BigRedDad

Fair enough. But MBA's running game would not have been the same without him leading, and without the threat of his quick hitters. He ran for 440 yards this year, and I don't recall him ever being tackled for a loss. And rightly or wrongly... to the winner go the spoils.

Think what you like. As you have proven over and over again...you don't know what you are talking about.

Do you pay attention to MBA only? Any fan of high school football would know that Chris Jordan had 'insane' stats over the past 2 years, while all Bart did was block. CJ got shammed. In the only few games he palyed he put up more stats than the entire MBA backfield did this season. What did Bart do to BA the championship game? Nothing, that's right, they had 4 field goals. Picking Bart over Chris Jordan, thats insane, or I am sure there is so amount of money behind it. Learn 2 see stats, noob. Do those words look familiar? "CJ got shammed. In the only few games he played he put up more stats than the entire MBA backfield did this season" Those are your words, posted 12/4 @ 1:25 pm. You post so much trash you can't even remember what you write. BTW my son is a Senior, started the entire season and if he is standing on any sideline for the next 2 years it will be a college sideline. For someone who is wrong about so many things you seem to be "sure" about an awful lot. Maybe you should think (but don't hurt yourself) before you write.

Excuse me, but you made the comment that even with his limited playing time CJ had more yards then the entire MBA backfield. I was just pointing out that CJ didn't have as many yards as Vinsing and approximately the same number of yards as Waddey who sat out 4 games with a knee injury. But never let facts get in the way of a good argument. As far as scholarship is concerned, I am pretty sure what the voters are suppose to look at is how a player does in the classroom, not how many colleges are offering. Speaking of which how do you know who offered Bartholomew, and who didn't? Are you his mother or something? He committed early to UT because he knew that is where he wanted to go. Mark Twain once said it is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid, then to open your mouth remove all doubt. Maybe you could learn something from Mr. Clemons.

I stand corrected. According to the Tennesean stat page: Vinsing 216 carries 1361 yards, avg 6.3 yards/carry Jordan 182 carries 1159 yards, avg 6.37 yards/carry So CJ averaged 2.5 inches more/carry the Vinsing. My bad.

You need to check the stats. CJ did not have more rushing yard then E.J. Vinsing alone let alone the whole MBA backfield with Waddey and Bartholomew. E.J. had more more yards per carry as well. Nobody, I mean nobody not BA, not FR, nobody stopped our power running play with the guard pulling and Bartholomew leading. Ya all he did was block, and MBA ran for almost 4000 yards this year. Bartholomew also played defense and punted. He probably played more then 80% of all of MBA's plays all season on offense and defense. CJ was probably around 25%. Not to mention that there are other criteria for this award, like scholarship and citizenship. I don't know what type of student or citizen CJ is, but I do know Ben is exemplary in both areas. Typical low self-esteem FR poster thinking everything has a price. I have never seen a post here from you that made any sense or was remotely accurate. Crawl back into your hole until wrasslin' starts (I guess it has already started). Of course FR will run into Bartholomew there as well. Good luck with that.

Like usual you make a comment that is insane. Chris Jordan only played in 5 or 6 games all season. He can't stay healthy, and he did nothing against the Big Red in the state championship game. Everybody on here made him out to be superman or something. I wish CJ good luck at the next level, but he did not deserve this award.

Congratulations to Ben Bartholomew, and Preston Bailey in Div.II AA. It's only fitting that the award goes to the best 2 players on the BEST team in the state. To bad the TSSAA will never know let us know for sure.

I stated somewhere earlier that I hated that this game had to be played in front of 40000 empty seats. I was in the middle of the MBA crowd and there were a lot of us, but there still was not awhole lot of atmosphere. I have nothing against MTSU per se, there would have been a lot of empty seats at Vanderbilt as well, although for this particular game there might have been more outside interest at Vandy from folks justing wanting to see the game who wouldn't drive to M-boro to do it. I don't think the players get any real charge out of playing in a college stadium that is pretty much empty. They do have a jumbotron I guess, so they can watch themselves (a good thing?). I'm sure there is more in it for the TSSAA this way though. The thing I liked about the old Clinic Bowl is that the proceeds went to a worthy cause (the orthopedic clinic at Childrens Hospital) instead of the TSSAA.

