopee, Edina, Eden prairie)

Maple grove may have had the toughest road to championship ever. I believe they played Burnsville then teams 2-5 in next 4 rounds
 
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In class 1A nobody cou
State of Football said:
6A’s bracket hasn’t changed. I’m referring to the other classes. As an example, I was hoping Minnesota v Springfield would have been a better game.
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No body in class 1A could match up with Minneota... That includes Bold. The start of the section championship game was way out of character for Minneota. They returned a ton of guys from a Championship team the year before. I think they only graduated 3 starters, I could be wrong. Anyone who really dissected the 1A games could see the outcome of Springfield/Minneota the week prior.
 

this was the 3rd year in a row that Minneota faced Springfield in the Prep Bowl. the scores:
2022 - Minneota wins 28-21
2023 - Minneota wins 43-22
2024 - Minneota wins 70-20

so familiarity didn't help Springfield. Minneota was just that much better. You could make a case that this year's Minneota team was one of the most dominant - for its class - in the history of the state FB playoffs.

as far as margins of victory, just out of curiosity, I compared last year with this year

6A: 2023 - 1pt gm / 2024 - 7 pt gm
5A: 2023 - 3 pt gm / 2024 - 9 pt gm
4A: 2023 - 8 pt gm / 2024 - 16 pt gm
3A: 2023 - 30 pt gm / 2024 - 21 pt gm
2A: 2023 - 18 pt gm / 2024 - 16 pt gm
1A: 2023 - 21 pt gm / 2024 - 50 pt gm
9p: 2023 - 2 pt gm / 2024 - 12 pt gm

so 5 of the 7 classes had closer games last year. but I don't know if that has anything to do with seeding. I tend to think that it simply means the top team was a little more superior compared to its opponent. you could seed 1-8 with no North/South division, or just draw the names out of a hat, and I suspect the same teams would have won in most cases.
 

Crazy that Minneota woulda won 4 in a row without Mayer Lutheran fielding a surprisingly talented team in 2021.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
this was the 3rd year in a row that Minneota faced Springfield in the Prep Bowl. the scores:
2022 - Minneota wins 28-21
2023 - Minneota wins 43-22
2024 - Minneota wins 70-20

so familiarity didn't help Springfield. Minneota was just that much better. You could make a case that this year's Minneota team was one of the most dominant - for its class - in the history of the state FB playoffs.

as far as margins of victory, just out of curiosity, I compared last year with this year

6A: 2023 - 1pt gm / 2024 - 7 pt gm
5A: 2023 - 3 pt gm / 2024 - 9 pt gm
4A: 2023 - 8 pt gm / 2024 - 16 pt gm
3A: 2023 - 30 pt gm / 2024 - 21 pt gm
2A: 2023 - 18 pt gm / 2024 - 16 pt gm
1A: 2023 - 21 pt gm / 2024 - 50 pt gm
9p: 2023 - 2 pt gm / 2024 - 12 pt gm

so 5 of the 7 classes had closer games last year. but I don't know if that has anything to do with seeding. I tend to think that it simply means the top team was a little more superior compared to its opponent. you could seed 1-8 with no North/South division, or just draw the names out of a hat, and I suspect the same teams would have won in most cases.
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I think if you really wanted a chance to have great games in the semis and finals in 5A though 9-man you would need the state tournament to start at the section championship and then seed 1-16. But that even gets weird because you would need to have a better system in place than the QRF. The reason I saw that is there are some schools that get scheduled games with teams in classes higher and lower than their perspective class.

You could go back to what we had prior to 1972 where a writer from the trib just decided who the state champion was.
 



Ranger692 said:
I think if you really wanted a chance to have great games in the semis and finals in 5A though 9-man you would need the state tournament to start at the section championship and then seed 1-16. But that even gets weird because you would need to have a better system in place than the QRF. The reason I saw that is there are some schools that get scheduled games with teams in classes higher and lower than their perspective class.

You could go back to what we had prior to 1972 where a writer from the trib just decided who the state champion was.
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If you really wanted a great state tournament you’d consolidate a class so that you only need 48 good teams instead of 56.
In some cases you have straight up mediocre teams in the tourney.

For instance.
Cretin’s team isn’t a top 50 team in the history of the school in.
Well now Owatonna who is decent but no where near there teams that were contenders of theirs recently gets into the semifinals

Well this means Alex isn’t really challenged. In 5a there were 3 teams of 8 who were just flat out average to above average teams historically (STA, Cretin, Owatonna)

There aren’t enough good teams to run 7 state tournaments anymore
 

Some guy said:
If you really wanted a great state tournament you’d consolidate a class so that you only need 48 good teams instead of 56.
In some cases you have straight up mediocre teams in the tourney.

For instance.
Cretin’s team isn’t a top 50 team in the history of the school in.
Well now Owatonna who is decent but no where near there teams that were contenders of theirs recently gets into the semifinals

Well this means Alex isn’t really challenged. In 5a there were 3 teams of 8 who were just flat out average to above average teams historically (STA, Cretin, Owatonna)

There aren’t enough good teams to run 7 state tournaments anymore
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Where are you setting the parameter to consolidation? 4A - 6A?
57 teams in 9-man
58 in 1A
55 in 2A
55 in 3A
44 in 4A
46 in 5A
32 in 6A
 

Ranger692 said:
Where are you setting the parameter to consolidation? 4A - 6A?
57 teams in 9-man
58 in 1A
55 in 2A
55 in 3A
44 in 4A
46 in 5A
32 in 6A
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well - just for fun. if you take all the teams in 1A through 6A, add them together and divide by 5, you get an average of 58.

so you would have 5 11-man classes with 58 teams in each class. (and 57 in 9pl). that gives you 6 sections with 7 teams and two sections with 8 teams in each class. then it just becomes a matter of figuring out where to draw the enrollment lines to produce the desired number of teams in each class.

