BlueDevil58

Morgan Co. is a tough place to coach. They don't pay a dime towards teachers' insurance so they can't keep people at places like Wartburg, which is also full of a bunch of weird backstabbing drama that throws anyone who tries to build a program under the bus. They had a good coach a few years ago, but he left for a job at Clinton because of the insurance issue. After that, they hired a guy who pretty much alienated everyone around the program (it wasn't all his fault--I know the situation there and he had a lot of bizarre backstabbing going on to undermine him to the parents and kids). That's the coach who got them their last win (2014 against Jellico). He got ran out of town on a rail. Then they fired him and promoted somebody from the good ol' boys network who doesn't know jack about football--he hasn't won a single game in a season and a half. Wartburg has won 1 game since 2013! ONE!!! Wartburg could be a good program, but they have a disadvantage. All the Morgan County schools do, really but Coalfield gets the cream of the football crop because of how Morgan County does their zoning and allows kids to play wherever they want. The system is basically designed to all feed one powerhouse program and let the others rot.

Volunteer figures to finish at 5-5 this year. They'll beat Central because it's Central, while South is way down. This will be their first .500 season in years. Next year, they are expected to be a small 5A school, which is very bad for them. At 4A, they would've had a shot at building something, but in 5A they're looking at a conference made up of Tennessee High, Morristown West, Morristown East, Daniel Boone, David Crockett, and Cherokee for the next 4 years. The more things change, the more they stay the same for Volunteer.

Are they actually better defensively or is it their latest coach actually running the ball to shorten the games and not hang their defense out to dry? I know that the previous 2 coaches wanted to run spread offenses there and throw the ball all over the place without a legit QB. That was stupid at a place like UC with such a tiny roster of 2 way players and an overall lack of skill and athletic ability. All it did was put their kids in matchups they couldn't win while stopping the clock and turning the ball over to prolong the misery. 63-6, and that's with Rosser calling off the dogs after the 1st quarter. The backups will still be scoring and UC will get their 1 TD in garbage time against the 3rd and 4th stringers.. UC is probably the worst team in the entire state.

EHS is notorious for recruiting from anyone within 30 miles. As for OOC games... there are VERY few teams Unaka's size within 2 hours. All the ones that are close and had openings are already on the schedule. The closest you can get are a handful of 2A schools, which are usually pretty good... like Hampton. Unaka's just in a bad spot as a program. They can't really schedule another win right now with the state their program's in unless they drive 3 or 4 hours. The closest they can get are Hancock (done!), or maybe Cosby (beat them already this year) or Cumberland Gap (who is improved). Thankfully, Concord Christian was a conference game, but they go D2 after this year. The conference will probably add Jellico or maybe Cosby to replace them, which isn't necessarily a bad matchup, but it's certainly not the easy win Concord Christian figured to be for the next year or two. As far as coaching, Pink's put his heart and soul into that team for years only to have players who don't care about showing up for practice or paying attention when they're there, players who milk "injuries" for weeks, etc. The culture itself in Unaka is toxic. That's not Pink's fault.

Yes, but are they working with those kind of numbers? If the post about them having 5 eighth graders playing up was true, then they really only have about 24 high school kids, with several of those hurt and a bunch unreliable about showing up from what I've heard. So even if you have 24... how many of those are at each position? Even if a kid gets hurt, with numbers that low, a few injuries in JV games could cause you to have to cancel games at the end of the season. How many will you lose for the year before the season's over due to all the things that can go wrong? It's terrible for the kids, but on teams with numbers that low--and I've played and coached on a few myself, you just can't reasonably do JV with less than 35-40. Even then, it's tricky. We once tried to run a 3 game JV schedule in 1A football at a school with 32 kids on varsity. Due to low numbers at certain positions, we wound up playing a bunch of varsity contributors. We ended up losing our second best receiver, #3 TB (and fastest kid on the team who was getting some playing time), and a starting C for the year due to injuries. We had several others we were counting on to play varsity ball get banged up and miss games or be less effective. Another year we started the season with 29 on the team. By the end of the season, every single kid on the team was getting a lot of snaps because we literally had no one else to play. Injuries, quitting, and discplinary actions happen.

Most likely they'll stay in District 1 along with: Cloudland Jellico Unaka Oakdale Hancock There are so few 1A schools in the far Eastern part of the state that they'll probably need to just group the 5 farthest east to create a 5 team district, unless the TSSAA pulls something weird and creates a 4 team district with automatic berths for everybody. The travel for teams like Jellico and Oakdale up to Cloudland and Unaka is insane. Jellico will probably ask to be placed in 1A. They expected to be last time and were flabbergasted that Oakdale was the team sent there instead of them a couple of years ago. They would much rather play Unaka and Hancock Co. than Coalfield and Greenback.

That's assuming they divide regions evenly, which they've never done. With 4 per region making it in, there are 5 team regions where all you have to do is beat that 1 team at the bottom and make it in at 1-9. Meanwhile, other districts will have 8 or even 9 teams where you can go 6-4 but be left out in the cold. Supposedly the reasons for this are to save on travel expenses, but try telling that to the 6-4 teams. I don't see why the TSSAA would be any different this time around.

You are correct. The reason for 6 classes with automatic berths for the Super 32 this last time around was to simplify things AND keep the 6 playoff systems intact. They want 32 teams in each class going to the playoffs, so 4 per region. They make a ton of money off this. With only about 47 or 48 schools in each class, this means 2/3 of the schools in Tennessee will be playoff bound next November.

There'll be about 47-48 per class divided into 8 districts. The sensible thing would be 6 teams per district, but I guarantee the TSSAA will have some districts with 7 or 8 teams and others with 5 or maybe even 4 (automatic playoff berths for all!). The complicating thing that makes projections difficult is that so many of the small privates are going to Division II, but we won't know exactly how many for a few weeks. Cutoffs should be around: 1A-- 150--248% variance in enrollment from smallest to largest 2A-- 400--33% variance in enrollments from smallest to largest 3A-- 600--35% variance in enrollments from smallest to largest 4A-- 810--37% variance in enrollments from smallest to largest 5A--1115--34% variance in enrollments from smallest to largest 6A--1500+--53% variance in enrollments from smallest to largest (2300)

Those 8 kids skipped practice from what I hear. Coach Buckner did the right thing in sitting them. The old coaches at Jellico wouldn't have bothered. Fans don't support Jellico because they can't afford the gas or they just plain don't care. Nobody in that area cares about football. Not even the kids' parents or half the kids on the team. I had family who played there a few years ago. Half the kids couldn't even get their own parents to show up to senior night. Jellico will always have a hard time getting kids out because of how spread out the community is and how poor or just plain sorry the parents are. Lots more boys would play but they don't have any way to practice in the summer or any way home once school starts. Jellico's a different kind of place.