dead bear

I've seen too many "non competitive" HS teams beat "competitive" HS teams and even more really fight it out. Didn't Walker Valley (a non-compete team in this list) make it out of their district last year? How many others? But should the classifications be revisited? Perhaps. Maybe a AAAA to spread fairness a little more. We could even go crazy and do like the European Premiere league does: bottom finishers in the league rotate out and the top finishers in the lower league rotate in. Is this too complicated for HS sports? Probably. Rivalries mean a lot across sports. The football team that gets stomped by School A loves to watch their soccer team take School A apart. If you want to compete, build young players and youth programs. Build up competitive programs. Or move to a "competitive" area.

As a Farragut grad (over a decade ago), I understand why Farragut has the crowding problem it does. Some rezoning occurred while my brother was still there. My mother swore we'd move before being rezoned. Farragut is a school with an excellent academic record as well as athletic. Yet Hardin Valley doesn't even exist yet. If it draws from the Farragut area, it should have similar academic success. I have, however, heard some unhappy rumors about Hardin Valley's budget. I've heard everything from it having no athletic program to a massacre of the building budget. If switching to HV will mean students miss out on opportunities, I'd be upset too. It's the county's responsibility to make sure this new school offers everything other schools do. Otherwise it's geographical discrimination, isn't it?

I find that refs more often show bias against one team rather than in favor of one. They expect a team to play dirty or just don't like the players/coach/whatever. I can't imagine this comes from alumni loyalty but it could occasionally stem from old rivalries. Bias is a human trait that can't be eliminated, only recognized for self-suppression.

You can sub after a yellow. It's a relatively new rule that a yellow carded player has to leave the game at all. (Relatively meaning ten years or so). A red card requires the team to finish the game short. Be that a straight red or a second yellow to the same player. I'm aware of at least one team that finished a game with 8 players last year -- two soft reds and one hard red. Only one TSSAA suspension was issued after that game.

As I understand it, a "soft" red (second yellow) is still a red card, but there is no TSSAA suspension beyond the current game. In other words, you play 10 for the rest of the game but all players are eligible for the next game. A "hard" red (no yellows, just a red card) is more in line with most sports' ejections and thus carries the mandatory one game suspension. That is, you play 10 for the rest of the game and the carded player misses the next game (but you play 11 the next game). Many coaches and/or schools will assign their own suspensions for unacceptable behavior that results in an ejection.

The problem isn't technically a shortage of referees, it's a shortage of linesmen (technically assistant refs). If TSSAA certified people just as linesmen, the demand would be easier to fill. They would be able to spread around refs better, too. A linesman need only do four things during a game: 1) make possession calls on out-of-bounds, 2) call offside, 3) help the referee regulate substitutions, and 4) watch for fouls the ref might not notice -- usually blatant or serious fouls. Implementing such a system would be pretty simple. Pay linesmen half what a ref gets and the price for a trio would be the same as a dual. Is it as good as having three certified refs? Maybe not, but I bet it beats a dual. Of course there's the issue of recruiting these linesmen. I know I'd do it if I wasn't expected to cover more than a couple games a week. I know several others who would do it, too. All I know is that I'm tired of seeing duals at every game outside a major city. Something should be done to better protect our players.