This is what makes High School football fun. BA like MBA knows they have some quality players coming back next year. But to be successful they both will need some unknown players to step up and take ownership of a position to "fill in the blanks" if you will. It is fun to see which kids emerge. It is amazing to watch the transformation from a goofy little kid to a more mature player. I suppose the coaches have an inkling about who those players might be going through offseason workouts, and spring and summer drills, but the fans don't, and there are always pleasant surprises. MBA had a number of them this year. Take the o-line for example. We had Bailey and Rolfe returning starters from last year. Adams played a good bit last year as well. We had to replace the right tackle and center. Wesley Johnson and Owen Lipscomb stepped up big and these 5 guys evolved into what might be the best o-line in the state. Next year they will have 2 returning starters to build around, and 3 new guys will have to step up and join them. This is what makes playing team sports such an important part of the players education and maturation. It is a never ending process in high school sports...players graduate and new players come along to replace them. It is great to watch.

I think of an upset in this context as when the "perceived" weaker team wins. Actually it is an upset when the team getting points against the spread wins. It is always easy to look back in hindsight and say the best team won. I got slapped around earlier on this thread for saying based on the posts here MBA was the underdog this year. Someone actually went back and counted the predictions of the outcome and there were a few more for MBA then BA. But there were also an awful lot of posts depicting Chris Jordan as Superman who was going to run over our defense for at least 500 yards all by himself, and there was no way we would gain more then 25 yards against the vaunted BA defense (hyperbole mine). I would not consider the outcome of this years game an upset, but there we a lot of non-believers in The Big Red around. We beat some very good football teams this year...BA and Father Ryan twice. It is always hard to beat a good team twice in one season. We beat Hillsboro, Independence, both exceptional public school teams. Independence is still playing. It has been a good season for The Big Red (understatement mine as well).

If you remember 2003 that was the regular season game at BA where the game tying field goal was kicked after time had expired, and BA had players moving all over the place. MBA came back in the Clinic Bowl and "tore BA to pieces" as I said. In his final high school game Michael Fisher was something like 22 for 26 passing. Rutledge said later it was the best game he had ever seen from a QB at any level. Hyperbole maybe, but it was a great game.

I know one year when it was an upset in the championship game. It was 2002. It was Jeff Rutledge's first year as coach and BA had beaten us badly in the regular season. Everything was set for Carlton Flatt's coronation that year. In fact the City Paper was trying to put together a game between the DII AA winner and the 5A winner which I think was Germantown that year. But MBA came into the Clinic Bowl and beat BA for the State Championship. That MBA team had juniors Michael Fisher, Tom Santi, Matthew Jacques, Brad French, Michael Koban. They went on as Seniors to dominate the state. They opened by beating Brian Brohm and Louisville Trinity who were rated #3 in the country at the time, and beat everyone they played until they got hosed at BA in the regular season. They came back and tore BA to pieces in the Clinic Bowl.

Sorry bud, but Hillsboro lost to Maplewood last week. That is a shame because in my opinion Hillsboro was the best team we played this season.

Boy you keep serving up softballs. If you are going to be the best you have to compete with the best. If you lose or are even embarassed trying there is no shame in that. It beats staying in Nashville and playing only the weak sisters of the poor outside of the league games. MBA played 6 unbeaten teams this season, 3 of them (Ensworth, BA, FR) late in the season. No one really knew what type of game to expect because of the calibre of competition those 3 played. FR beat Ensworth without their best player, and we played them with him. How does that compare. Well, we found out on the field. MBA played Loiusville Trinity for 4 straight years home and away. The first year when Brian Brohm was a senior. Everyone around Nashville said we were crazy to play those guys, they would kill us. They came into the first game rated #3 in the USA Today poll, KY state champion in the big school division, and what happened. We beat them. It was a outstanding game. We were able to win 3 close games in the series, and they blew us out on our first trip to Louisville (2004). The Big Red recovered from that and won 7 or 8 straight games before losing to MUS in Memphis, and then again to MUS in the playoffs. The Trinity series was great in all respects. Great competition, great high school atmosphere at both places, and great fans at both schools. Unfortunately due to scheduling differences between Tennessee and Kentucky, this game can't be fit into either teams schedule. I wish it could. I think I would rather lose stepping up and playing Cinn Moeller, or St. X, then beat Red Boiling Springs 56-0. I guess that is a foreign thought to you.

