State football playoffs to expand in 2017

There will be nine football champions decided in the 2017 season in the TSSAA, and other sports added classes as well on Wednesday when the TSSAA’s Board of Control met in a special meeting at the organization’s headquarters.

The Board voted to expand Division II football to three classes to be separated based on enrollment. The smallest class will have an enrollment of 265 students in high school or lower. The largest classification will have 531 or more, and the middle class will be schools with enrollments from 266-530 students.

“The reason for that is because the current AA class splits off at 530, so they kept that the same,” said Jackson Christian athletic director Scott Gatlin, who is a member of the board. “Then the state recommended splitting the smaller class into two with the split at the halfway point.”

The addition of the football championship expands the total number of football championships awarded by the TSSAA from eight to nine.

That addition caused the Board to make another change to its football championships as they decided to rotate the days in championship weekend in which each classification’s championship is decided.

“The thinking behind that was now all three days have three championships, so it’s probably best to rotate each day of games around because that Friday night time slot and the Saturday games are kind of viewed as prime time games,” said Milan athletic director Greg Scott.

The current setup has been starting the weekend on the Thursday of the first Saturday in December with the two Division II championships followed Division I championships in Classes 1A, 3A and 5A on Friday and 2A, 4A and 6A on Saturday.

“I can see the classes that don’t play in that time slot wanting the prime times, so now that all three days have three games it seems reasonable to rotate them around,” Scott said.

He also noted there was question about how much of a financial hit the TSSAA would take as there was a question about if as many people would show up on Saturday to watch Division II games as there are for 2A, 4A and 6A games.

“That’s something the state will look at as we work through this cycle I guess,” Scott said.

The other big decision to come out of the meeting was to keep the number of classifications for basketball, baseball and softball at three classes. There’s a growing number of schools across the state who want more than three to decrease the difference in enrollment numbers between the smallest and largest schools in each class. The state’s recommendation to keep it as is passed by a vote of 7-5.

“The big thing discussed today in that was that district tournaments would be eliminated if we went to six classes,” Scott said. “I asked them today if district tournaments are so sacred that they’re worth holding on to with both hands at the risk of not giving more schools the ability to compete.”

Apparently to some board members it was.

“It was an eye-opening experience for me today to see how important district tournaments are for some people in certain pockets of the state,” Gatlin said. “Some of them were for financial reasons and others apparently for tradition purposes, but they’re important to a lot of people across the state of Tennessee.”

Scott and Gatlin voted against the recommendation and wanted to change. Chester County principal Ricky Catlett voted for the change.

“I sent a survey out to my schools in recent weeks asking them to let me know what they thought about certain issues,” Catlett said. “The majority wanted to keep eight teams competing at state tournaments and to keep district tournaments.

“A month ago we would’ve voted for four classes, but our schools didn’t want to do that at the risk of the current form of state and district tournaments.”

Scott thinks the plan was shot down because there were no viable alternatives.

“One of the Board members from Nashville said he had 45 schools represented at a meeting [Tuesday], and he asked everyone who likes the current setup to stand. No one stood,” Scott said. “He then asked the ones in favor of four classes then five then six to stand.

“A total of 19 schools stood, which means there were 26 schools in his district alone who said, ‘We want to see change, but we don’t know how we want it changed.’ If we had a plan of this is how the postseason would look, there might’ve been more support for it.”

In another decision, there will still be six classes in Division I football, but instead of having 32 schools in Class 6A, the classes will be divided more evenly, putting about 48 teams in Class 6A and 49 in the other five.

“That will mainly affect the schools who are the largest in each class, because that will pull them up,” Scott said.

Here’s a rundown of other decisions made in the meeting:

• Two classes for Division II in every sport besides football with 450 being the cutoff mark between classes. Wrestling and bowling will have one class.

• Volleyball classes will remain at three, but they will be split evenly among participating schools. Cross country, golf, tennis and track will remain at two classes, but they will also be split evenly among participating schools.

• Soccer will expand to three classes to be split evenly among participating schools.

• The private school multiplier for Division I will remain at 1.8, but the Board voted to remove the limitation that schools can move a maximum of one class. Scott said this was in fairness to keep a school in the class it’s supposed to be in. This was the one vote where there was a split between the public and private school Board members.

• Region and district alignments will be published before they’re finalized in November.

• Enrollment for each school will be evaluated every two years.

• Schools can move up in classification by one sport. This was a new proposal on the agenda, and it changes wording to the rule.

“Before this meeting, the rule was if a team wanted to move up a class, every school who fielded teams in that kind of classification had to move up,” Scott said. “So if Milan track wanted to go from A-AA to Class AAA, then cross country, tennis and golf had to as well. Now just one sport can do it.”

The only exception to that is if a basketball team wants to do it, both genders of basketball teams have to make the move.

Brandon Shields, 425-9751