RedRobin1

You got that right!!! Wow - this was a real surprise to me and should be fun to watch. Good luck to Coach White and the Golden Wildcats!

I am looking forward to the trip to Memphis regardless of where the game is. I don't think you know me, or anything about me, so please tell me how you pretend to know what "Demographic" I am afraid of. Tell you what - I won't make assumptions about you and you don't make assumptions about me. That sound fair? As for football, you are entitled to your opinion, but I don't see that you have set forth any objective criteria to support your proposition that MBA, BA or Ensworth is "afraid" of playing anybody. Ensworth used to regularly play Oakland and Smyrna (when they were really really good) in home and home and has no shame in their record against those teams. Those series fell apart when the AAA schools decided that they had enough on their plates and chose not to renew. Actually left Ensworth with a 9-game schedule for a year or two there. Was very happy to see Whitehaven win it all last year - awesome team; sorry that some of their fans can't display the same class as the players and coaching staff.

Well since White Station is the home team, I guess it will be wherever they put it - likely the same venue that they play their other home games. Probably the same place you play them when it is their home game.

Well.......since you are looking at life differently based upon incomplete information (perhaps hand-picked to advance a particular agenda?), I feel compelled to add that MBA played at PC in 2013. I don't know why you are spreading an unfounded rumor that MBA won't play at PC - maybe you should ask Coach Brunetti about their arrangement with MBA before you start spewing the hate speech. By the way, I know this doesn't fit your narrative, so feel free to ignore it, but MBA is playing at White Station on September 28 this year.

"Top shooter" can mean different things in different contexts, but if my team needed someone to hit a shot, from anywhere on the court, to make or break our season, I would want Oatsvall from BA to take it.

I don't know how you define "hiccup", or "business as usual", but Ensworth is 2-2 against Trinity in their home-and-home series, which has been played the last 4 seasons. Ensworth looks to have a better, more experienced team next season than the one which lost to the Shamrocks 14-7 this year. Hope they continue this budding rivalry.

Understood, and no offense meant. I wasn't trying to pick on you, was just expressing my thought that D2-AA has a lot of very good teams. I appreciate those who do these polls, but they really don't mean much when you are talking about putting a bunch of 15-18 year-olds on a bus and having to drive 300 miles to play a very good team at their house. Moreover, with very little cross-play, we in the middle of the state never really know what to expect from the west until we see them in the playoffs. There really is no "easier" - imo, you either win the game and move on or you don't. Sooner or later, you will have to play the other teams that keep winning; getting to the next round doesn't really mean much unless the next round is the final. Since McCallie and Baylor are on the same side of the bracket, they will get a chance at a rematch if they both win tonight. Hope for no injuries and close games!

There are no easy games in D2-AA at this point in the season. MUS, especially at home, is no joke and would not be an "easy" game for any team in the state. That's also a long. long commute for Baylor. Hope it's a good game!

You may be right, but I wouldn't count my chickens before they are hatched. Ricky always seems to come up with something. Ensworth has won 5 gold balls and 1 silver ball in basketball in 10 years of varsity competition, so you write Ensworth off preseason at your own peril.

You need to wait until BA gets it's football players on the court before you judge how good they will be this year. This statement holds true for many of the D2 schools.

CBHS also needs to figure out a way to beat Ensworth, who has beaten them in 2 out of the last 3 state semi-final games.

Not sure I understand this point. FRA finished their year 1-10. Harding Academy beat them 48-16 on Friday, so I imagine that Harding's nominee for Mr. Football watched much of the game from the bench after having helped his team to an insurmountable lead. DCA, on the other hand, beat FRA 48-34, so it stands to reason that Walker was involved from the first to the final whistle. He apparently had quite an impressive night and that was no doubt a good win for DCA. However, simply comparing yards under these circumstances is not really indicative of much of anything. No other nominee's team got to run up their stats against FRA this year, so I am not really sure what you are trying to say. I comprehend the concept of "mutual exclusivity" just fine - that concept does not come into play when you say Player A should have been nominated in lieu of Player B,C,D or E. There are a lot of excellent players out there - some get nominated for awards while some do not. Good luck to DCA this week - hope it's a good game with no injuries on either side.

No doubt there is some subjectivity involved; would you have them just award it to the back with the most yards? If so, how should we distinguish between passing yards and rushing yards? Should we include return yards? Since I am not on the panel that picks the finalists, I cannot tell you what criteria they used. I can tell you that perhaps one such criteria may have been the level of competition. It looks like 3 of the 4 nominees for Mr. Football in the D1-A back category come from the west. Based upon the first round of the playoffs, the west seems to be the far superior to the division in which DCA plays. In fact, it appears that the only team that DCA played that is still alive in the D2-A playoffs was Webb, which administered a 41-17 beatdown in that game. The other nominee is from Webb, which also played first round winner BGA, Alcoa and Oak Ridge. No offense meant to DCA, 'cause they played the teams in front of them and have had a great year (and again, Walker is an excellent back), but it just might be a wee bit tougher to put up those kind of stats against some legitimate competition. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I will accept the opinion of those handing out the trophies over that of some anonymous homer on a message board. And yeah, despite your protestations to the contrary, you are clearly implying that your candidate is more deserving than at least one of the semi-finalists, so you are showing disrespect to those nominated. Congrats to all of the nominees.

