rick7425

I'm pretty sure they've figured it out. But as this board reflects, it is new, different, and in some cases a bit complicated, so they are continuing to try to help school people figure it out. They also will be conducting the regular administrators' meetings in late August and early September, so they probably are trying to get something out in advance of those meetings so administrators can ask follow-up questions.

The families of players and followers of participating schools who would have driven to Murfreesboro will also drive to Cookeville. The presence or absence of other entertainment in the area will make no real difference in their decision to go there. The players who make it to the championship game aren't going to concern themselves too much over the dressing facilities. As for the size of the stadium, they will probably be more excited by the atmosphere of a crowd that fills a lot of the seats than they would by playing in a larger stadium with 90 percent of the seats empty. And not to be overlooked is the strong support that the entire Cookeville community had for this move. Cookeville really wanted this event. There is a better chance in Cookeville, than in either of the other venues, that people from the area who have no children playing in the games will still view this as an event worth seeing and will go out to some games. Attendance has been declining, revenue has been dropping (all of which, after expenses, goes to the schools since TSSAA is a not for profit organization, as some on here apparently don't understand). It was time to try something different. No site was perfect ... but this was a good move.

I'll add a little more based on our experience. It took roughly 5 months following surgery before my daughter was able to get on the soccer field in competition. She didn't wear a brace for soccer or basketball after surgery. I asked the doctor if she needed a brace, and he responded by asking, "for which knee?" He then explained that after this surgery, her reconstructed ACL would be every bit as strong as the other one and she would be at no greater risk of injury to it than to the other one. That information seems to be borne out by the literature.

My daughter tore her ACL in 2007 in her team's next-to-last basketball game of the year. She was a junior. She had a patellar tendon graft performed by Dr. Kurt Spindler of the Vanderbilt Sports Medicine center. The surgery was done on 3/29/07. She worked really hard at her rehab. Her senior year, she played soccer and basketball, ran track, and ran the half-marathon. She did experience some occasional soreness in the front of her knee, but all in all, I think the patellar tendon graft she had was quite successful.

Mr. Childress has 14 years of experience as an Assistant Executive Director at TSSAA. The Board of Control has had the opportunity to observe his work and see how he interacts with their fellow member school officials. He already has established relationships with the various players with whom the Executive Director must interact, such as principals and administrators, coaches, game officials, the State Board of Education, TACA, TAIS, the various officials' associations, sponsors of TSSAA events, facility operators, organizations that host TSSAA playoffs, and the NFHS. He already has established relationships with the TSSAA staff, among whom he is highly thought of. He understands the role of the Executive Director, understands the functions of the organization, is respected, thoughtful, and a hard worker. He is committed to the organization. He is already on the staff, so the transition can be accomplished smoothly. It may have been an easy decision since someone so well qualified for the position, and who could take the position without undue disruption, was right there. It may have been a simple decision because it was so obvious. But I don't think choosing to avoid unnecessary disruption, and selecting a qualified candidate that you know as opposed to engaging in guesswork based on resumes and interviews with people whose work you haven't observed, is "kneejerk." I'm confident that Mr. Chidress will be a fine Executive Director. Of course he will be criticized, because criticism comes with the territory. But he will serve the Association well, as he has for the last 14 years.

Bigmoney, I don't know you, and because of that I would not presume to call your character into question. You, on the other hand, came right out of the box and called Mr. Carter a "pompous arrogant jerk." This goes beyond a simple difference of opinion. You may very well have had some conversations over the years with Ronnie Carter. But having a few conversations with someone is not the same thing as knowing the man. Your pejorative name-calling attacks on Mr. Carter reflect the real limits of your acquaintance with him and are offensive to those of us who know him well.

Yes, I have dealt with TSSAA. Yes, they do give a "hoot" about member schools. TSSAA is an association of member schools. The member schools elect the Council members who write the rules. The member schools elect the Board members who interpret and apply the rules. The Council and Board members are administrators of member schools. The Executive Director is employed by the Board and answers to the Board. Every one of his decisions can be appealed to the Board, so that ultimately the elected representatives of the member schools, who are themselves member school administrators, have the final say. This goes for eligibility rulings, hardships, penalties, classification, and everything else the Executive Director decides or recommends. Beyond all this, your comments about control issues, like earlier comments from other posters using terms like "pompous" and "arrogant," simply reflect that you don't really know the man.

If you want TSSAA decisions to be made by referendum, then propose an amendment to the TSSAA constitution to do away with the Legislative Council and the Board of Control... and be prepared to spend a whole lot more of your time dealing with things that others presently take care of for you, including many that you may not care much about but will now have to take time and energy to address. And then also be prepared to be criticized by all those who, however ill-informed or uninformed, disagree with you. "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt (1910).

The schools had something to say on classification. The schools elect the Board of Control members. Each Board of Control member is an administrator at a member school. The Board of Control makes the classification decisions. The schools also had opportunities to communicate their views on the classification possibilities to their Board members. The different plans that were under consideration were presented and discussed at Board of Control meetings (all schools get notice of those meetings) well in advance of the meeting where classification decisions were made. The information was out there for any school that wanted to examine it and provide feedback to the school's representative on the Board, or any of the nine elected Board members.

