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Texas
UIL governs the schools. They handle all the pety rules that we don't have in the book like who is elegible to play and so forth. They divide the state in to four regions and within each reagin there is four districts. Each district acts like a conference would with round robin play for a district title. Top two teams in each distrct in basketball make it to the playoffs. I like the way track does it. Top two in each event at the distrct meet make it to regionals. Top two there make it to state. No prelims have to be run at the state or regional meet. But your have to be good to move on.
TASO(Texas assosciation of Sports officials) governs officiating. Every HS official must be a member. TASO governs the officiating of the major sports so all officials are members. They divide into regions and then chapters. You may only belong to one chapter. I know some offials in my chapter that also belong to an association in Louisiana but not another one in Texas. Some chapters like Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston have one chapter for the region. Others like mine in East Texas has 7 chapters in the region. The schools contract with one chapter to hire officals. All games are assigned through the chapters. This can be fun as the local 4A distrct would have one school hiring from the Mt Pleasant chapter while the rest of the schools hire from my chapter in Longview. There is a 3A district that all but one hires from Longview and the one hires from Tyler. The gerimandering of where we travel is attrocious since this one school that we don't work is just 10 miles from my house. I have traveled up to 100 miles one way to call a game in another chapters back yard.
If you have read the book "Friday night lights", you see a little bit that goes into deciding who does the playoff. The schools get together and decide which chapter is going to call the games and the chapter decides which officials go. After deciding, they send the list of officials to the schools and the schools have a chance to accept or reject the officials. I remember after one football playoff game, some kids came to me and said how bad the officiating was. I just shook my head and told the kids that it was your coaches who decided who was going to call your game.
For the state games. The TASO state board travels around to the various chapters and watches officials who each chapter would consider in the top 15% of its chapter. And from there they decide who is going to call at the state playoffs.
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