Multiple Class 7A football coaches seemed mostly positive about a new playoff format approved by the AHSAA’s Central Board of Control this week.

On Wednesday, the Board approved a postseason format beginning in 2024 where each of the regions would match up against the other three in the first round on a rotating basis. The “rotating basis” is the big key.

Since the inception of Class 7A in 2014, Region 1 teams (Mobile) have always played Region 2 teams (Auburn/Dothan) in the first round with Region 3 (Birmingham) matching up with Region 4 (Huntsville/Decatur/Florence).

That will not always be the case in the future.

“I think it’s all positive,” Tuscaloosa County coach Adam Winegarden said. “At the end of the day, the teams that are going to be in the finals are probably doing to be in the finals regardless. I think it’s a good change. I’m for it for sure.”

The playoff format in Class 7A has differed from that in Classes 1A-6A historically because only 16 teams (out of 32) reach the playoffs in Class 7A, resulting in one less playoff round. In the current format, Region 3 teams have dominated overall, while Region 2 teams have dominated in the South half of the bracket.

Thompson (R3) has won the last four state titles. Before Mark Freeman turned the Warriors into a dynasty, Josh Niblett and Hoover (another R3 team) won three titles. The only other 7A teams to win state titles are Central-Phenix City from Region 2 (2018) and McGill-Toolen from Region 1 (2015).

“I think it will add a little variety to the playoff pairings in the first and second rounds,” Enterprise coach Ben Blackmon said. “You will play teams maybe you haven’t played before in stadiums you haven’t seen, and I think the potential is there for two southern teams or two northern teams to play in the state title game in a given year.”

The exact first-round rotation beyond 2023 has not been decided nor has the rest of the future 7A playoff brackets. Auburn High coach Keith Etheredge expressed some concern about a top-seeded team from one region having to travel to face a lower seeded team from another region in the second or third round.

That hasn’t been the case in most years in Class 7A because Region 3 and Region 2 teams largely have been facing rematches with region rivals in the second and third rounds. It does, however, happen fairly regularly in Classes 1A-6A where teams play four rounds of the playoffs before they get to the state title game.

Overall, though, Etheredge said he thinks the change “will be fine.”

“It definitely changes things up, and I think change is good sometimes,” he said. “People get used to the same thing. Is it easy to do the way we’ve always done it? Probably, but I’m OK with change in general.”

The desire for a least a small change could be what led the Board to approve the new format. Thompson and Hoover have played in the North semifinals for five straight years, and Hoover has played in all nine 7A semifinals. In the South, Central-Phenix City and Auburn have played in the last four semifinal games, and Central has played in eight straight.

“Anytime you get a dominant North or South team, people are looking for a change, but that’s fine with us,” Freeman said. “It’s tough to go through Hewitt-Trussville and Hoover and the people in our region twice. The way I look at it is we are playing to get in the playoffs. Once you get there, you are going to have to beat the best teams at some point anyway.”

Freeman said his preference for a new format would have been to seed the playoff teams 1-16 after the regular season and play it out that way. However, he didn’t seem to have any huge concerns with the approved format.

One possible concern could be added travel for schools, especially in the years Huntsville and Mobile-area teams would meet in first-round games. If Region 4 teams played Region 1 teams in the first round of the 2022 playoffs, the matchups would have been:

Mary G. Montgomery at Austin – 344 miles, one way.

Fairhope at Florence – 376 miles

Huntsville at Baker – 357 miles

Bob Jones at Foley – 356 miles

“If I’m in the playoffs, I don’t care how far I’m traveling,” said Winegarden, who has also coached at Fairhope and Auburn. “When I coached in Georgia, it was the same case. You may have had a long travel situation there, but there was never much discussion about it. Here, I think it is discussed because we emphasize it a lot more.”

Central Board member Terry Curtis said he had taken an informal poll of coaches whose team might have to travel from one end of the state to the other.

“In polling them maybe even as far back as last summer, everybody in Region 1 said they had no problem in going to Huntsville and vice-versa,” the UMS-Wright head coach said. “It kind of surprised me, and it kind of didn’t. I think people are tired of playing the same teams in the playoffs.”

One of those is Mary G. Montgomery coach Zach Golson.

“I think it’s going to be a good deal,” he said. “It definitely will create some new matchups, and I think that will be intriguing. I think the travel might be tough at times, but I also think it creates better opportunities from a matchup standpoint. I think that will be fun for fans, fun for everyone.”