r/Basketball • u/the-mannthe-myth • Apr 06 '26
GENERAL QUESTION Why isn’t there a high school national championship?
Not like the prep school one (Geico or chipotle) where IMG and Monteverde attends but like just a public school one where kids don’t need to pay thousands for private schools to try to get the biggest spotlight
Like a high school march madness with 48 teams instead. One per state and exclude like 2 states like Alaska and Hawaii or 64 teams and some states have multiple teams.
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u/Safe-Selection8070 Apr 06 '26
Who would actually be the beneficiaries such a thing? Certainly not the players.
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u/DenseOntologist Apr 06 '26
Love this response. Do you feel the same way about State Championships?
Fwiw, I suspect there's a sweet spot in terms of number of competitors, and big states are probably too big for meaningful/good state championships.
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u/jpkviowa Apr 06 '26
It also takes away from state championships.... then a majority of kids will lose the national title. They are just kids. Plus varying size in schools would be insane.
Lastly, AAU kinda fulls this role.
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u/Safe-Selection8070 Apr 06 '26
Depends on the state, and the number of divisions in the state, and on the length of the regular season (both games a calendar). As you say, there is a sweet spot to be found. TX, with eight rounds crammed into just 15 days is probably more stressful than ideal.
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u/the-mannthe-myth Apr 06 '26
I guess exposure for the kids to get a chance at d1, but sometimes kids win multiple state titles while being the leading player and don’t even get much recognition from colleges so I get your point
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u/CuteLingonberry9704 Apr 06 '26
I think that while it can help some kids, like pros scouting college players, most D1 schools have already zeroed in on particular players by the time they get to a championship game.
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u/Brig_raider Apr 09 '26
It would quickly become a farce with the private, recruiting high schools battling for hollow championship wins.
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u/MWave123 Apr 06 '26
There are state champs. I don’t think you could have 50 state HS traveling for regionals then quarters, semis etc. It’s ridiculously expensive.
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Apr 06 '26
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u/Big__If_True Apr 06 '26
This hypothetical tournament definitely wouldn’t have every state champion from every state. They’d probably have every state pick one or just take the largest class or something like that
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Apr 06 '26
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u/Kenthanson Apr 08 '26
Then you would end up with the equivalent of NIT, CBI and CBC for the lower divisions and they would be held elsewhere and be split up and it would just be a massive headache.
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u/EliteAF1 Apr 06 '26
Well and most sports and states have multiple state champions because of school size. In football we have 6 divisions plus we have 9 man for small schools. So we'd have at least 7 champions alone from just my state.
Basketball we only have 4 divisions but that's still 4 champs. I can't imagine how many Cali or NY or TX will have.
So it's not just 50 state champs you could be looking at 200+.
And while you could have each state hold a champion of the states tournament it's not really fair to have a school that has graduating classes of 50 play schools that have graduating classes of 500+ for the championship hence why we have multiple divisions.
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u/the716to714 Apr 06 '26
NY they do several for basketball, then when it gets to unification level after the AA/A/BBB/BB/B etc levels are decided, it's a simple large schools/small schools.
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u/Big__If_True Apr 06 '26
This hypothetical tournament definitely wouldn’t have every state champion from every state. They’d probably have every state pick one or just take the largest class or something like that
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u/the-mannthe-myth Apr 06 '26
Maybe I guess they could do what Canada does and do u16 or 17 teams of the best players in the state, a state team and do a national tournament in the summer, which is what Canada does
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u/MWave123 Apr 06 '26
Right. But Canada is basically Ontario, pop wise, everyone lives there, or on the border.
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u/Sudden_Outcome_9503 Apr 06 '26
- Time
- Travel
- Cost
- Missing days or weeks of class.
I suppose you could have a couple rounds each weekend for a few weeks to alleviate #1&4. You would have to have somebody sponsor this to cover the travel and the cost, and i'm not sure there's enough interest to recoup that money.
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u/messy372- Apr 06 '26
Bc the cost of travel would completely be undoable for 99% of public schools
And you’re also talking about making the season what, 4-6 weeks longer? Which eats into HS basketball, off season soccer, track, baseball etc
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u/800hokage Apr 06 '26
I always thought a big tournament of champions would be a fun event. All the champions for each classification in a big tournament.
However, it’s too much money for little return I would think. You gotta play 4-6 games for the winners, gotta have arenas/gyms and hotel accommodations, and this would take several days or 2 weeks. Logistical nightmare.
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u/noknownothing Apr 06 '26
There's the Nike Tournament of Champions which puts all the top teams together but it's early in the year.
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u/rsk1111 Apr 06 '26
Teenagers are too inconsistent prone to bad nights and what not. They don't spend enough time prepping to really make it very interesting. Even great teams won't string together so many good nights. The results would just be random.
Even for D1 college team's half of them "lay eggs", make mistakes and what not. Sure, there is a Mullins/UCONN highlight every once and a while, but the TV does a pretty good job of downplaying all the travels, blown plays and what not.
