The toughest new districts in Texas high school football in 2022

UIL Realignment is the most pivotal moment of the Texas high school football calendar, the time when all 1,258 UIL Texas high school football teams discover who they'll have to face over the next two seasons. The release of the 2022-23 alignments on Thursday set the stage for the Texas high school football season — but not all districts are created equal.

So, what are the toughest new districts for the next couple of seasons? In many ways, it depends on what makes a district tough, and it brings us to a common issue with these types of analyses: the balance between top-end quality and depth. For example: South Oak Cliff was the top team in 5A Division II last season...but it also shares a district with Dallas Thomas Jefferson, which went winless in 2021. How do you accurately reflect both of those realities and come up with a measurement of the district?