If you wanted to have 48 teams in the biggest class, then you could go 60 in class 4, 3 & 2, and 62 in class 1.

It will never happen because the MSHSL members would die before allowing it. but it's still fun to talk about.
 

Ranger692 said:
Where are you setting the parameter to consolidation? 4A - 6A?
57 teams in 9-man
58 in 1A
55 in 2A
55 in 3A
44 in 4A
46 in 5A
32 in 6A
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I would think all 7 classes would be compressed a bit.


To me the best setup would be something like this.

I think the best ideal is:

48 - 5A
48 - 4A
48 - 3A
48 - 2A
Final 155. This is harder to be rigid on.

Damnit the math doesn’t work. I actually don’t like consolidating a class. Just balancing.
48 - 6A
48 - 5a
48 - 4a
48 - 3a
48 - 2a

That’s 240
Final 107 broken up into 1A and 2a

6 team sections in every section.
Regular season schedule is play 5 in your section weeks 3-7.
Self schedule within your class weeks 1, 2, and 8. Can play a team from a different class if 4 teams agree (2 from each class)to swap so everyone is full.

1-4 seeds make playoffs in a 32 team playoff for the class set up similarly to the current 6a model.
5-6 seeds play a 9th game exhibition against a different 5-6 seed.


This allows “playoff berth” to be a smaller measure of success that teams can sell to the community.
This also allows teams to self schedule 3 games for competitiveness/geography/rivalry.
This essentially makes each class its own district.
 
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It was a good season for high school football. A few dominate teams. Becker High School allowed one TD in the first quarter all year and zero points in the third quarter. Elk River threw like 1 or 2 passes the whole season.
 

I’d say we might be in the minority. There are different levels of success and perception.
Kids want to say they made state. In 6A they want to make the dome. MSHSL defines state as representing the whole state.

No matter how you slice it, only one team per section can make state. The 2nd best team in the state could miss state. That’s ok.

All levels of sport have criteria and systems to get teams to playoffs.

D1 has a playoff with auto spots that go against seeding
D2 & D3 have regional brackets that force teams to play the teams from conference early in the playoffs

Having representation is good for the sport IMO.

In HS you have so much diversity in programs and communities. Cutting classes would likely kill programs.

I’d argue if you added a class to Hockey some programs would be less likely to form cooperatives.

Yes there is a limit, but I don’t think MN is out of line with how it functions
 

bottom line for me is that winning a state championship should be an accomplishment.

I just think that 32 teams is not enough for the largest class.

If there ever is a re-organization, I'd like to see at least 48 teams in the largest class. as I said earlier, I would be fine with five classes of 11-man.

but the MSHSL loves to hand out medals, ribbons and trophies, so the more teams winning titles of some sort, the happier that makes the MSHSL.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
bottom line for me is that winning a state championship should be an accomplishment.

I just think that 32 teams is not enough for the largest class.

If there ever is a re-organization, I'd like to see at least 48 teams in the largest class. as I said earlier, I would be fine with five classes of 11-man.

but the MSHSL loves to hand out medals, ribbons and trophies, so the more teams winning titles of some sort, the happier that makes the MSHSL.
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They don't love it that much, they give teams 40 medals for section championship games. If your team has more people than 40, you buy the rest. Even the 9-man teams have more than 40 people who deserve a championship medal. Coaches, trainers, managers, they all had something to do with the success of the program
 

Ranger692 said:
They don't love it that much, they give teams 40 medals for section championship games. If your team has more people than 40, you buy the rest. Even the 9-man teams have more than 40 people who deserve a championship medal. Coaches, trainers, managers, they all had something to do with the success of the program
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If 9 player teams have 40 they shouldn’t be playing 9 player. I don’t want my school paying for your bloated rosters. Give me a break. Some teams have their 9th graders dress for state that have never played.. They don’t deserve medals. That doesn’t happen in any other sport…
 

I know it’s not Minnesota HS football but I’m looking forward to seeing Alabama HS football on Friday night in Birmingham. Watching Parker HS and Na’eem Offord who just flipped from Ohio State to Auburn. I’m also going to the Iron Bowl Saturday in Tuscaloosa. Bucket list for me
 

State of Football said:
I know it’s not Minnesota HS football but I’m looking forward to seeing Alabama HS football on Friday night in Birmingham. Watching Parker HS and Na’eem Offord who just flipped from Ohio State to Auburn. I’m also going to the Iron Bowl Saturday in Tuscaloosa. Bucket list for me
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Sounds pretty fun. Enjoy!
 

State of Football said:
If 9 player teams have 40 they shouldn’t be playing 9 player. I don’t want my school paying for your bloated rosters. Give me a break. Some teams have their 9th graders dress for state that have never played.. They don’t deserve medals. That doesn’t happen in any other sport…
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We had 42 kids on roster. When we run our #1 defense we have 11 guys on defense and 2 offense running the scout offense as fast as we can go. That's 33 kids practicing all at once and the no2s on defense rotating in very 3 or 4 plays... We also run our offense in a similar way So our entire roster is making our no1 defense/offense better each practice, please tell me why our 9th graders aren't a part of the team again?

Football is different than any other sport. There are 33 starting spots. (sure some guys take up multiple of those 33, but we have started freshman on offense, defense and special teams every year I have coached) Basketball there is 5, baseball there is 9, I could go on but I don't think you would get it anyway. Sounds to me like you have no idea what small school football looks like and are part of what has killed small town rivalries with the district schedules.

If you made it to a Section championship your 9th graders have played more than enough to have lettered for some schools.... You think the Minneota freshman have never played?
 

Not a bad morning for the state champs

 




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