Tribal

The last sentence sums it up. The kids are having a great season and don't deserve to have it ruined because of this BS, regardless of whose "fault" it is or who is "right." GS says on his FB page that "football is not important" compared to these unrelated issues, and he's certainly acting that way because his approach has now made him the issue and disrupted the season, which is the last football most of his seniors will ever play. I'm not at all saying that the county doesn't have issues, or that those in charge have done things correctly as I have no idea. But none of the issues he's brought up in such a confrontational way is so life or death that it couldn't have waited until after the season for him to address it publicly. He would say it's all about the kids (from elementary school on up), but it's actually very selfish IMO, whether he realizes it or not.

The Cats fought hard and have some good athletes. DB, well, DB continues to be its own worst enemy. The "special" teams gift wrapped 3 TD's for the Cats (and DB was in "safe" looking for the fake FG on the first roughing call??!), and we fumbled again going into our opponent's endzone, among other things. Fortunately the Cats had quite a few penalties and a couple of TO's as well, or DB loses another one after owning the LOS all night.

Hahaha nice sarcasm but I don't think anyone on the DB side was saying that, or was trying to take anything away from GHS, which has another very good team this year. If (and I emphasize "if" as I didn't see the play) it was a bad call, it cost DB an opportunity to win late in the game, that's all. GHS might have won anyway, but once that call was made the game was over.

I don't know how much the kid weighs but I'll bet you a steak dinner it's not 280.

Agree with both of you guys. Penalties and turnovers are certainly part of the game, which is what I was saying--DB did very poorly at that part of the game (with credit due to GHS for some of it) and paid the price for it. It's just more frustrating to lose a game (or at least lose an opportunity to win) like that than to be overmatched physically or athletically. You have essentially no chance in the latter situation and can't feel too bad, but if you have enough talent to win and don't, it's hard to deal with.

Sloopy's is still there. Best fish tacos in town, which a lot of people don't know about.

They were "better" in that they didn't shoot themselves in the foot all night like DB did. But they certainly weren't "better" in the physical or athletic sense, as DB had no problem moving the ball on them and outgained them by over 100 yards. DB didn't deserve to win, and talking about one particular call is curiosity, not excuse-making.

Very true. That was a huge call being on fourth down and would have given DB a chance to tie things up with good field position, but DB was its own worst enemy all night.

Was hoping you had that controversial PI call on the video but I guess not. BTW, a defensive back "getting in the way" of a receiver is not necessarily PI. The DB has as much right to the ball as the WR, and it depends on where they are relative to the ball (position), whether the DB is playing the ball as opposed to simply trying to impede the WR, etc. Just to use one example, if a DB backs up and runs down the sideline ahead of a WR, and then slows down to settle under the ball (just like a WR would), causing the WR to run into him as the ball arrives, you could say he "got in the way" of the WR, but that is definitely not defensive PI (it may well be offensive PI) because the DB had dominant position on the ball. Anyway, I have no idea what happened on that play, but it is rare for Coach Clark to come out and flat say he thought they got a bad call on a specific play, and the DB radio guys went nuts over it (yes they are homers but they are also honest enough to say "we might have gotten away with one there" etc. if the situation warrants). Thanks for the vid.

The odds of DB or SH winning a state title in football anytime soon are slim and none at this point IMO, and slim just left town. There has been a tremendous uptick in highly rated Div. 1 talent at the HS level in TN over the past several years, primarily driven by the increase in population in middle TN. That isn't going on in the Tri-Cities, so it would take a real "perfect storm" of talent converging at one time, combined with a seriously "down" year for some other teams, for DB or SH to be able to run the table. Not gonna happen IMO.

Union actually has around 650 students. Still smaller than Betsy (isn't Betsy around 800?), but not a night and day difference.

It does seem odd, but I understand the rationale for it also. Will be very interesting to see if either of the kids at Gate City head to a prep school, especially McClung, as other than the Arby's Classic the competition they face is even worse than DB and SH.

I've often wondered if they coach DB's in man coverage to look back for the ball at the HS level, and to what extent they do so even at the college level. It's easy to watch a guy focus on the receiver and not see the ball coming, and the resulting completion, but it's easy because we can see the ball and the receiver at the same time and know when the perfect time to turn around would be (we're also sitting still and not running after someone at full speed). The flip side of looking back for the ball is you have to take your eyes off the receiver, and if you do that at the wrong time, it can turn a short completion into a TD. Knowing when to do that is a high level skill, and even NFL DB's are very careful how often they try it. I wouldn't be surprised if many HS coaches specifically tell their DB's NOT to look back for the ball on most routes, at least in man coverage. It's obviously a bit different for safetys, depending on the coverage, as they can get away with it more easily.

Not sure if it's reason for hope or not, but the passing yards DB gave up to WB were not the result of receivers running wide open through the secondary like we've seen frequently in the past. Almost all of them resulted from well run routes and very well thrown balls, and DB actually had pretty good coverage. It would have been nice to have safety help on the first long post for a TD as the corner got left by himself and I'm still not sure where the safety went (looked a single deep safety), but DB's secondary did not look lost or in bad position pretty much all night. Have to tip your hat to WB for its execution much more so than fault DB's pass defense IMO. At least on that night.

Middleton? Is this a history lesson? Or did he start over as a HS freshman?

7:30. All regular season games are at 7:30, and then they back it up to 7:00 in the playoffs.

There is no "pattern" there. If you go back before 2010 you will see that DB went 5-5 in 2009 in the first year back in the Big 8 (with more local teams), but was 10-0 in the last year of the Big East (fewer local teams) in 2008, and was a combined 72-8 over the eight regular seasons before that going back through the 2000 season. And the trend was similar before that. Basically they averaged 9-1 in the regular season and dominated a conference that contained a lot of Knoxville area teams. The local teams in general are certainly not as good as the larger schools, but DB has historically done just fine against larger schools as well.

We demolished them last year but it didn't translate into a successful season. The win is more important than the margin. We need to focus on getting better each week.

I was off by 30 yards--330 yards passing on 9 completions in the first half. 29 points and only seven first downs. Good grief.

Couldn't beat Central with secondary play like this. JC must have 300 yards passing in the first half, almost all on complete busts in coverage.

Easy there Trolltribetroll. You're going to run out of email addresses to register new screen names if this one gets banned too.

JMO, but what Carter has done at SH is not nearly as amazing as what his 2 or 3 immediate predecessors failed to do. No reason on earth for SH to have been as bad as they have been the last 20 years or so other than coaching.

Huge respect for Maryville, but definitely pulling for SH in this one.

Haters gonna hate. Congrats to SH on their two game winning streak. That makes them 2-18 over the last 20. I guess Vandy is the new UT too.

Anyone know if they'll be streaming this one? Or does TSSAA even allow that with playoff games?