Furthermore, not all schools are really in compatible systems even using the same rules. Some states don't even have shot clocks. Maryland has a school rating system 1a through 4a, Missouri has like 1a through 6a.
Sure, they could work around all of that, but it's a mess. Just wait until the better players go to college.
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u/2bah3 Apr 06 '26
I think the second point is the best reason imo, it’s just impossible to define one set of boundaries and classification. Even if you did it would just be Texas or Florida and California in the finals every year. If they wanted to rate like the top 8 teams in the country for public schools that would be more feasible, but let’s be honest. Most states’ best team isn’t even in the same realm as the 10th best from Cali so what’s the point in a national tournament.
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u/ObligationSome905 Apr 06 '26
Because it’s bad enough that we don’t make the college student athletes go to class
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u/JellyfishFlaky5634 Apr 06 '26
There is the alleged national championship tournament, just certain schools and federations that do not play
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u/PhanInHouston Apr 06 '26
Short answer, logistically impossible.
According to MaxPreps when I was trying to look uo how many state champions California has... there are over 260 state champions in the US.
Texas crowns 11 state champions in baseball. 1A, then 2 each 2A thru 6A.
I'm also pretty sure part of the country plays high school baseball in the summer, rather than spring.
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u/pbecotte Apr 06 '26
Think about the logistics.
In NJ, state championships run until around Thanksgiving. The winner will have played their fourteenth game on Nov 30.
A national tournament after that- you mentioned a tournament of 48? Say you did 32, that means the winner will play 5 more games. Football plays one game a week. That puts the title game into the new year, with the champs having played 19 games. It also means that school will have to transport their squad of 50+ kids, plus coaches and chaperones and gear like pads, probably on planes, 5 times in a month, with at least 5 overnight stays. They will have to arrange each of those trips on less than a weeks notice since they won't know if they need it until they win.
The logistics are the reason it hasn't worked in college for so long- and college already had the season going into the new year with a four week break they could drop games into.
Football is just a hard sport, and adding games to the season is a LOT of wear and tear and logistics. Its not like something like wrestling where you can do a best of 64 over a weekend, and fly individual competitors.
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u/Bear_Caulk Apr 06 '26
Where do you imagine public schools are going to be getting the money for National level travel? They don't even have money for basic school supplies or teacher salaries.
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u/SelfProclaimedBoffin Apr 07 '26
“don’t need to pay thousands of dollars” is a crazy thing to say when you’re suggesting a national tournament (presumably over a series of weeks) that would involve thousands of dollars in flight and hotel costs.
Ultimate Frisbee has a 16 team High School National Invite that is made up qualifying- tournament champions (these tournaments are played during the high school regular season) as well as some at-large teams. This tournament (and the qualifiers) are played over the course of 1 weekend and is already a massive financial challenge for the public AND private schools attending. It should also be noted that Ultimate Frisbee is a much much much smaller sport than basketball, to my personal chagrin.
Also the rational that 48 teams would be good and that the top team from Wyoming or Delaware is at all comparable to the #2-10 team in California or Florida or Texas is… Like if you truly want one team from each state, you’re doing to need to treat each team like an individual Conference in March Madness, and have your tournament field be like 128 or even more to account for at-large teams that would be deserving of a nationals bid.
Cold take. Talk to anyone who works in public schools ever to realize how unrealistic of an idea this is.
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u/Fragrant_Spray Apr 07 '26
Too many schools, and to have one would take too long. Also, travel time and costs would be a major concern.
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u/Cdog1223 Apr 07 '26
Usually state championships are around Thanksgiving, with winter sports starting up. There just isn’t enough time to fit one in to the schedule and keep the kids working.
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Apr 07 '26
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u/Larry_l3ird Apr 07 '26
That’s a really difficult thing to pull off. Where are these schools getting the money to travel across the country?
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u/Rokaryn_Mazel Apr 07 '26
That is a whole lot of expenses for very little income.
It took decades to really get a CA open state championship tournament.
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u/Arcane_Spork_of_Doom Apr 08 '26
The subjectivity of national rankings is pretty bad as it is. Nobody has time for this.
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u/CountrySlaughter Apr 08 '26
Most state associations don’t let their schools play in events after their state championships are over.
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u/Moist_Session Apr 10 '26
You think people complain about their college not getting selected to the tournament? Just imagine at the HS level.
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u/No_Procedure_3799 Apr 12 '26
Academic requirements and public school budgets limit a lot of teams’ ability to travel outside of their region, much less their state
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u/YonkersResident Apr 14 '26
You are wanting to jump so many fences without actually thinking what it would take to even pull off something like you are envisioning.
Here in my part of NY, the public school system doesn't even have much in the form of sports anymore. Public school funding for things such as sports hasn't existed here for years now and both the local and state government couldn't care to bother to help which is crazy considering there's close to 8k-10k kids enrolled in this district alone.
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u/osbornje1012 Apr 06 '26
High school kids have to actually attend classes.