I haven't seen anyone on this post suggest that next year will be a rebuilding year. Every year in high school football players graduate and new players have to step up and play. One advantage of crushing Ryan twice is that a lot of our younger players got a lot of playing time. That accounts for your 1 score in 8 quarters. As to why MBA is playing in The Herbstreit Classic? That's easy. The Big Red was invited.

It was #72. Hopefully it will show up on film and they can send it to the TSSAA, so they can do nothing about it. Albert haynesworth was suspended for what (?) 5 games for stomping on an another player.

I would have thought the crow would be better with bitter herbs

This moment is bittersweet for me. I have had boys playing football at MBA for the past 9 years, and last night was the culmination of all of that. What a great way to go out. My older son played on the 2003 team with Michael Fisher, Tom Santi, Brad French etc. That was great team, and one that really should have been undefeated. The next year they had a real heartbreaking loss to MUS in the playoffs, then MUS went on to crush BA in the finals. That 2004 team had more adversity (5 injuires to key players by the end of the 1st quarter of the 1st game, then lost their center for the playoffs against BA) to overcome then any team I've been around except maybe last years group. This years team was fortunate with injuries. Waddey missed a couple of games and Bailey missed a game and a half, but beyond that I don't remember anything real serious. This team did not make many mistakes either. In fact I would say last night was the sloppiest game they played all season in terms of inopertune penalties. If they played as clean game as they were capable of doing they might have put up 4 TD's. I have throughly enjoyed being a football dad, and I will miss it.

I guess this will be my last post as BigRedDad, since my son is one of the Seniors on this team. I guess I will have to change to BigRedFan or something. I want to say something about this group of young men in general and the seniors specifically. None of us, not even the parents can know how hard they worked and what sacrifices they made to achieve this championship. When other teams were practicing inside because it was 105 degrees back in August, these boys practiced in the heat. They had to adjust to new coaches, and new schemes. At the same time keeping up with a very demanding academic schedule. Occasionally a school is blessed with outstanding leadership from their Senior class. This group of seniors (all of them, not just football players) have been outstanding from the time they entered in 7th grade. There are 14 National Merit Scholars in this class, not the highest number in the state, but by far the highest percentage of the class. I expect that 100% of the boys will go to college, some of them to the most prestegious Universities in the country. I seriously doubt that you will hear of any of our DI signee's not qualifiying academically. Oh yes and just in case you are saying to yourself, "ok MBA had a great group of seniors but now they are finished", for the 1st time in 110 years of MBA football ALL of the High School teams were undefeated this year...Freshman, JV, and Varsity. So for all of us Big Red fans the party ain't over, it is just getting started.

My son plays O-Line for MBA, and I asked him about the encroachment calls. He said that BA had an offensive lineman consistantly lining up offside. As far as the the illegal procedure calls against MBA he said that the BA players were barking out the cadence. That is something the officials are suppose to pay attention to, but hey who knows. I would like to make a comment about the the venue. I hate to play this game in front of 40,000 empty seats. There was no atmosphere in the stadium. On top of the fact the boys have to adjust to a new environment. The hash marks are closer together then on a high school field, the goal post are narrower, and they have a 25 second clock working at both ends. I was told that part of the trouble for both teams ws that the 25 second clock reset faster then the officials did during the season. Having said all of that I think I speak for all MBA players, coaches and fans when I say we will play in the parking lot if need be. Bring on the best of 4A, or 5A, we will play them. We might lose but we wont dodge them.

Even though we are 12-0 and beat BA in the rgular season, if I polled this blog we would be a decided underdog. Our boys relish that role.

There is nothing wrong with MTSU per se. The TSSAA moved the game from Vandy when Blue Cross offered to sponser all the State championship games. So instead of it being a fundraiser for Childrens Hospital put on by the Jr. Chamber of Commerce, now it's a fundraiser for the TSSAA.

What type of turf do they have on the field at MTSU?

Finally something I can agree with. The Clinic Bowl for Childrens Hospital was a great event, but the TSSAA went for the big bucks. I guess they need the money to pay their legal fees.