Yes, indeed, feel free to say so if you are glad to see him go. But the words "pompous arrogant jerk" don't fit. Whether you like him or not, whether you agree or disagree with some of the things he has recommended (the Legislative Council makes the rules and the Board of Control makes the decisions), he's a good man who has been committed to doing what he believes is right.

Amen to that.

The TSSAA Constitution gives the Board of Control the responsibility for selecting the Executive Director. The member schools had their say when they elected their representatives on the Board.

You might find that a lot of DII folks don't want to play football games on Thanksgiving because of conflicts with families' other holiday plans and traditions.

Under the TSSAA bylaws, a member school can play any school team -- not just NFHS sanctioned schools. But I think there are a lot of costs and logistics involved in running an association, and I doubt the DII schools are anxious to take on those costs. TSSAA membership is a pretty good deal financially for them, and with the DII committee they actually have a lot of control over their championship events.

They are heads of DII schools, and they meet regularly with one of the Assistant Executive Directors of TSSAA and make recommendations about a variety of things that affect DII. For example, it was the DII committee that proposed playing the DII basketball state championships at Lipscomb instead of at MTSU with the DI championships. Most of the DII committee's recommendations on things like this get approved unless they are logistically impossible. I don't know if they had anything to do with this decision or not. I'm just suggesting it might be worth finding out before you assume that this is evidence of TSSAA picking on DII.

Before castigating TSSAA, did anyone inquire about the role of the DII Committee in the scheduling of the DII football championship games?

Owlbooster, I think you may have your rules confused. There was a "quota" rule that limited the number of aid recipients who would be eligible in a given sport, but that was the rule before DII was created. The "quota" rule was the product of a committee of independent school leaders who were looking for a way to "level the playing field" among themselves. The creation of DII followed years of debate over the "quota" rule, when a number of public school leaders wanted to do away with all eligibility for aid recipients while a number of independent school leaders wanted to have unlimited eligibility for aid recipients. DII -- whether good or bad -- was a sort of compromise result. The independent schools that want unlimited eligibility for aid recipients may have it, but they compete in the DII classification in the playoffs. The "quota" rule was eliminated with the creation of the DII classification.

No, both teams move on to Sectional games, and if they win there, both move on to the state tournament.

What money would that be?

My understanding is that there have been only a handful of occasions when a private school head has run for a position on the Board of Control or the Legislative Council, and that they have won about half of those elections. This does not include Steve Harris, the upper school principal at Franklin Road Academy who currently is a member of the Legislative Council. He was the principal at Antioch High School when he was first elected to the Council, but he was re-elected after he retired from the Metro schools and took the job at FRA. No other private school head besides Steve Harris has sought election to either the Board or the Council in recent years.

They have done it before.

I don't know all there is to know about catastrophic insurance. I'm not sure how the coverage defines what qualifies as a "catastrophic injury," how much the medical expenses must be for it to kick in, or those sorts of policy details. I do know that the premium for this coverage is the largest single expense that TSSAA pays each year, and I also know that the coverage is for all players. The administrators at your child's high school should be able to provide more information about the program. If they are not familiar with the program, they should be, and they can easily get information about it from TSSAA.

Asitis: I won't get into my personal opinion about a "split." I've been down that road before here, and the same arguments pro and con just get recycled. But I do want to say something about representation. Complaints about lack of representation are not matched by efforts on the part of private schools to secure representation. Seats on the Board of Control and Legislative Council are filled in elections every year. The heads of independent schools don't seek those seats.

Asitis: Ronnie Carter has made clear over many years his opposition to a "split" of public and private schools as well as his opposition to classifying schools into Division I and Division II. But that classification decision was made by the TSSAA Legislative Council. As Executive Director, Ronnie Carter is obliged to follow the rules established by the Legislative Council as well as the enforcement decisions made by the Board of Control -- just as the CEO of a corporation is obliged to follow the policies and directives of the corporation's board of directors. My comments about costs and logistical issues had to do with your suggestion that private schools might form their own association. TSSAA does more than just adopt and enforce rules. TSSAA obtains catastrophic insurance for kids at all the member schools, and by spreading those costs over the kids from so many schools, it obtains a more competitive premium than a smaller association could get for the same coverage. TSSAA provides training for officials, a system for registration of officials, a playoff system, coaches' education programs, and a number of other resources for member schools. TSSAA employs a staff of people to handle all the various responsibilities that are entailed in operating the association. If a group of private schools decided to leave TSSAA and form their own association, they would be faced with the prospect of duplicating the services of TSSAA that they would be abandoning, without the ability to spread that cost over almost 400 schools as TSSAA does now. As for your comment that it is all about money, TSSAA is a not-for-profit corporation. It generates revenues through some of its playoff events and through advertising contracts. A very small percentage of the TSSAA revenues come from membership fees from the schools. Many of the playoff events operate at a net financial loss. Where profits are made, after the administrative costs of TSSAA and the costs of the services it provides (such as catastrophic insurance) are covered, the rest goes back to the member schools. These are the things I was talking about in my response to your earlier post.

If you knew Ronnie Carter; knew his sentiments about public/private issues in TSSAA; understood how TSSAA governance works; appreciated the costs and logistical issues that managing a separate association would entail; and understood how TSSAA operates financially, then perhaps you would understand how some people might find your reasoning a little bizarre.