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A once very successful high school coach from Florida (multiple state championships) gave me his philosophy and plan over a few adult beverages one evening. 1. He encouraged all of his players to be multi sport athletes because he did not want burnout 2. He ran 2 high school summer league teams. Kids that were on the varsity but did not start during the high school season had to play on the top school summer league team. JV and all 8th graders that were going to be freshmen played on the 2nd tier summer league team. He did say that on a couple of occasions he moved an incoming 8th grader up the top top tier summer league team because he could tell that they had the talent to start or be a major contributor on the varsity the following season. Every kid that started was allowed to play on one of 3 top tier summer league teams that traveled the country. 3. The team had mandatory strength & conditioning at 8:00am Monday-Thursday. He didn't care if they didn't get home from an out of town tournament until 1:00am they had to be at the strength training at 8:00am. If someone was late to practice, games or strength training they had to do an extra workout on Friday morning at 8:00am. 4. He felt that you should play as many games as allowed during the high school season and play against the very best competition. Don't be afraid to take a loss as it will make you have a better tournament team. 5. He would schedule 8 JV games per week. He would get the lower level varsity teams in the area to play his JV team and they would call it a JV game. One thing that he did say was that to get coaches to do this he had to pay for the umpires and furnish the game balls. 6. You must develop a pitching staff in high school and the only way to do that is to work with the kids. He felt that you must have 8 solid arms to win a state championship so he found 8 kids that could and would throw strikes. He hardly ever allowed his starting pitcher to go more than 4 innings or 75 pitches. He liked the idea of giving the team a different look (pitcher) every time they have an AB. 7. He typically placed his very best athletes at catcher. Like he said you win championships with pitching and catching. A good high school catcher is able to switch positions at the next level and be successful. He used 2 catchers during the season and they would never catch back to back games. He would place them in another position when they were not behind the plate. I know this is out of the box thinking for Tennessee but I hope that it helps you.

This has happened before with girls basketball.

The TSSAA has a valid contract with the City of Cookeville to host the TSSAA State Football Championships. Moving to another venue/city would be a breach of contract.

If I were a public school coach I would want to play against the good private schools to see just how prepared my team was at that time. It would give me an opportunity to fix the mistakes before the playoff run began. My earlier comment had nothing to do with not wanting the public and private schools to compete against each other. It was merely a statement that all the TSSAA does for the private schools is take their money.

Private schools do pretty much as they wish! In fact I would encourage the private schools to abandon the TSSAA and form their own league. They are not well represented within the TSSAA so why not form an organization where you make the rules to fit your needs.

How would these plans affect high school football in Knox County?

Why not allow the citizens of the great State of Tennessee to make their own decisions regarding the attendance of sporting events, concerts, church, etc...? I am personally tired of most government officials wanting to make the decision as to what is best for me and my family. The only good thing that could come out of high school football being shut down for the 2020-21 season is the T$$AA would have to be disband due to the fact they would not be able to pay their debts.

We had Woodstock during the Hong Kong Flu so why not allow people to make up their own minds about attending athletic events, concerts, etc...

Childress and the rest of his cronies are complete idiots. The problem is that he is protected by a Board Of Control that appear to be just as silly as him. It's a sad day in the life of Tennessee high school athletics. It could and should be so much better if you had a forward thinking group of individuals that were in charge of the TSSAA.

You have to understand the difference between DeLaSalle and Mater Dei. DeLaSalle is a small all boys Catholic school in the East Bay area of Northern California. They have always done things "low key" and tried their best to keep things in perspective. Example; the football players dress in a regular physical education locker room with metal lockers. Very plain and simple, there is nothing fancy about DeLaSalle as the program is based or working harder than the competition. Mater Dei is the largest coed Catholic school in the USA. It's sits in the middle of Southern California and is where some of the most wealthy, influential and elite kids attend high school. Not that one is better than the other but the two schools have totally different philosophies as to how they operate and present themselves to the public.

The TSSAA has shown complete lack of leadership with COVID19. IMO, it's really not fair for some schools to already be in the middle of Summer workout when other school districts are closed. The smart and equitable thing to do would have been to do away with the dead period but not allow teams to begin summer workouts until July 6, 2020 which is the first Monday in July. I would also seriously consider not allowing the first practice in pads until August 10, 2020 with the first game being August 28, 2020. The TSSAA has done nothing more that pass the buck by basically allowing each school district to do their own thing. I realize that my plan would not be popular but it's really not fair for some teams to be working out for a full month or more before some of the competition is allowed to workout.

He was teaching at Rockvale so why didn't he begin the program at Rockvale and not at Riverdale? Just asking.

Every athletic director that feels as if he/she can get away with dropping a sport will do so and use the virus as an excuse. This is why it's imperative that ALL sports other than football & basketball fundraise like crazy to endow the scholarships for their sport. Over the past ten plus years I have been preaching to anyone that will listen that the very survival of NCAA D1 Wrestling will be based on money. If a school has 9.7 scholarships endowed and the monies cannot be used for anything but wrestling the school will not drop wrestling. Some wrestling programs have even taken this one step further and are now working to endow the coaching salaries which is very smart.

One local director of a Little League Organization told me that they are hoping to play an abbreviated schedule in June & July. He said he was hoping that the teams could begin practice around May 10th with play beginning Memorial Day weekend. All the teams would play around 20 games for the regular season and then have a one week tournament. Youth baseball is meant to be played in the hot summer months and this may very well be a great idea.

Turn out the lights is actually an old Willie Nelson song that was made famous by Dandy Don Meredith.