There was a collective sigh of relief felt throughout Hillsborough County after it was announced by the FHSAA that District 8-6A also known as the “District of Doom” would be broken up for the foreseeable future. The massive 8-team district assignment that caused many sleepless nights for staffs at Armwood, Blake, Chamberlain, Hillsborough, Jefferson, Lennard, Leto and Robinson for years was to undergo a makeover. Four teams are now gone from that list as Lennard and Leto head to Class 7A, while Jefferson and Robinson find themselves in the same district in Class 5A.

Everyone knew that Armwood and Hillsborough together would always create a traffic jam at the top no matter who else was in there with them based on the cycle of prospects that were on the rosters, but with schools like Jefferson and Robinson in the mix people got even more frustrated with the fact that those teams were becoming regulars in the playoffs and although were good teams in their own right, would have to play nearly flawless ball week-in/week-out.

Enter Lennard into the equation. The longshot-Longhorns found themselves at 7-3 after three seasons in which they won just three games; effectively ruining everyone else’s chances at getting that runner-up spot to Armwood and the preseason predictions by the pundits alike. By the end of the season, half the district (Armwood, Hillsborough, Jefferson and Lennard were all at least two games over .500 and teams like Robinson, King, Blake (with the current #1 DT in the nation now off to IMG) and Chamberlain were left to fight it out with the hope of postseason play virtually gone by the middle of October.

That collective sigh and releasing of stress may be temporary, however. It might even be safe to assume that some staffs around Hillsborough (and the other three counties as well for that matter) are already breathing a little heavier and sleeping a little less with little relation to spring ball, if that seems possible. Although the spring games have yet to be played and the pads JUST went on, the fact remains that the sample size is starting to grow from some of these squads and that the district schedules aren’t going away. In fact, they’re getting closer every day.

Not only is there a “District of Doom” in Hillsborough County, there’s district(S) of doom throughout the area containing teams from the four counties in 2015. Districts that should provide the “old-fashioned” sort of doom in which the schedule requires an “SEC West”-type mentality; a district with seven teams that you could make the case at least six if not all seven of them could make the playoffs in “other” districts. That means for more than half the season (on top of playing what could be a grueling non-district schedule) these squads will have to grind it out, literally and figuratively. There are districts with three, four and five teams in them that have playoff teams everywhere from last season; and even though the district schedule is light in number of games, the weight class is somewhere closer to gargantuan and the margin for error becomes so small we would need the biggest microscope on Earth to see it.

So if you thought we were going to avoid another season in which quality teams with records of two and three games over .500 might get left out in the cold come November, better think again. Not only will one district see this occurrence like last season, there’s the potential as many as five districts could have teams in which more than half the district are playoff-worthy and sitting at home. This spring we will take at look at those districts and the characteristics that could make them so tough to predict and to process once they start playing this fall. Be sure to check out and see which districts made the list starting tomorrow.