Football fans in Central Texas are anxiously awaiting the first week of February.  That’s when the Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL) will announce the results of its biennial realignment, and all the schools will learn their district assignment for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 school years.  For many schools, especially those in the cities, their districts do not change much.  They are surrounded by all the same schools, and based on enrollment one school may move out of a district and another new school may move in, but the district is pretty much the same year after year.

That is not the case with our high schools in Central Texas.  Because of our location in the geographic center of Texas, the schools in Brown and surrounding counties can — and have — moved into districts north, south, east, and west.  We just never seem to know where UIL will send us.

But what district a school is in has a huge impact on its fortunes.  Brownwood’s football district 5-4A (Div. 1) has had three Top Ten teams the last two years, and so was one of the toughest districts in the state (along with fellow Region 2 district 7-4A, which also had three Top Ten teams).  In fact, districts 5 and 7 have produced a state champion, runner-up, or semi-finalist in each of the last four years.

Early’s district 3-3A (Div. 1) has perennial powerhouses Wall and Jim Ned, the latter winning state in 2020.  Two years ago Coleman was placed in district 4-2A with Cisco and San Saba, always tough teams, but the Bluecats flexed their muscles in 2021 and won that district.

So everyone is waiting to see where they will play next year.  Some changes are known.  Bangs is moving from Class 3A, Div. 2 to Class 2A, Div. 1, but that may not be any easier, if they get put in that district 4 with Coleman, Cisco, and San Saba.  Early will move from Class 3A, Div. 1 to Class 3A, Div. 2.  Brownwood remains in Class 4A, Div. 1, and we know that one of the Top Ten teams in our district, Midlothian Heritage, is moving up to Class 5A.  That’s the good news.  But Heritage could be replaced by China Spring, which is moving back up to Class 4A Div. 1, after having won state in Class 4A Div. 2.  We could then possibly have two state champions in our district, along with Stephenville, who won state this year in Class 4A Div. 1.

But exactly how does realignment work?  How does the UIL determine which teams play in which districts?  There is a lot of mystery — and misinformation — about the realignment process.  So we spent some time on the phone with Dr. Jamey Harrison, Deputy Director of the UIL, and the man in charge of realignment.  What we learned is below.

First, the UIL has to assign each school to one of six conferences, known as Class 1A through 6A.  Each conference has 32 districts.  Classes 1A through 5A are split into two halves, the larger schools in Division 1 and the smaller schools in Division 2.  Class 6A, because of their Superintendents’ wishes, splits the schools into two Divisions only after the playoff teams are determined.  Each Class/Division then has four regions, with four Districts in each Region.  Generally speaking, Region One is northwest Texas, Region Two is northeast, Region Three is southeast, and Region Four is southwest.

The schools are assigned to a Conference based on school size.  This is probably the most misunderstood part of realignment.  Each school superintendent must submit an enrollment number for his school, as of a specified date in the fall.  There are always rumors of a school that “cheated” by submitting a false low number, to stay in a smaller conference.  You even hear stories of schools that arrange for a certain number of students to stay home from school “sick” on the specified day.  Dr. Harrison laughed, “yeah, that’s what we call the Realignment Flu.”  But it’s not true.  The Conference assignment is based on enrollment, not attendance.  Everyone could call in sick that day, and it would not matter.

Plus, the UIL does verify the numbers.  The date they select for enrollment is the same date that school districts turn in their enrollment number to the Texas Education Agency, which determines funding from the state.  If a school turns in a low number to the TEA, it would negatively affect their funding.  The UIL does verify their numbers with the numbers turned in to the TEA.  So Harrison is confident there is no cheating on UIL enrollment numbers.

Once the enrollment numbers are received and audited by the UIL, they get a printout of all the numbers, largest to smallest, with no school names attached.  Just numbers.  They count down about 250 from the top, and draw a dividing line between Class 6A and Class 5A.  “We try to find a break in the enrollment figures that makes sense, and that’s where we draw the line,” said Harrison.  Then they go down about another 250 and draw a line between 5A and 4A.  “That middle conference of 4A is always the most difficult for us,” said Harrison.  “Class 4A typically has the largest enrollment disparity, top to bottom.  And it has the fewest number of schools.”  He explained that Texas has lots of high schools with more than 1000 students, and lots with fewer than 500, but not so many between 500 and 1000.  But that is Class 4A, which currently has 192 total schools, and less than 190 play football.

