Three of Orange County’s oldest high schools, Edgewater, Jones and Apopka, have made history by qualifying for football state championship games next week.
Never before had Orange advanced more than one team to the Florida High School Athletic Association finals in a season.
Now the question is, has the Orlando area caught up with the tidal wave of talent South Florida again will send to the finals?
Miami-Dade County has five finalists. Champagnat Catholic of Hialeah played in Thursday night’s Class 2A game in Tallahassee, and Miami Columbus (8A), Miami Central (6A), Northwestern (5A) and Booker T. Washington (4A) are coming to Daytona Beach in pursuit of titles next week.
Add in national polls championship contender Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas (7A) and Hollywood Chaminade-Madonna (3A), both of Broward County, and South Florida has a finalist in all seven of the classes above the 1A rural division.
That pipeline of college prospects shows up on the scoreboard. Dade and Broward schools, renowned by many as the nation’s most fertile recruiting ground, have combined to collect 28 of the 49 available championships (above rural 1A) over the past seven seasons. That’s more than the rest of the state combined.
HIstory is still on South Florida’s side. And so are computerized power ratings.
Joe Pinkos, the Titusville attorney who has been compiling Florida high school football power rankings for decades, forecasts six of this year’s seven South Florida finalists to prevail in championship games. The only underdog is Columbus (10-4) against Apopka (12-1) in the Friday, Dec. 13, Class 8A championship game.
Pinkos pegs Jones (13-1), playing its first FHSAA final, as a two-touchdown underdog against Miami Northwestern (12-2), which has claimed six crowns since 1995, in the Saturday afternoon, Dec. 14, Class 5A final. And 10-time champion Aquinas (13-0) is an 18-point favorite against Edgewater (13-1) in 7A.
The MaxPreps power ratings also predict wins by Aquinas, Northwestern and Apopka.
“If Division I players mean the winning edge and my evaluations are correct, then every one of those South Florida teams should win,” said Dwight Thomas, who scouts Florida high school football prospects for colleges as an XOS Digital talent evaluator.
Thomas coached high school football for 33 years in Florida, including a 1980s run at Pensacola Escambia with Emmitt Smith as his bell-cow back. For the past 25 years, he has been evaluating prospects.
“Dade and Broward are going to be No. 1 by whatever numbers you want to look at when it comes to football talent,” Thomas said. “I have said this forever. … There will be more players on NFL rosters, and more college signees, and more first-round draft choices that will come out of Dade and Broward than anywhere in the country. Every year.”
Teams from the current Sentinel coverage area are 4-12-1 against Dade and Broward in state football finals. That includes the 1991 tie between Evans and Miami Southridge, which prompted the FHSAA to approve the use of tiebreakers in championship games.
The area winners against Dade/Broward were Apopka three times (2001, 2012 and 2014) and Seminole with its 2008 comeback win against Northwestern at Camping World Stadium.
But Dr. Phillips (2017) and Bishop Moore (2015) also have captured championships in that span — giving the area five winners in the past 11 years. That’s a huge step up from the previous 37 seasons (1971-2007), when the only three championships claimed by Orlando-area schools were the Evans co-championship of 1991 and titles by Eustis (1983), Kissimmee Osceola (1998) and Apopka (2001).
bcollings@orlandosentinel.com
