FOOTBALL FRIDAY: Realignment

This week’s version of Football Friday will be related to TSSAA realignment and the meeting held at University School of Jackson this past Wednesday between local Board of Control officials Greg Scott (Milan), Rickey Catlett (Chester County) and Scott Gatlin (Jackson Christian) and about 60 representatives of schools from across the region.

There were a number of nuggets of interesting information that didn’t make it into the story that was on jacksonsun.com Wednesday night that are worth mentioning for various reasons.

To be up front, some of the items on this list have nothing to do with football, but let’s be honest – realignment is at least 90 percent (if not 100) about football.

So either football affects all of the items on this list or it’s affected by this list. The numbers on this list are more for organizational purposes and not necessarily a ranking.

1Hardin County’s non-football district travel: Two years ago, this was also the Tigers’ district travel for football. But they’re in Savannah. Their district opponents are in Munford, Brighton and Dyer County (Newbern). Those schools are 105, 106 and 109 miles away. And that’s for district. Because of these long trips, that also means the Tigers are staying overnight in hotels before they get out of district tournaments. That typically doesn’t happen until the state tournament in Murfreesboro.

2District tournaments are not required in non-football sports: When it’s time to play region tournaments, the TSSAA doesn’t care how a district determines what teams move on to the district tournament.

“They just need a winner and a runner-up,” said Milan athletic director Greg Scott. Plus a third- and fourth-place team in basketball. “You can have a coin flip, a tournament or you can just pick them. It doesn’t matter to the TSSAA as long as teams show up for the region tournament.”

3Middleton football is in the playoffs: For the first time in 25 years, Middleton will be in the postseason, no matter what the Tigers do in the regular season.

That’s because Middleton was in the six-team Region 8-1A last year, and the Tigers were the only non-Shelby County school in the league.

Since the school year ended, Memphis City Schools have shut down Carver (who won the region last year) and Memphis Northside.

That leaves four teams in the region, which means all teams will go to the postseason and match up with 7-1A in the first round.

4There are no extremely large schools in rural West Tennessee: This isn’t exactly breaking news, but it was amusing when I looked at each possible alignment and saw the largest class had no teams from the region.

Munford, Brighton and Henry County were always in the second-largest class, and Hardin County and Dyer County might also be there depending on the alignment system.

5It is all about the money: The TSSAA highly recommended not expanding to six classes because that would force all sports to go straight to region tournaments in the postseason and skip district tournaments because there’d be a lot fewer schools in each class.

The TSSAA put the number of $800,000 lost for the schools for missing district tournaments. If you divide that number by the total number of schools, each school is losing about $2,000 give or take a couple hundred.

Since TSSAA gets 18 percent of the gate of postseason basketball tournaments, that means they are losing about $200,000 apparently, assuming the $800,000 is strictly the amount that goes to the schools from district tournaments and not the total revenue brought in from the tournaments.

6The notion of dropping a class in football is highly unlikely: Since it is all about the money, we can pretty much bet against the possibility of dropping a class in football.

Here’s why: There are six sets of football playoffs that start with 32 teams in football each year.

Dropping a class means the TSSAA not only loses one championship game but also a total of 31 playoffs games from which they get 50 percent of the gate. The members of the Board of Control don’t directly benefit from TSSAA revenue according to the organization’s bylaws, so how they vote isn’t influenced by this part of the business.

But the TSSAA will probably never recommend reducing the number of championships for that reason. And the fact there are six Division I champions doesn’t really seem to hurt anybody.

7An added Division II class is probably happening: Right now there are two classes in Division II – the larger class with 12 schools like Ensworth, Brentwood Academy and Memphis University School and the smaller class with about 30 schools including University School of Jackson and Sacred Heart.

There are 23 private schools in Division I that will have to decide whether or not they go to Division II this fall.

If at least nearly all of these schools go Division II, the TSSAA plans to create a third class.

Considering the restrictions placed on private Division I schools last fall including no financial aid whatsoever allowed for athletes including parents working for the school and work study programs, there’s a good chance enough of them make the move to warrant a third class.

8Jackson Christian and Trinity Christian don’t know yet if they’re moving or not: Athletic directors at both schools have said in recent weeks via text message they’re considering whether or not to move.

There are varying factors involved in this decision for each school internally and externally each school’s administration will take into account later this year.

Brandon Shields is the high school sports columnist for The Jackson Sun. Contact him at 425-9751 or at bjshields@jacksonsun.com. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or on Instagram at jacksonsunsports.