BlueDevil58

The cutoff changes every classification cycle. They want to divide the schools equally into 6 classes, so there's no way to give a static number. Right now the low end for 4A starts somewhere around 700ish.

Where did I ever say "dominate?" I didn't. I simply think they can handle Greeneville up front well enough to run the ball with consistently and milk the clock. I don't think South wins this game. I just think they milk the clock enough to hang around longer and keep it closer than people are expecting. Greeneville won't have time to score 70 on them because South's going to have several 5 minute drives in there. I also don't think you have to be big to be a good OL. Plenty of big fat guys can't move or block. Plenty of small, strong kids get moved from FB or LB and turn out good. One of my own teammates in HS was our C who dominated a Parade All American NT in 3 separate meetings at just 190lbs and the LG beside him was our second best OL at just 180lbs--he was a converted FB who squatted over 500lbs. You're preaching to the choir on that. South's OL are both strong and big. I'm basing what I said about Greeneville from what I'm told about the Sullivan Central game. Central is tiny up front but I've heard their OL handled Greeneville's starting front 4 pretty well except for a couple of missed blocks.

This will be closer than people think. South is huge up front on both sides of the ball and I think they have the advantage against Greeneville on the ground because of that--Greneville is not nearly as good up front as they have been. Both teams are fairly one dimensional, with South getting the edge on the ground due to that big OL. South has no passing game, but Greeneville's passing attack isn't the same without Cade Ballard throwing the ball--the difference is that Greeneville still has athletes everywhere who can score from anywhere when they get a crease. My prediction is that South comes out and successfully plays 3 yards and a cloud of dust, and shortens the game, keeping it from getting out of hand until the 4th. A healthy Reed could be a difference maker, but South's backups RB is decent. Meanwhile, Greeneville has a habit of coming out flat and making mistakes in the first half that get them in a hole against average teams. I look for those Greeneville athletes to be the big difference, limiting South to few explosive offensive plays while ripping off a bunch of their own when they get in the open field. 42-21 Greeneville.

Not really. If you hold a kid back and have them play in youth leagues outside of the TMSAA and work out so they're bigger and stronger when they get to HS, they're still eligible for 9th grade. That still happens quite a bit. It's nowhere near as big a deal as recruiting, though. Holding a kid back is perfectly legal and there are non-sports related reasons to do it. Schools don't like doing it in MS now because they're afraid it can backfire and hurt their HS graduation rates. Recruiting, though... that goes on everywhere. Show me a dominant program and I'll show you some type of recruiting. The TSSAA does not want to do anything about it besides paying some lip service to the rules against it every now and then, but there are tons of ways to get around that rule. Cozy up to the people running the local youth leagues to get them to steer kids to your school, get the school to set up a sham "academic program" nobody else offers so any kids who want to do so can attend your school as if they're zoned for it, hire a MS coach or parent onto the coaching or school staff to get his players, have players and boosters do your recruiting for you, etc. All of that is perfectly 100% legal or at least easily deniable if you're caught.

Tennessee allows the same thing, though there are "tuition" fees they'll have to pay. It's benefited places like Elizabethton, Greeneville, Dobyns-Bennett, and especially Maryville and Alcoa. Tons of Maryville's starters on their championship teams didn't live in Maryville's zone.

Does anyone closer to the school know what the heck happened? It's pretty disgusting if they just shut things down simply because they were being blown out. Did all the kids quit or something? Glencliff has to have some deep, structural/cultural problems to have struggled the way they have, but to just throw up your hands and take away the football program from the kids entirely is absurd.

Central is super small and soft up front and they just can't stop the run. They've given up like 400 yards on the ground to everybody and they've not played an offensive line or RB like what South has. I think the North QB had over 200 yards on them and they made Volunteer look like Alabama. South's going to cruise to a very easy win this week and clear the bench.

Grainger will be lucky to keep it within 50. This is Elizabethton's year to beat Greeneville and make a real run at state.

South picks the score in this one. Julian Reed will break his new rushing record by going for 400 on Central. Probably in the first half. South 91 Central 0

Only if he wants to take a huge pay cut and start over with a whole new staff of assistants, which I don't see him doing. When Science Hill hired Carter, they gave him a sweetheart deal where he got a lot more money than he was making in Sullivan County, tons of money for the team, brand new facilities, and the ability to get just about any ssistant coaches he wanted (like the Nelson brothers) and pay them more to be his assistants than head coaches get paid in Sullivan County. Sullivan County will have new facilities going for it, but that's it. That system is lousy about supporting athletics these days and the pay is only about 75% of what Johnson City pays. They probably will hire someone promising from outside the system, but it won't be Stacy Carter.

Really? Science Hill is having a down year after heavy graduation losses and a couple of weak freshman classes. Stacy Carter knows what he's doing. In a year or two they'll be right back where they were before. It's not like they've ever been a Maryville. Or even a Dobyns Bennett.

Boone will be lucky to hold GHS under 50 or score 2 TDs on GHS's first team D. GHS 56-13 with Boone scoring once or twice in garbage time.

Science Hill is weak up front on both sides of the ball this year. That's going to be their achilles heel, especially as they get into 6a play. Crockett's style of offense could actually work in SH's favor because of that, though. Crockett would much rather pass first, which means that SH won't have to worry as much about being pushed around. Where it'll show up is in Crockett's defense vs. SH's offense. Chandley knows how to defend spread offenses like SH's and SH will have a hard time getting anything going on the ground or protecting their QB. SH's QB is a good athlete, but he hasn't shown the best decision making or accuracy yet. I expect SH's offense to look sloppy and misfire a bunch while Crockett strings together just enough plays on offense to win. DC takes it 28-21.

