GG22

It's not true. What is true is that they may not have a viable high school baseball team next year, due to being extremely senior heavy. They may find a way to continue, but it will be hard to be competitive unless some new players transfer in or come over from other sports. Football and basketball struggled this year as well, but they could bounce back quickly, as they haven't had the same consistent challenges with numbers and depth of talent in middle school as baseball has for 3 or 4 years now. Their middle school football team was quite good this year, actually.

They may just be dropping HS baseball for now, or the HS coach may just be returning to the MS level where he previously was. They're very senior heavy in baseball, and the few classes behind them struggled in middle school and also have low numbers. This may be a way to try to build the program back up.

From the school's release: Fayetteville High School has announced that Brody Quick will be the head football coach for the City Tigers. Coach Quick brings with him coaching experience from across the state of Tennessee, having served in roles including Director of Football Operations, Assistant Head Coach, Offensive Coordinator, Defensive Coordinator, Strength and Conditioning Coordinator, and Special Teams Coordinator. At four previous coaching stops, Coach Quick has played an integral part in establishing or rebuilding the cultures of successful high school football programs. He looks forward to bringing his own culture to Fayetteville High School which revolves around leadership, ownership, discipline, and building valuable and lasting relationships with all stakeholders in the school, football program, and community. Prior to being named the Head Coach at Fayetteville High School, Coach Quick served as the Assistant Head Coach, Offensive Coordinator, and Offensive Line coach for the Cleveland High School Blue Raiders in Cleveland, TN. Before switching to the offensive side of the ball, Coach Quick worked as the Director of Football Operations, Co-Defensive Coordinator, and Linebackers coach at Blackman High School in Murfreesboro, TN, on a team that reached the quarterfinals of the TSSAA-6A playoffs in 2022. He coached at Blackman High School after having the opportunity to be a part of establishing the inaugural football program at Green Hill High School in Mt. Juliet, TN. Coach Quick was blessed to begin his coaching career at Shelbyville Central High School in Shelbyville, TN where he served in various roles, including Defensive Coordinator, Strength and Conditioning Coordinator, and Special Teams Coordinator on a team which won 24 games in his three seasons with the Golden Eagles and reached the quarterfinals of the TSSAA-5A playoffs in 2019. According to Coach Quick, Fayetteville City Tigers’ players and fans can expect to see a fast-paced, explosive style of offense; a fundamentally sound and highly aggressive style of defense; and an equally aggressive but analytical approach to each special teams unit. Coach Quick is originally from the small town of Kirklin, Ind. He earned his bachelor’s degree in History from Eastern Illinois University and has been a Social Studies teacher and football coach in Tennessee since graduating college. He and his wife, Alyssa, will soon be welcoming their first child into the world. The Quick family is excited to be joining the Fayetteville community where they are forever grateful for this new opportunity.

Lincoln County is already open.

Overall, I agree that the TSSAA is too blunt of a tool to have any business trying to use a one size fits all approach to schedule non-region games for every DII-AAA team. The CPA game is a good example of that, and Ingle Martin sounds entirely reasonable not wanting to play a team 3 hours away when instead he could play an opponent 20 minutes away that will be a better situation for both teams, schools, families and fans, and budgets and is a tougher opponent to boot. Rankin, conversely, sounds like a whiner because, while he tries half heartedly to create a safety concern, he's clearly upset because he'd rather not play a non-region game he knows he'll lose 9 times out of 10. McCallie and Boyd Buchanan are 4 miles apart, both just east of downtown Chattanooga, so they don't even have to battle the horrible traffic. There are a lot of coaches who would have responded by encouraging their kids to step up and see it as an opportunity to test themselves, get tougher and see where they can improve for playoffs, and take their chance at shocking everyone. Some coaches would even try to schedule that game for those reasons and convenience, budget, and local interest reasons, rather than being concerned about scheduling themselves all easy non-region games against more distant opponents. It's not necessary to agree with Rankin in general to agree it's best that TSSAA's assistance here is poorly implemented and creates as many or more problems than it solves. Ironically, McCallie v. Boyd Buchanan is one of the only reasonable matchups the new approach generated, from most viewpoints other than Rankin's team likely losing. So, yes, I think Rankin kind of exposes himself in his arguments even if he's right that it's a bad system. The TSSAA should either drop it or tweak it. They could limit it to just DII-AAA or opponents within 75 miles or, my favorite idea to irritate even more folks, make it DII-AAA against the 12 teams from the previous year's D-I 6A quarterfinalists and 5A seminfinalists.

Move Collinwood and Wayne County to 6. They are just as far from the 5 schools, maybe farther.

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.