Basically promotion and relegation? That makes sense. Question - do you run this throughout the entire high school league like the English Football Pyramid, where, in theory, even a small club team could make their way to the Premiership? Some class 1A team has a ten year run that ends up with them in 6A?
Great questions and I have no idea.
I just know that it makes absolutely no sense for those four high schools to be in that upper division, in football.
Football is special. Well obviously it is, no other sport in the state has near as many divisions.
No other sport is so entrenched at the intersection of "this matters, deeply, to the identity of the school and community" and "this sport is really difficult to be good at, even just a one-off year, so many things have to be done right to even have a chance".
Basketball, I don't know, you can probably just pickup the right 2-3 kids, and suddenly you're a contender.
Hockey, even more special than football in how difficult it is to do well. Kids play club, play year round. There are few schools in the state just already known as "hockey schools". You go there if you want to be serious about high school hockey. And it does matter, in this state, but it's like "niche special". When MPS only has a single team for the whole district, you know it's niche.
Every other sport, on the boys side at least, drops off dramatically in the "importance" department. Baseball, soccer, lacrosse, at matter dramatically less.