Yes. They can and will. Crockett might not go as far as they did last year, but this is still the best team in their school's history. Science Hill, on the other hand, is in for a long year.

I think it's mostly Science Hill being so bad combined with EHS getting better. SH is going to be way down this year, especially up front. I seriously doubt they'll finish over .500 after the way they've been getting embarrassed in scrimmages by mediocre teams.

I'm late to the party, but that kid got kicked out of school. I doubt he's able to play anywhere this year.

Elizabethton by at least 3 TDs. Elizabethton looks like a very good team this year and might be the only team in NET who can knock Greeneville off their pedestal. Science Hill is way down from what they have been. They've been struggling greatly in scrimmages and will be lucky to win 5 games with their schedule. I'm not sure about HVA, but SH will lose at least 3 of their first 4 games unless they get some serious home cooking' from the refs against 'Betsy and Greeneville. After that, things don't get much easier.

Both those Science Hill games are going to be ugly. Science Hill is way down this year, Crockett has their best team ever, and Greeneville is still Greeneville. Volunteer at Cherokee's also going to be a blowout. By all accounts I'm hearing, Volunteer's even worse than last year and Cherokee's improved a lot.

Is it true that Boone got lit up by Sullivan Central through the air in a scrimmage?

I wasn't implying that you didn't know it or directing that comment at you, so apologies if it came off that way. I was simply elaborating more on what you said, as a response to the previous comment and to others on here who may be confused. I see and hear so many weird and factually incorrect things from non-teachers and administrators about how easy teachers have it with tenure and guaranteed jobs for life. That's just not the case anymore and hasn't been for some time.

Tenure technically exists, but it's really paper-only for new teachers who started after TEAM. That was one of the goals of TEAM when it was passed. A friend of mine was in a teacher program when it went through and one of his professors explained to his class: "What this means it that none of you will ever have tenure. You will all probably be fired at some point" Teachers can technically get if they meet very specific requirements in years 4 and 5 of their teaching placement and are then approved by the school board, but that's rare. Then they can lose it if they have a couple of years of bad scores (or if the subject they don't actually teach but are evaluated on has a couple of years of bad scores), so it's effectively meaningless. All tenure means is that they are supposed to get an automatically renewed contract at the end of the year and receive due process if the board wants to let them go. The administration can still do plenty of things to run off teachers by making their jobs miserable/impossible if they want to get rid of them. Some districts have a policy of automatically firing any teacher who is up for tenure but does not receive it. McMinn County, I think, fired their coach a few years ago over this. They claimed it was a state law that they had to dismiss him if he was denied tenure, but it never was Rumor has it that Nashville is working on a replacement for TEAM now that's designed to make tenure even harder, if not completely impossible, to get. We'll see what happens. They want teaching to be a short-term gig that people do for a couple of years after college and move on, which is basically the Teach For America model our lawmakers love.

Two things about Caleb Slover: 1. He was hired on his college playing and coaching resume as much as what he has done as a HS head coach. Before taking the Cocke County job, Slover was the Tusculum offensive coordinator and QB coach back when they were among the nation's leaders in passing yards and total offense. What he had to run at Cocke County was just whatever he could cobble together from the players they had: some years, it was just taking his best athlete and putting him at QB to run around and be the entire offense. At Mo-East I think you'll see something more like the old Tusculum air attack, which would set them apart in the conference. 2. Cocke County is an EXTREMELY tough place to coach. It's not just the lack of athletes and tradition, but also the lack of assistant coaches, money, and administrative support that make it hard to build anything there. They cannot get or keep assistant coaches to help teach basic fundamentals or help out with anything and coaching at a 5A school is something no one, not even Nick Saban, could do all by himself. The fact that Slover was able to hang on and coach there for years without being run off or fired for some political BS is a much bigger deal than people realize. The fact that he was also able to rebuild them to playoff contention is another huge deal that people underestimate. I think Slover will be ok and may pleasantly surprise some peoople. However, I also know that Wells was a better coach than people give him credit for and we saw he got treated by fans on here. Morristown East's biggest problem for the past several years has been that they've been soft up front on both sides of the ball, even when they had size and guys who looked like football players. If Slover can improve the OL and DL play, either by bringing in new position coaches or just coaching up the coaches he has, they figure to make dramatic improvements.

I was just about to say Pickett County. Their locker room and "weight room" situation is bad enough, but that field is a nightmare. The worst part is that the "utility field" they play on is all hard dirt with rocks and thistles sticking out of it. It's a terrible surface for the players. Then there are no bleachers and the cheapskate "fans" who can't be bothered to pay the $5 to support the team so they sit on the side of the road. It's shameful and hands-down the worst I've ever seen in HS football. As far as nicer ones, both Greenback and Oneida have really nice facilities for small schools. I'm not sure why there was so much ragging on Sunbright earlier in this thread. Their place has a certain "quaint charm" to it. Same goes for Oakdale and a lot of the District 2-A schools. Unaka, though their team's struggled, has a cool atmosphere on game nights with the bleachers built into the hillside. It's a shame the football can't be better over there. I also like Hampton and Happy Valley's stadiums, too.

Exactly. There are lot of guys who've gotten jobs because they once coached at Maryville, Alcoa, or other successful programs and completely flopped as HCs. Being around success doesn't necessarily guarantee succeed somewhere else, nor does walking into a good situation with a lot of talent mean a coach is going to be able to build the same type of thing elsewhere. The programs that are extremely successful year in and year out usually have a lot more going for them than just the coaches in charge. Talent is part of it, but so is administrative support, boosters, and culture. Tradition may not suit up on Friday nights, but it sure helps to get kids into the weight room the other 9 months out of the year.

Do you mean the former Jefferson County head coach from a decade ago? There are a lot of coaches named Justin Anderson, including several coaching at the college level. Which one are you talking about?