Stonewall

I agree with you. The feeder program issues can be tabled for a reasonable amount of time. However, the coaching staff issue will be immediate. In the event, there is a new coach, solid new candidates for want to bring in assistants who will be critical to their success. They don’t want to hear “we don’t tell the math department, the English department, the PE department, or the social studies department who to hire“. If they hear that, they will assume D-B is not committed to winning and not go to the trouble to uproot their families to start such a huge endeavor.

Nah, if it were visions of Clark we would have won. He had the same game in ‘99. Undefeated ‘Betsy, with Jason Witten no less! Very average D-B team…AT Elizabethton. Clark and company blew ,em out!

One of my favorite topics and maybe we can pick it up in a different forum in the off-season. You said the people from Greeneville and Elizabethton don’t think upper east Tennessee football sucks. I wouldn’t think that either if I were them, but they are in the high school football equivalent of the special ed room and don’t know it. Tennessee has as many football champions as Florida and Texas, though they only have about 1/5 of the population. It’s ridiculous. Look it up & fact check me; Greeneville and Elizabethton have 4 state titles between them in the last five years, all from beating Haywood or Springfield. NONE of those “state championship worthy” opponents lost less than 3 games in the regular season, and one actually lost 4!! You can‘t lose to Greeneville at HOME and think you’re any good.

I’m having trouble following your (& Wacos) logic. I’m disappointed in this loss because of exactly what you accused Clark. Upper East Tennessee football sucks. I wanted this win to show we are ready to be different. At least Clark made the semis. People who think we were better than OAKLAND IN ‘98 are on drugs. Red Bank beat us and won it. Riverdale was a Gary Rankin power, much better than Greeneville. Right now we don’t clear East Tennessee, but somehow Clark doing much better “doesn’t matter unless he wins it”. Hard to figure.

Wow. Short memory huh? I don’t recall 3 trips to the Final 4, one of them 13-0 when we arrived, since he left. I pull for the Tribe every Friday night, but much better teams than Greenville are down the road.

So incredibly proud of our Indians at Dobyns-Bennett. Winning the ultimate championship at any level almost always involves FINALLY having everything go your way, then you still have to win it. The criticisms have been there over the decades for the three major sports that were knocking on the door. There was always one particular area that popped up and we had to discuss being the bridesmaid. Off the top of my head, I remember baseball in the 90's one year had to win one of the final two to be state champions, but fell. A great football team lost in the semis to a Red Bank team that wasn't as good as us, but we literally played in tropical storm weather. The team built for a power game won it late. Ditto two years later when we thoroughly out played Riverdale, but gave up a fluke shanked punt for a losing score. I'm sure there are many more, but for once, things went our way and kids made huge shots, defended their tails off, and found a way. Who knows what happens if Farragut doesn't get 7 players suspended? Things like that have to happen most years for a champion. Tennessee only won the legendary National Championship of 1998 because, of all things, Arkansas QB Clint Stoerner had his foot stepped on, stumbled and fumbled, or Tennessee would still be without a National football champion since the 50's. It was their time. So happy for the city of Kingsport.....Roll Tribe!

Nah, Clark beat Science Hill and dang sure never scored 3 in J Fred.

Wow.....250+ wins, 3 trips to the Final 4, 6 trips to the quarters, and his shot at Alcoa was a controversial loss on a late call by a score.

I have followed this story with great interest while staying out of the discussion. My involvement with the TSSAA goes back almost 30 years and I was an ardent defender of them back then. My sentiments were along the lines of "you try governing the whole state and see how hard it is." The passage of time has completely flipped my opinions and this case is a perfect example of why. The TSSAA is a money hungry, meddling, and increasingly liberal organization that is still feeling the effects of Ronnie Carter to this day. Their officials can be blatantly caught in the wrong when it comes to controversy, but they will cover their butts and defend the officials every time. As for the Haywood situation, another classic example....If you as an organization say that you can't control coach firings, then so be it; that was your decision. What it comes down to is a Mafia-type threat that says, "Kill him and we'll spare you. Let him live and we'll kill you and your kids." Sophomores at Haywood will never play in a state playoff game because of punishment handed down that would far better suit being caught in widespread cheating and recruiting. Possibilities from witnesses have been expressed on earlier pages that said this escalated because of umpires taking a "it's right because I said so" position. I can't count the number of times I have seen arrogant officials in every sport take that position. I was directly behind a basketball bench one night when I saw a coach get hit with a technical because he said, "That wasn't a walk." He got T'd up and the official walked over and said, "It's a walk because I said it's a walk." Space won't allow me to cite far worse examples. In a perfect world, high schools would unite and leave the TSSAA and form their own federation. Spare me the "horrible example in front of kids" speech. Parents forfeited that innocence long ago when they turned High School baseball into years of travel ball, massive money being spent, yelling at umpires, personal hitting/pitching coaches, and firing coaches that didn't get their kids to a full ride at Vanderbilt.

