GG22

There was a similar situation with Fayetteville High School a few years ago. As I recall, they lost the appeal and got a temporary injunction, with the judge removed a day or two later. I expect the same to happen with LA. Fayetteville went from 10-0 to about 4-6 and out of the playoffs that year, after the ruling against them. In their case, they had a QB transfer across the state line from Alabama, and there was a question about his eligibility based on a technicality of whether a city school bus ran by his house or just a country school bus. He had initially been ruled eligible by the TSSAA before the season, but then they took another look at it over halfway through the season and ruled him ineligible. The sad thing is due to a combination of his injuries and not being that good, he ended up not starting, and the team very likely would have been 10-0 without him but still had to forfeit enough wins that they were ineligible for the playoffs in a year they'd have had a shot at a gold ball.

I just watched the replay of the full drive on Fayetteville's NFHS feed, which shows the live scoreboard clock, so you can see exactly when it was stopped. Based on that, there wasn't any funny business. The two incomplete passes were really quick plays, and the clock ran through the full playsstarted on time and didn't stop until they were over. On the run play, the clock also started immediately and ran through the full run play, and at most you could argue that it maybe could have run one second longer before they gave the final timeout (which you can see immediately signalled from the sideline). So, maybe there could have been two seconds remaining instead of three before the last play, but there would have been a play regardless. Also, there were three times earlier in the final drive when the clock ran two seconds past the end of the play on automatic stoppages, so it didn't look like the clock operator had a quick trigger in general. City was lucky the receiver didn't catch the pass on the next-to-last play, as Willoughby threw it low and the receiver sat down on the one yard line to try to catch it; if he succeeded, the last three seconds would have ticked off. Instead, City got one more play. Forrest ran a zone defense with a 3-man mush rush, presumably more scared of Willoughby's legs than his arm. The RDE rushed inside between the C and LG, allowing Willoughby to roll to his preferred left without any pressure and find an open receiver in a soft spot in the zone the back of the end zone, and a good throw and catch made the difference. The case might be stronger to argue poor referee calls in the last drive, although there was nothing blatant. There were a couple times it looked like a Fayetteville OL may have moved a split second early. Also, I couldn't tell on the video what the pass interference was, but based on the Forrest defenders' reaction (or lack thereof), it may have been justified. All in all, it was a heck of a drive that ended a great game, and Forrest would have deserved the win just as much as City if the last play had gone the other way.

Good point. I miss the days of 3 classes total. State would be better off with at least dropping to 4 public and 2 private classes

The new soccer stadium in Nashville, Geodis Park, is an obvious answer if it's available. It's centrally located in the state, easily accessible in the city, and far nicer than anything else in the state, including having a roof over the seating areas. With a capacity of 30,000, it's also a reasonable size. Bigger stadiums would make the crowds these days just look sad.

The new Nashville soccer stadium, Geodis Park, would be outstanding. Centrally located in the state, a good size at 30,000 capacity (could have had some sellouts in the '80s and '90s), and a very nice venue, including a roof over the seating areas.

I forgot about Hillenmeyer. As I recall, he wasn't a super highly regarded prospect when he went to Vanderbilt, but he exceeded expectations there and then far exceeded them in what turned out to be a very solid NFL career.

BA might have given them a run, but I don't think MBA had the horses to keep up. They had some great high school players, but Martin was the only one who would be in the top handful of talents on Lipscomb's team. MBA dominated what was arguably a down cycle in D-II, shortly after the divisions were split. I do remember a fairly narrow win over an average Lincoln County team in '99, and I believe they were blown out on the field by Bolles in 2000 but later got the win by forfeit due to Bolles having an illegal player. MBA was definitely good, but I'm not sure I'd put them in the top handful of best Tennessee high school teams ever.

Still 14-0. McKenzie had a few penalties and had their first punt, and City has the ball and is finally moving the ball a bit. At McKenzie 40.

They may be, but it's not all about 2 schools. TSSAA has to make the regions and numbers work, and there are a lot of schools closer together than that who won't be in the same region.

2A Projections: East - 25 1 (6): Hampton, Happy Valley, South Greene, West Greene, Cumberland Gap, Eagleton (could be 2) 2 (6): Wartburg, Oneida, York, Bledsoe, Tellico, Polk 3 (7): Monterey (could be 2), Jackson, Smith, Trousdale, Westmoreland, East Robertson, Harpeth 4 (6): Marion, Cannon, Cascade, Forrest, Fayetteville, Loretto *Harpeth and Loretto both make more sense in the West (Region 5) if imbalanced sides aren't an issue. West - 26 5 (7): Summertown, Mt. Pleasant, Lewis, Hickman, East Hickman, Waverly, Camden (could be 6) 6 (7): Adamsville, Riverside, Huntingdon, Milan, Gibson, Peabody, JCM 7 (6): Bluff City, Trezevant, MASE, KIPP, Memphis Business, MLK Prep 8 (6): Sheffield, Oakhaven, Hillcrest, Freedom Prep, Fairley, Mitchell

LCHS refused for the initial years after City started a high school, largely due to sour grapes from the old dudes who were administrators and boosters. That's starting to fade now, and there have been preseason football games the last two years, so I think within a few years they'll start playing. The kids would love it, and the gates would be useful to both sides.

