Did you just suggest that the Patriot District is the SEC of VA. The SEC wins championships. If anything I would call the colonial region the SEC of VA because highland springs will most likely win 5A state championship and Varina will most likely win 4a state championship. When was the last time a team from Patriot District won a state championship.
In football? South County in 2019. I called them the SEC of VA because it's got the highest level of competition across all teams in 6A and NOVA, and
one of the highest in VA. You've got recent state champs and 2021 #4 South County; Lake Braddock, who took down Madison in a game that wasn't as close as the score suggests; Robinson, who actually beat SoCo to the regular season crown last year and is just as dominant this year; Fairfax, with 4-star Penn State LB commit Tony Rojas; West Springfield, who are perennial upset contenders for any of the other four schools; West Potomac, the Texas A&M of the Patriot District (Wildly inconsistent, but having great fans and the potential to upset any team on any day); and Alexandria City, who, while having just an okay team in recent years comparatively, always finishes with a winning record and is good enough to win the National district anyway. Point being, take any of these teams and put them in any of the other districts in NOVA or any of the other 6A (and even some of the RVA and 757) districts and they will easily challenge for a title, but instead they can end up 5th in the division due to the level of competition. I don't think a singular district has more control of a playoff structure. Last year in 6C, 7 of the 8 teams qualified for the playoffs, and if you put them in region D, 6 of 8 teams qualify, with only Madison and Centreville (who would have qualified 6th instead of 2nd) is left. Region B is the same, with 6 of 8, and 6A is 5 of 8, with the 6th best team in the Patriot district missing the 3rd place in all of Region A by 0.13 points. Point being, while sure, they don't have the O Smith or the Highland Springs or the Alabama, the fact that the competition is so high and there are always at least 5-6 of the teams in the top 25 (in this post, there's 7) makes it the most high-level competitive district in the state. Forgive me for my lack of knowledge on how they do it down in Richmond, but speaking of specific
districts, we'll use the Capital district as an example. Sure, Varina and Highland Springs are some of the best teams in the state and even the country, but Henrico is average, Atlee and Armstrong are bad, Hanover's pretty good and Patrick Henry seems more to me as an upset threat than a strong presence on their own. You've got about 3 and a half strong teams, and then the rest are mediocre. I'll take any team outside of Varina and HS and run them through a schedule that say, West Springfield has to go through (FFX, SoCo, Robinson, WP and AC; one of the weaker schedules) and see how well they fare. The only one that I'd bet on having a winning record would be Hanover. Let's then take Fairfax, who was 4 out of 8 in the district last year, and I'd bet on a win for every game except for a 10 pt. max loss to Varina and a obvious blowout to HS. It's not about having Georgia, it's about having Georgia, Alabama, Texas A&M, Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, Ole Miss, LSU, etc.
