I agree with you completely that the days of football first are on their way out. Promotion/relegation would be ideal, but...
Asking for ADs that won't get rid of an archaic region system in favor of regional conferences for travel/competition, letting everyone into the state tournament in non-football team sports, eliminate PKs and end in ties (like every soccer league in the world); are never going to be willing to keep track of promotion/relegation in 25+ sports.
Many states have a multiplier, separate tournaments or in Indiana a promotion/relegation. Indiana was the last state to have 1 state title in every sport regardless of size (the movie Hoosiers was based off the real life Milan HS in Indiana).
But, I will respectfully disagree on one point... There are haves and have-not in professional/college sports. The difference is, they all play by the same rules. The same salary cap, the same amount of scholarships, the same free agency rules; within each individual sports league. At the high school level, traditional public schools are restricted by boundaries while non-traditional schools can recruit from anywhere. That is not a level playing field. If a person was the head coach at a non-traditional school and was the head coach for U13/U14 ENCL teams, they are completely able to recruit every one of those players to come play for them for free. What 3A public school in the state could compete with that? I'm not sure, but if we went sport by sport and totaled up the state championships; that non-traditional schools may be dominating at the smaller levels (3A and lower).
Non-traditional schools absolutely have a place in our educational system, but to say that the ability to recruit doesn't drastically enhance sports programs is not fair.
