They filed a lawsuit over the new competitive balance rule. St Paul’s has enough money that they could probably tie this up in the courts for years.

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2018/05/st_pauls_files_federal_suit_ag.html

Simple solution.......They don't like the AHSAA rules, they don't have to be a member. As a private school, they chose to join the AHSAA. And also as a private school, they get to pick and choose athletes from wherever they want so there should be "competitive balance" rules applied to them.

I wonder why UMS Wright didn’t get moved up to 5A in football ?? I’m sure Terry Curtis didn’t have anything to do with that..

I talked to a Madison academy parent last weekend and they weren’t happy about it either. If I understood right their enrollment counted 1.35 for every student already but now it would also be based on championships won. He said they would be playing in 5a next year.

They already have a 1.35 multiplier.

According to the article Alabama is the only state that does this. SOME high schools get moved up and down every two years and they weren't competitive in the class they were already in. These private schools will be or soon be as good as any team in that class. They will just have to recruit more top players imo.Alot of private school players go to major colleges so I don't think it's any more dangerous for them to play in a higher classification.

Quit your whining. Simple solution... stop recruiting top athletes and recruit top students.

Private schools with the ability to recruit players shouldn’t be competing in the AHSAA anyways.

My senior year we lost the State Championship to a private school who had recruited every single ball player on the court for them. Let all the private schools play each other and let us poor folk enjoy our poor people stuff.

But I bet they wasn’t whining when they was busy beating up on the Pisgah’s, Sylvania’s and Geraldine’s of the world in football.

We played them a few times in High School Basketball. They had a 7 footer straight from Africa, name was Bawa. There wasn’t much that our team of 1A country boys could do with him. They wasn’t whining when they beat up on 1A teams either.

Bawa didn’ have a birth certificate either if I remember correctly.

So, is he is running for president?

O'Bawa?

You guys realize that the majority of state championships in football are won by public schools, right? It’s not like a private school wins every division every year, or even the majority of classifications every year.

Not only that....you can bet your sweet ass that public schools recruit as well.

I can promise you Hoover does. Schools like Thompson have joined the game since Freeman arrived.

It happens.

You're right. But you get a school like Madison Academy that will rack up every state championship that year for multiple years in a row. Only fair that if they're going to recruit players then they work off the multiplier as well as what ever other competitive balance rules that'll put them in a competitive classification.

Private schoolers can get pissy and think it's not fair, but the truth is they have a competitive advantage by being able to recruit. So there has to be rules to address that.... Or... If they don't like it then drop out of AHSAA. Simple as that really.

I most certainly know that. In those cases, if they are losing more then they win, the private school should fire the Athletic Director and the Head of Recruiting Personel.

Madison County was super excited to move up to 5a, they were finally getting away from Madison Academy....except that Madison Academy also moved to 5a and still in the same area. lol

Madison Academy’s a 5A now? We beat them in the 2010 3A baseball state championship. Luverne has since moved back down to 2A.

Moving up for the upcoming seasons

So why shouldn’t this rule apply to really good public schools? When a Sweetwater, Spanish Fort, etc comes along and wins 4/5 state championships, why shouldn’t they move up? You can bet that public schools recruit just as much as the private schools do.

Here’s one for you. My alma mater is a private school. While my siblings were in high school, they won or came in second in track and cross country all 4 years. They didn’t have a single recruit on their team. Under the new rules, they would move up, yet they hadn’t benefited from recruiting at all. How is that fair?