H.S. FOOTBALL: In-depth look at possible new districts

The TSSAA’s legislative council voted this past summer to change how football state champions are decided.

After six years, the current plan known as the Z Plan will expire, and the TSSAA is bringing back a hybrid version of football classification similar to the five classes that were in place before the Z-Plan along with a Super 32 Class 6A adopted by neighboring states.

Class 6A is comprised of the 32 largest schools in the state with all teams making the playoffs no matter their record at the end of the regular season.

The rest of the state is a puzzle that’s separated into five classes with eight regions apiece. The top four teams in each region will make the playoffs.

How the districts are aligned and how they will line up in the playoffs is a puzzle the TSSAA staff will put together over the next couple of weeks.

Here’s a look at what could happen with the new system.

The process

The TSSAA released its enrollment breakdown for the upcoming football reclassification that will be officially announced in November.

Each school in the TSSAA submitted enrollment figures after the first two weeks of the school year, and the state’s governing organization let everyone know what class they are set to be in.

The question left to answer is how the regions will be drawn out.

TSSAA assistant executive director Matthew Gillespie explained the process from this point.

“Each school has until Wednesday to let us know if they want to move up a classification,” Gillespie said. “For whatever reason, we’ll usually have one or two schools that will want to do that.

“Once we know who wants to move up, we’ll begin drawing out region proposals for each classification.”

This affects football only. Every other sport will remain in its current classification system with districts staying intact.

There are six classes of football teams. The 32 largest schools are in Class 6A with the assurance all teams will make the playoffs. The rest of the teams in the state are broken up into five classes with 55 teams in each class.

Any team that wants to move up will probably be granted their wish.

“But that doesn’t mean the smallest school in the class would move down,” Gillespie said. “If 2A has 55 teams and a team wants to move up to 3A and 3A has 55 teams, then 3A would then have 56 teams and 2A would have 54.”

Once the classification lists have been finalized, the TSSAA staff then draws up the region alignments.

“The biggest thing obviously is based on geography,” Gillespie said. “We want to make travel as easy and cost-effective as possible for everybody, so we’ll draw them out the way we think is best then bring that proposal to the members.”

Gillespie said the TSSAA will try to make each region as even as possible when it comes to number of teams in each league, but that’s not the top priority.

“There’s nothing in the bylaws that says regions have to have so many teams or be limited to so many teams,” Gillespie said. “We will keep things competitive and travel-easy as possible for everybody.”

Gillespie said bylaws can’t even prevent the TSSAA from forming a four-team region, which would automatically put all four teams in the playoffs.

“It would take a very extreme set of circumstances for that to come about,” Gillespie said.

The TSSAA will line out eight regions in each classification within those parameters and bring that proposal to the member schools.

“We’ll let the members see the proposal maybe about a week before the TSSAA Board of Control meeting on Nov. 13,” Gillespie said. “The schools will have the option to go to their board member before then and ask to move to another district.

“Sometimes that will happen because maybe they have two or three rival teams in another district or something like that. We won’t let a school move to another district just because they think another one is easier to win in. If they give us a legitimate reason to move districts, we’ll probably do it.”

The possibilities

There is no way to determine for sure where teams will end up in district play, but here’s a look at where they possibly will land.

• In 1A, there are a total of 57 schools. Twelve are in rural West Tennessee, and there are five more in Memphis.

That leaves 40 teams east of the Tennessee River, and they could easily be divided into five or six regions, leaving two or three in the area.

If there are two regions, the five Memphis teams and Middleton could fit in one with maybe the two Gibson County schools. That would leave nine teams from Obion, Weakley, Carroll and Lake counties to play with the longest trip being from Bruceton to Tiptonville.

If there are three, the five Memphis teams could be by themselves, then keep the split between what is now districts 14-A and 13-A. Middleton, who is now in 15-A, would probably fall in with the Memphis group.

• In 2A, there are 55 teams with eight in rural West Tennessee and 10 in Shelby County, leaving 37 in Middle/East Tennessee.

There are a few teams just on the other side of the river like Waverly and Lewis County that could be lined up with Adamsville, Riverside and Scotts Hill, and they might do that and leave the remaining 15 teams to be split among two regions.

Or there’s the possibility of having the 10 Memphis teams together and having the eight area schools together with the longest trips being Adamsville, Scotts Hill and Riverside traveling to Halls. Halls is the only 2A school on the Hwy. 51 corridor north of Memphis.

• In 3A, there are 12 rural West Tennessee schools and five in Shelby County among 56 teams, leaving 39 on the other side of the Tennessee River. Fayette-Ware and Covington are close enough to Memphis to warrant a single region among those seven schools. There‘s also no one terribly close to either one of them either.

If the other 10 were to be split into two regions of five, Dyersburg, Westview, Camden, South Gibson and Milan could be one with the other being Liberty, Jackson Central-Merry, South Side, McNairy and Bolivar.

If they kept it to two districts on this end, we could be looking at a 10-team district with divisions similar to what District 13-AA did for a couple years when South Gibson joined to make it a 10-team league.

• Rural West Tennessee in 4A has nine teams with with four Shelby County schools and 41 on the other side of the river. Those 41 will probably be divided into six regions, leaving two on this end.

The two most obvious choices to be added in with Memphis are Ripley and Haywood with the possibility of either North Side or Dyersburg. If either went, logic might suggest Dyersburg because if North Side went, there would be a massive void in the map between Hardin County and most of the rest of the region.

Another possibility would be for the Memphis region to go north and include Ripley, Dyersburg and Obion County. That would leave Hardin County, North Side, Lexington, Haywood, Chester County and Crockett County for the other league.

• With only three teams in rural West Tennessee in 5A, logic would suggest Brighton and Munford will go into a Memphis-based region and Henry County will probably have a region similar to what it has now mainly in the Clarksville area.

None of this is official or even comes from the TSSAA, but it’s just a third of the scenarios the state will look at when it maps the districts out as the month ends and November begins.

Brandon Shields, 425-9751

Rural West Tennessee schools by classification

A breakdown of where every school between Shelby County and the Tennessee River fall into the classes. Student enrollment numbers in parentheses.

• Class 6A – No rural West Tennessee teams among 32 largest schools.

• Class 5A – Brighton (1,417); Henry Co. (1,349); Munford (1,324)

• Class 4A – Dyer Co. (1,168); Hardin Co. (1,129); North Side (1,007); Obion Co. (947); Lexington (941); Ripley (901); Haywood (876); Chester Co. (861); Crockett Co. (842)

• Class 3A – Bolivar (819); Dyersburg (787); Fayette-Ware (782); Covington (781); Liberty (779); South Side (754); McNairy Central (751); South Gibson (711); Jackson Central-Merry (639); Milan (616); Westview (613); Camden (597)

• Class 2A – Adamsville (541); Scotts Hill (490); Gibson Co. (458); Trinity Christian (441*); Riverside (434); Jackson Christian (430.2*); Halls (416); McKenzie (410)

• Class 1A – Union City (397); Peabody (395); Dresden (375); Huntingdon (354); Middleton (350); West Carroll (295); Humboldt (263); South Fulton (245); Lake Co. (243); Greenfield (210); Bruceton (209); Gleason (161)

* - Private school numbers reflect multiplier of 1.8.