It appears many, many N.C. High School Athletic Association schools were not thrilled about the latest realignment draft.

Craig S. Smith, executive director of the Community School of Davidson and part of the realignment committee, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that they received more than 170 feedback forms.

There are 444 NCHSAA schools total.

Let’s leave the door open that some schools may have sent more than one form, but that’s a high ratio — one form for about every four schools — of schools asking that something be changed.

That number is not, in itself, an indictment on any one party in the realignment process.

There are always complaints about realignment, with some more emotionally-charged than others. After all, your conference impacts all parts of your athletics program, from travel costs to expected revenue to playoff chances. The stakes are high, and with schools getting what they asked for — a doubling in classifications from four to eight — the complaints were bound to increase.

But 170 forms is a high number no matter the context, and it should, at minimum, be a wake-up call for all parties when it comes to how we do realignment. (EDIT: Smith later added that “not every single feedback submission” was asking for change — but even if only a quarter asked for a change, that’s still a high number, and the following points stand on their own merit irrespective of the nature of each form.)

There’s plenty of blame to go around, and plenty of opportunities to work together to improve the process in the future.

Let’s start with the NCHSAA itself.

Although the NCHSAA did not put together this draft, they did drop the ball on an all-important question as we get ready to transition to eight classes — playoff scenarios. By not casting a vision for the seeding of bracketed sports (as Nick Stevens has already pointed out), there are several schools who are in the dark about what the latest draft means for their programs. They might regret submitting a feedback form, or might regret not submitting one. The mantra of “We cannot determine the playoff format before we make the conferences” is outdated, and also just not true.

The NCHSAA also failed to provide membership with options outside of “Big 32” and “Little 32” for eight classes. What’s with the 32 fascination? What about “Big 48” or a “Little 48?” What about both? We’ll never know, but we do know this — there are about 48 schools in N.C. with 2,000 students, but quite a few of them won’t be in 8A next year.

Then there’s the committee (which did not meet until December, but whose fault that is is unclear), which put together the most inconsistent draft I’ve seen in my 17 years of covering high school sports.

Some areas avoided split conferences like the plague, others used them to keep or renew rivalries. Some areas placed charter schools together, others mixed in traditional public schools who aren’t good fits either because they field more JV programs, or because they field too few programs overall. Some areas stretched their conferences to nine teams and an hour and a half travel from one end to the other, others kept things tight-knit. Some made sure county schools stuck together, others sent School A driving past School B (of the same classification) to be in a different conference.

There is no standard across the board that you can point to and say “this was the approach,” and it was sorely needed. The lack of a consistent approach was bound to lead to more complaints.

Lastly, some of the headaches here are self-inflicted by the schools themselves, and they share in the blame.

The membership voted — almost 90 percent for that matter — to double in classes but has also said in various surveys that they also wanted to keep travel down and also avoid split conferences. Having all three was never realistic. Life is full of trade-offs.

There are now requests to deal with charter schools and parochial schools and other kinds of schools differently, which makes the recent vote to go to eight classes by ADM only even more puzzling — another self-inflicted headache from schools who should’ve known better.

A few years earlier, in 2019, schools had a chance to vote for more classes with less rigid rules than what we have now. But partly because no one could imagine dropping from eight football titles to four, and partly because the NCHSAA worded the proposal badly, many voted against it and it failed. If we had a time machine, maybe that bylaw would’ve passed knowing what we know now.

Alas, there is no such thing that can take us back to undo everything that led us here, but a second draft is due to come out this week.

Hopefully it placates a large majority of the complaints.

But no matter what, all parties must change how we approach realignment in the future.