Well, no, not really, unless you are referring to the middle school. Bowers has been at Ensworth since they opened the high school. 2007 was the first year that they had freshmen through seniors at the school and was their first full year of varsity football. 4 gold balls and 1 silver ball in 9 years, playing in the large school D2 division. Not too shabby, imho.

For someone who is "not interested" in debating, you sure have posted much attempted debate with owlbooster, who was simply trying to decipher your initial post. I agree that Walker of DCA is an excellent back, but I cannot say that he was "jobbed",since I have not seen all of the backs who were nominated. It seems to me that you show a tad of disrespect to the actual nominees by implying that they are somehow the beneficiaries of some nebulous unfair system. I guess you can feel free to give out your own awards if you don't like the criteria utilized by the existing award structure. Congrats to all of the nominees!

Wouldn't be the same though if it didn't count. I am not a student (unfortunately), so I don't know how the vote will turn out, but as I said before, I will be absolutely shocked if the Tigers don't play up next year. As for this year, I am hoping for a good game. It should be, as always, an awesome atmosphere and a lot of fun, regardless of the outcome.

Don't know who makes the ultimate decision at BA, but at Ensworth, the decision is wholly dependent on a vote by the students. Since they consider MBA to be their main rival (and, to a lesser extent, BA, Baylor and McCallie) in all sports, I can't see the students voting any way other than to move up. Ensworth has played against the large D2 schools since its inception (as the result of a prior student vote when the high school was brand new) , so they really have not had the opportunity to build up any other meaningful multi-sport rivalries.

Didn't say it was against the rules, Booger - that's why I used quotation marks when I said they "moved down". They were certainly within their rights to do so, but any objective observer would agree that it created a very unbalanced situation in D2-A football.

Soooooo........a CPA fan is outright accusing Ensworth and BA of recruiting????? You do know that the TSSAA rules prohibit recruiting, even in the wild world of D2??? My guess is that certainly Ensworth and most likely BA will move up, so you will likely need to turn your evil eye towards Webb in Knoxville.

Absent NCS, my top four are DCA, Friendship, Davidson and Middle Tennessee Christian. The drop off after that appears to be pretty steep, but at least those four should all have a fair shot at bringing home a trophy in any particular year. As I said previously, that's a whole lot more interesting, in my opinion, than betting on whether Webb will win the championship game by more or less than 3 touchdowns. Hopefully, without a bully like Webb in the division, some of the other small schools will be able to get their programs moving forward and become competitive as well. Part of my point is that the schools which will be left in D2-A are all much more similar to each other than any of them is to Webb, especially if NCS moves up. Much better situation for all involved at that level. I don't see that as a bad thing, regardless of whether you want to call it a "rec league".

D2-A as comprised in the past several years not been very interesting, with Webb (a school which has much more in common with the larger schools than with the smaller schools) totally dominating football since they were allowed to "move down".. If, as you seem to think will happen, NCS moves up, at least there will be several teams left in the small school division that will be capable of winning the championship every year. To me, that is much more interesting than seeing the same school dominate, even in "down" years.

Had not heard that NCS is thinking about playing in D2-AA next year, but would be surprised if they do. Sorry if you don't like my tone - didn't realize that this was a safe space where posters expect to be coddled. just type what I think - no offense intended.

First, neither Ensworth nor BA has yet announced what it is doing. I would be surprised if BA "plays down", shocked if Ensworth does. Travel funds aren't much of a factor to those two - having been around both programs, I can assure you that competition is much more important to them than are travel considerations. More importantly, you have not been paying much attention to small private schools if you don't think that Nashville Christian should dominate D2-A next year, and possibly for the near future. I personally think that next year's D2-A division will be much more entertaining that this years D2-A. Next years D2-AA and D2-AAA also stack up nicely, imo, if Ensworth and BA move up.

Was not my intention to be anything other than civil - sorry if I wasn't. The thing about competition is that most programs seem to live up or down to their competition. In my opinion, D2 was kind of stuck in a rut until Ensworth came along and won several championships (I think 4) in a row. Most of the other programs stepped up their game - new coaches, new facilities, new attitude. No reason that can't or won't happen at Lipscomb; based on their history and what they bring to the table, I think they will become competitive in their division no matter who is in it. Trying to stack the deck so that they avoid someone. anyone, is not, IMHO, the best way to go about anything in life. I understand what you are saying, but your solution requires subjective placement of schools in the "right" class - no one (other than perhaps the school which goes home with the trophy) is ever satisfied when subjectivity is incorporated into a competitive situation. I respect your opinion in this regard and wish it could be so, but, like communism and socialism, though it sounds good in theory, I just believe that it would not work in the real world. We thus disagree - no offense meant. Still don't understand why open-zone publics (which can accept students, who pay minimal tuition, from out-of-county) are totally different and why for them you believe that classifications must be based on enrollment. Seems to me that they operate by the same rules as privates, except (1) the "out-of-zoners" are subsidized by the state and county and (2) the tuition is a lot less.