Florida's Playoff Brackets Land November 6 — and This Year the State's Best Eight Play Their Own Tournament
Lee and Collier teams learn their postseason roads on Friday, with Classes 1A–6A opening November 13 and the new Open Division pulling the state's top eight into a separate championship chase.
The regular season is over, and Southwest Florida's high school football teams now wait on the bracket. The FHSAA will reveal Florida's playoff pairings on Friday, November 6, setting the regional roads for Lee and Collier County programs after the Week 11 finales closed the regular season on October 30.
The postseason itself opens Friday, November 13, with regional quarterfinals across Classes 1A through 6A. Each class fields 32 teams — four district champions and four at-large qualifiers in each of four regions — seeded on the final MaxPreps rankings, with district champions hosting in the opening round when they face an at-large team.
This year also brings a first: the state's eight highest-ranked eligible teams are pulled out of their class brackets into a new Open Division, split into two pools (seeds 1, 4, 5 and 8 in Pool A; 2, 3, 6 and 7 in Pool B) for pool games on November 13, 20 and 27, semifinals on December 5 and a championship game on December 12 at Pitbull Stadium in Miami — the same stadium that hosts the class finals. For Southwest Florida, the first question gets answered Friday: who is in, who hosts, and who has to travel.
