yellowdog

Read the dissenting statements on the Supreme Court decision.

I don't know how we got from merit system to private/public - but the private schools that think that the "state actor" thing will give them the right to play public schools in state championship competition are getting some bad information. The reason the TSSAA is a state-actor is because their board of control and legislative council are school employees. If your local Lions Club or Rotary Club's boards were all school officials then they too would be state actors. If TSSAA closes down and and association of only public schools starts up with a Board and Legislative Council not made up of school officials they will not be a state actor. If Brentwood Academy wants to join in they will have to go to District/Regional and the Supreme Court all again to let them make a decision about expanding the state-actor definition. Private schools (mainly Brentwood Academy) want their cake and eat it too -- They want to recruit, play by their own rules, be allowed to compete against public schools for state championships. But, public schools have to follow all federal rules on due-process, and private schools don't. That will be the next judicial battlefield. The reality is very simple -- if a private school wants to dominate a sport they can do so by putting empahsis on that sport. The vast majority of private schools have good relationships with public schools -- but a handful ruin it for everyone.

You obviously don't understand the fabric of high school sports. Tuesday/Friday night basketball games between local schools with both boys and girls games playing is more than just a contest between schools. It is a place where local citizens, former players and parents of players gather for a community get-together. Many parents have both girls and boys playing on the same night, or a player on the girls team is the niece of a parent who has a boy playing on the boys team. I can assure you, that if you had a daughter and son playing on a high school team you would be very upset that the girls played somewhere different than the boys - because of some controversial merit system that only affected a hand full of schools. What about schools cheerleaders? Where would they cheer? Would you have different squads for the boys and girls? And yes, transportation costs are huge for any school system. I would suspect if a merit system was even considered, there would be an outcry of dissention from school systems. Supporters of a merit system are living in a fantasy world of expectations. Theory is good, but reality would trump the effort from getting off the ground. People who make decisions about classification have to consider more than the competition side of it. Go to your local school principal and ask them what they think about splitting teams on Tuesday/Friday night and see what kind of response you would get. Merit system is a bad idea.

But a Class AAA team can't play for a Class A championship either. I can make the same argument for that as you can for the private schools I am not talking about BA -- You stated that because of the "state actor" situation an association could not kick a school out of the organization. If a school knowingly played 24 year olds in a game and had bought players and played students who weren't even enrolled in the school - does the "state-actor" keep the association from kicking them out?

Please explain the difference difference between classification based on enrollment, geographic area, or private/public, church/state, rural/urban - is any classification illegal? Also, explain how private only divisions is limiting competition. Last I knew was that schools in private division are not restricted on who they can play. And yes schools can be kicked out if they don't follow the rules -- just like there are kids kicked out of schools for not following the rules. Are you saying that if a school breaks rules orver and over they cannot be kicked out of an organization?

While a merit system certainly looks good (in theory) there are huge holes in it. Basketball comes to mind immediately. Jackson County girls may play AA while the boys may play A. Gibbs baseball may be A while softball AAA. There would be chaos in the schools -- you would never know who your district/regional opponents would be from year to year. On Tuesday and Friday nights during the season, the boys and girls would be headed out to different places to play - costing the school system for transportation. What is Jackson County girls had Cumberland County scheduled for a home game and on the same night the boys were playing Clarkrange? What would the Clarkrange boys and Cumberland County girls be doing that same night? When it comes to district/regional basketball tournaments who do the loyal local fans support when both boys and girls are playing on the same night at two different locations? Sports programs can change dramatically when a coach leaves -- one year a AAA contender and the next year a middle of the road A program. Also, almost any school will have a run of good athletes for 2-3 years and then they're back to normal play. Leaving out the private schools, you can name on one hand the public schools that a merit system would affect. Jackson County girls basketball, Maryville and Trousdale County football and Gibbs softball are four that come to mind. What would you do about Memphis? Players follow coaches there -- while Mitchell and Hamilton are baskball powers this year, next year it may be Carver and Washington. In almost every case, a team's success is directly related to its coach in that sport. When that coach leaves the team suffers and the coaches new team starts winning.