They continue down the list, drawing lines between classifications of about 250 schools in Classes 3A and 2A.  Class 1A (six man football) currently consists of all high schools with an enrollment of 104.9 or less.  Once the Classification lines are published in December, they do not change.

Next comes the task of assigning schools to districts.  “The primary factor is geography, plain and simple,” said Harrison.  There are a few rules that guide the process.  For example, big city school districts often have more than one school in the same classification.  Those schools must be in the same district.  Also, they start forming districts at the perimeter of the state.  “We start in El Paso, Dalhart/Amarillo, Beaumont/Orange, Brownsville, etc. and work our way in.  Because if we start in the middle and work our way out, we end up without a home for those schools that are the farthest geographic outliers.”

Then they start trying to form the districts, and initially it is a manual process.  “We use our eyes to put it together.  We want to avoid 9 team districts when we can, but it’s not always possible.  We want to avoid 3 and 4 team districts, but it’s not always possible.”

For many years UIL formed the districts using pins in a map with rubber bands, but no longer.  They start with a hand-made draft, plus a secondary draft.  Then those drafts are run through a computer software program to balance travel distance and travel time in each district, as best they can.  “The mapping software calculates the total mileage to travel between the schools in each district, for all of them, in total.  And it calculates the travel time.  It takes real-time traffic data.”  Harrison mentioned that the software calculates two travel times, one at rush hour, when the teams would be travelling to an out of town game, and then late night, when they would be returning home.

“We do consider time, we consider mileage, we consider total number of teams in a district, all of those things factor in.  There are multiple versions of every map that are run, where we get the data back for every one of them.  There is a lot of science that gets us to that point, and there is some art involved too.  There is no computer algorithm that can take all of those factors, and just produce a result for us.”  Realignment is a complicated beast.  “If you take a team out of one district and move it to another, it has ripple effects across the entire state.”

Harrison said they do not consider the level of competition within districts, rivalries, etc.  “We do consider input from the schools, especially in those districts that may have difficult travel.  We do consider it, but it is only one factor.”

Once all of this is done, the UIL announces the new district alignments in February.  Always there are schools that are not happy with their district assignment, and they have two appeal options.  The first is a local appeal.  If a school wants to be in a different district, it can move only if the District Executive Committee in both districts (the one the school wants to leave and the one it wants to join) approve.  If that fails, there is a state appeal.  The school can take their argument to the UIL District Assignment Appeals Committee, which is made up of eight Superintendents from around the state.  Harrison said typically about 12 schools do change their district through the local appeal process, and another 4 or 5 through the state appeal process.

Most of the above pertains to football.  Other sports such as basketball, volleyball, softball, and baseball, have different districts, and no Division 1 and Division 2.  Harrison said that is because “football schedules differently than any other sport.  They play ten games in eleven weeks in the regular season.  They play one game a week, and typically it is on a non-school night, Friday or Saturday.  All of the other  sports play a double round-robin schedule, where they have two times as much travel.  The other sports play 30 games or more.  They do play on school nights, usually on Tuesday.  So you have more trips, and you have trips where you have school the next day.”  Because of this, and without the split Divisions, there are 32 districts in each Classification, which allows for smaller districts geographically, and thus less travel distance and time.

But why does only football have Division 1 and Division 2?  “If you do historical research on state champions, in football if you just take every district and circle the largest four schools, you will have a remarkably high degree of accuracy in predicting the playoffs and the teams that end up at the state championship level.  In the other sports, team size matters, but it matters more in football.  Football is more of a numbers game.  The larger schools tend to do better than the smaller schools, because football requires more players.”

So there you have it.  When the realignment is announced in February, you may be happy with your school’s assignment, or you may not.  But now you understand the process, and I think you can see that the UIL does all they can to be as fair as possible.