Former Blazer is spot on with #1. Eddie and Shawn live and breath football all year long. They are involved in the pee-wee program and they invite those young players to be a part of Friday nights. Those little ones idolize the HS players and can't wait to be one. It's a completely different attitude from birth in those cities and it shows in every aspect and that's why they are champions- because they have a champion mentality.
Both those programs have incredible community support as well, as does smaller programs like Hampton. Most JC or Kpt residents could care-less about their high school football program and it really shows on Fridays.
Boone actually has a great fan base- but their good-old boy coaching system has been running the same thing for 20 years. You've said it before BlazerSet... Run, Run, pass (penalty), punt. Even when they work on a great play all week the coaches often are too scared to run it on Friday night. Too conservative and too stubborn to try something new. And their pee wee program struggles as well. I think they had one age group that did go to the championship this year- but Elizabethton swept 3 of the age groups in the end.
If NE TN really wants to start competing in football it would take a changing of the coaching staff at most of the schools and then duplicating what Eliz and Greeneville does with the pee wee program and creating a championship mindset and in about 10 years you'll have some great teams that might get past the 1st round.
Last year would have been Boone's year if the QB wasn't hurt. As someone on the team said, they were even good enough to overcome bad coaching- but this year's team wasn't nearly as talented and those coaching calls and ill-prepared defenses were glaring.