As far as I know, there isn't even a middle school baseball coach at City currently. You're right about there being more opportunity, though, as any above average rec ball player could start for the middle school currently. The city youth rec baseball program has been a mess for a few years and the best athletes at City usually don't play baseball, so it's a struggle there. There's a lot more than sports to choosing a school, but it's pretty obvious currently that City has a more successful football program and Lincoln County has a much stronger baseball program. Both have had some recent success in basketball, but City has had more and probably has the potential to reach a higher level.

He's back on the roster. He may have some work to do to be back in top form and at the top of the rotation. I don't know all the details so I won't speculate, but it's safe to say it wasn't an ideal offseason for him.

Fayetteville may be tough next year if they come back hungrier again. They have to replace 3 OL and their best LB, but they're returning their QB, top 2 RB, TE, and 4 of the top 5 WR including the best one.

It's illegal pretty much everywhere in high school, since a few years ago. He did it last night, but he would have scored on that play anyway as it was right at the goal line, so I didn't have a big issue with the no call. I don't remember the Frame call last year, but it must have happened early. Once he got hit a few times, he didn't do much for the last 3 quarters.

Hurdling. It's illegal in high school football. It was definitely there, but I guess the refs didn't feel it was enough to take points off the board.

It's worse even than than that. Including this season, they've only had 2 winning seasons in the last 13, and their last really good year was 2003. City currently has far better athletes and is now a big factor, but it only came into existence in 2011 and wasn't a power until 2019, after Palmer retired. LCHS started a fade after 2003 and was already pretty bad by Thompson's last two seasons, prior to City's launch. The down years now span 4 coaches from Thompson to Rose. LCHS Football by Season

Lincoln County has fired their coach, halfway through his (bad so far) second season. My guess is they're trying to give themselves time to gear up to go after a big hire to try to salvage the program after a run of about 15 mediocre to bad seasons. LCHS Coach Released

Two points on that. 1. There was a time not so long ago where the title games at Vanderbilt pulled 20-30,000. Put the games back in a central, big city that people like to visit, and the numbers should improve again, although probably not to 30,000. 2. The new soccer stadium will be far, far nicer than Nissan in pretty much every way.

That stadium is way too big, with the little crowds the games have been getting for years. The new soccer stadium would be perfect after it opens next year, though. It'll be much nicer than any other stadium in the state and have plenty of capacity at around 30,000.

In practice, I don't think you'd need an attendance cutoff initially, as I don't think many/any schools that can still field an11-man team would make the jump. There are currently 11 public schools with under 200 attendance that play football, plus several that don't. That's probably your target audience among the publics, plus maybe a few slightly larger magnets or charters, so you might get 10-20 there to start. Once the sport was established, you'd probably get interest in the second cycle from some bigger schools that struggle to get 30 players or compete. If the TSIAA privates were drawn over, that's around a dozen schools in a given year, and with the added legitimacy of TSSAA sanctioning I think you'd get to 20 privates pretty easily, possibly more since there are privates up to about 300 whose football interest isn't enough for 11-man. I could see one public classification and one-two private ones to start, depending on the numbers. 11-man would probably need to return to 2 classes on the private side, which may be a net positive as it'd allow for better geographic regions and classes big enough for a state championship to mean more than a region championship. If there's enough interest in it for there to be more profit than hassle, TSSAA will eventually add it.

It really favors speedy players, as there's so much space since you play on a regulation football field with 3 fewer players. That's why the scores typically resemble arena football.

CPA had a noticeable advantage in size and depth this season, and Lipscomb still snuck out one win and was close in the other game. Ingle is a great coach, but Lipscomb will get their share of wins if the talent level continues to improve. Isn't Pulaski Academy the school that never punts and always kicks an onside kick? That should be interesting. GAC is a C of C school like Lipscomb (tons of GAC graduates attend Lipscomb U) and a powerhouse program in Georgia, so that could become a great interstate rivalry.

The school district is Fayetteville City Schools, as opposed to Lincoln County Schools. Also, before the county high schools consolidated in the '70s, the biggest high school was located in town and was known as Fayetteville Central High School, or Central for short. Central became Central Junior High when LCHS was built. Fayetteville Junior High was the Fayetteville City Schools junior high in the same era and was known as City to differentiate it from Central. That building later became the City high school, and the nicknames (City and Tigers) stuck. The colors did change from orange and blue to orange and black, though.

Agree. I also don't buy the argument that the risk of injury is too high. It all comes down to LC for years not wanting to play out of spite and City not wanting to now that they have the advantage, similar to Texas refusing to play an SEC Texas A&M and then A&M deciding not to play when Texas saw the light. In both cases, it's hard for both sides to agree at the same time that a great rivalry should happen, rather than try to maintain a perceived current advantage. The City-LC game should happen in baseball and basketball, too, and there's even less reason not to make that happen since games across classes are so common. The City girls recently played and beat Shelbyville for goodness sake.