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The Orange County Football Conference, an association of all county football leagues except the Trinity, will align its top 60-rated teams into 10 six-team leagues starting for the 2026 season, committee member Ray Elliott of El Dorado confirmed Thursday.
The alignment will deliver a key change for the top-rated teams in the Alpha League.
In the current, two-year format, Orange County features 10 six-team leagues but starts with the No. 2-rated Bravo League. The top-rated Alpha League is a four-team group with Mission Viejo, Los Alamitos, Edison and San Clemente.
The four-team alignment has faced criticism from Alpha League coaches because it left seven openings for nonleague games on their schedules — two more than most other schools.
But with the top 60 teams being divided into six-team leagues from the top of the conference, the Alpha League schools will return to schedules with five nonleague games.
“Thankfully,” Los Alamitos coach Ray Fenton said this week. “We have two weeks of a bye (this season). We played a double (Week) 0 (game). We go seven (games) in a row. Then we have two weeks off and then we play (weeks) 8, 9 and 10. That’s horrible.”
Mission Viejo coach Chad Johnson also agrees with the switch. “I am happy to hear that,” he said. “Finding games outside of league (is challenging).”
For the 2026 and 2027 football seasons, teams will again be placed into leagues according to their power rating on HSratings.com, formerly known as Calpreps.
Teams’ rating for the 2025 season will count 65 percent toward the formula with the remaining 35 percent coming from 2024, Elliott said.
With the top 60 teams approved for the six-member league format, the conference will now discuss how to organize the lowest nine schools in the county, Elliott said.
The football-only conference features 69 members.