Deliberately stayed off of here this entire season. My views clash with many on here and I wanted to allow Christian a year to present a full body of work. Tonight I am sad. It’s the evening of October 26th and football season at D-B is over....again, in October!! I think it’s the first time we’ve missed the playoffs in 33 years! We now have all of the off-season to debate the inner workings of the Kingsport City School system. However, the very words I predicted over and over on here while y’all were slamming Clark have been verified. I said that only when Clark left would people see what he meant to D-B football. One year ago tonight we were Region Champions and about to embark on a week that would bring us our 8th win. That included wins over Oak Ridge and defending state champion Farragut. All of the spin on the earth won’t change how much we miss the guy that won over 250 games and lost about 70!

Let’s assume you are 100% correct in your assessment. Why do you think that was the case?

Anyone surprised? I hope Christian does really well. However, this reflects what I’ve been saying for years. The “vision” to conduct this “national search” is the same vision that has handcuffed Clark for 10 years. My $$ says there were really qualified coaches who, in the eyes of our East Tennessee locals, wanted “way too much” for the powers that be.

I understand this can hit a nerve if someone is a Greene County resident and a fan of Greeneville, but I disagree with using Greeneville as proof that "it can be done" with D-B and Science Hill. Greeneville does a terrific job of playing the people that are put in front of them. They have no say in it and it's not their fault that the state of Tennessee (thanks Ronnie Carter) has done what it's done. However, when our state has as many state champions as Texas and Florida, something is obviously wrong. (Follow the money) D-B will never have the opportunity to play teams in the semis and the state championship that were 7-3 in the regular season. That has been the case for Greeneville in both 2017 and 2011. Now, before you react and attack this as an anti-Greeneville post,.....it's not. As I said, they do a great job of beating who is put in front of them. My only point is that D-B and Science Hill won't get that luxury. Until one of those schools decides to get serious about football from the administrative standpoint, to let the coach hire a quality staff and put the politically correct nonsense about "this is favoritism over our other sports," they will never stand toe-to-toe with a program like Maryville, That's what they have, a program....not just a team.

The verdict on whomever DB hires is not hard to predict. The facilities are unmatched and the football in the area stinks, so that's not the challenge. The issue is what will the admin do in terms of letting the new guy hire coaches? Clark had to pull teeth to get anyone hired, much less someone he really wanted. If that's the sentiment coming in..."this is DB and that should be enough for you".....Nick Saban can be hired and the struggles will continue. For all of the love on here about Maryville, people don't appreciate the quality of that staff and the number of former head coaches/coordinators that have been/are there.

This thread will go nuclear by the end of the day.

Norris at North doesn’t get near enough credit. He quietly puts a solid product on the field every year. Not easy to do when they are about to close your school.

There you go again. You got almost to the end of your post before you name-called again. It seems you’re dealing with some insecurity issues. We could do this in perpetuity because I love it, but on a more serious note; I have said this on here before although it has been quite a while. Unless his current and former coaches are lying, Clark has been very frustrated in the last 10 years at the lack of the school allowing him to replace coaches. He has hired part time and retired guys because, unlike football schools, they have not allowed him to simply name the best available Coach and put them into a slot. He isn’t stupid. He knows many people. He hasn’t been able to assemble the kind of staff that that you would like. I E – a Maryville staff. He has been plugging holes for sometime because he doesn’t get treated like a coach of a football school. As has been accurately stated on here, DB is more of a band school. Perhaps a topic for another time. We should all enjoy a big win tonight and a big challenge ahead next week. Oh, and the fact the Hill is at home.

Genuinely bizarre. No where in that post are you mentioned, called out, or remotely referred. Try again.

To paraphrase someone from last week, “show me a post where I called you out.” The only aggressive thing said on here tonight was you calling me an idiot. Now, about that “did you play” thing?

....aaaand your the tough guy who can call me that behind the confidentiality of a keyboard. By the way, did you ever play football? Did you play in college? Just curious.

That’s a relief! Here I was thinking there were years of heavy criticism leveled at him for being a poor coach that needed to step down. It appears that we all now agree what a great job he’s done! That’s great! Now we can all move on to the 2nd round in harmony! Fantastic!

#1 seeded Tribe plays a #4 seed ...in the first round of the playoffs....at home...and rolls them 30-7. I can’t imagine what an idiot Clark will be on here by night’s end.

Ummm, Waco, I never said that it was you who criticized him. You just volunteered it. I don’t think making it to Maryville is a state title. I believe, no, I KNOW that anyone believing there is a budding state champion from extreme East Tennessee is a delusional homer. Any objective analysis of Greeneville’s 2 titles illustrates how bad their competition was and how weak their playoff tree was. It’s what happens when our state has as many champions as Texas and Ohio with 1/3 the population. We have hard working rural kids and way too small of a minority population to consistently scare people in the final two rounds. That’s why I think Clark has done a good job!

All I know is he has navigated an extreme upper East Tennessee team to an undisputed Region title. This has been against 4 teams that are 35-5 and represent 2 defending state championships. There isn’t a Division I player in sight on his roster. I hope they make a great run, but it won’t matter to his critics. Even if it’s Maryville that bumps them out, he will still get ripped.

I hope that at some point in these threads, those that have seemingly lived to criticize Coach Clark will own it and praise him for the amazing job he has done this year.