I have read the opinon and agree that our personal feelings are meaningless in this whole matter. I suspect the TSSAA will appeal to the whole 6th circuit court. A three judge panel (Gibbons, Rogers, and Bell) made the ruling. What the news people are not saying is that that vote was 2-1 for BA, with Rogers dissenting. Bell is no longer on Sixth circuit court (according to their website). So the vote now is 1-1. Of the 37 page finding, 11 pages are by the dissenting judge. If TSSAA appeals, then a majority of the 15 or so judges at the Sixth Circuit have to vote as to whether the case will be heard by the whole sixth circuit court. And even if they turn it down -- the case can be appealed to Supreme Court. In the first trip to Supreme Court, I believe the Sixth Circuit voted 14-1 against BA, but they still appealed to the Highest court and they agreed to hear it. Judge Rogers arguments were as compelling to me as Gibbons. A BA person would find Gibbons arguments more compelling I guess. I think we're still a long way from this thing being completed.

I don't think your numbers are correct for the classification, seem low to me. What happened is this -- small schools rejoyced when the multiplier went into affect because it moved most private schools up in classification. But what they did not consider, that if you move some schools out of Class A, others have to drop in classification. We saw that in this year's boys and girls tournament -- Union City and Humbolt were AA last year, Jackson County and Oliver Springs girls were AA last year and now A. If you were a Class A school would you have rather played CPA or DCA instead of Union City or Humboldt this year?

VolunteerGeneral can probably clear this up for us. But, I think I heard that Liberty is a new school that picked up students that were zoned at other Jackson schools. The "magnet" is technically stretching it a bit. There is a wing of Liberty that is magnet, as they offer classes not available at other local schools - but the school primarilary just a new school. Madison, on the otherhand is a true magnet and there is a lottery to get in -- just lilke Hume-Fogg in Nashville. VolunteerGenernal - can you clear this up?

Point 1 How did the TSSAA Public/Private separation result in the restriction of competition? DII schools can play any school in the state whether or not they are DI or DII. Likewise, a public school can play in DII if they chose to do so. The only thing they can't do is play for a DI state championship. But neither can a Class AAA school play for a Class A championship. What is the difference? Classification (enrollment) causes this. If a DII school chooses not to give financial aid, they can play in DI. I see the DI/DII split, not as a restriction of competition, but rather a simple classification issue. Travel issues come up as a difference between DI and DII and the DII proponents say this is a problem. Well, yes this can be, but you need to remember that regular season requirements are set by a DII committee, made up of DII schools. They are the ones who set the schedules. If they so chose, they could chose to play no inter-league DII games, but just meet in state and regional tournaments. Look at the differences between the DII - Super-Seven and DI schools in football. How do you expect large DI schools to compete with DII schools when most DII schools have a coach who makes over $100,000 a year and does not teach a class, give as much financial aid as the Student Service for Financial Aid (SSS) in Princeton, NJ allows, and have sophisticated game film requirements between them. No reasonable person can expect a level playing field to exists with these differences. Point 2 "It will be very difficult for the public schools to form an organization that is not considered a "state agent". If a new association was created just for public schools, what right does a private school have to be a member of that association? How does "state actor" play a part of that? If Franklin, Brentwood, Riverdale, Blackman, Oakland, Ravenwood and Columbia chose to start a Lacross league, can Brentwood Academy go to court to become a member of that league? What is the difference if those school broke away from TSSAA and played all sports against each other? TSSAA is a volunteer organization and any school can drop out if they want.

This case is still far from over. There are probably appeals still to come. What ultimately Brentwood Academy wants is to recruit athletes (Barfield said this in the Tennessean article by making the tuba player analogy) and they want to compete against public schools (their antitrust agument) for a state championship. No merit system or multiplier can equalize this inequity. If they get their way, then high schools will be competing for athletes from middle schools, just like colleges do when they recruit high school kids and state championships by public schools will become rare. The Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati ruled against Brentwood Academy years ago and they appealed to the Supreme Court. I would suspect the same thing will be done by TSSAA. If high schools can recruit, this would have far-reaching implications on every state, thus, it would probably be something the Supreme Court would ultimately decide on. We all need to remember, this is not about BA vs. TSSAA, it is about anti-trust, due-process, education, high school recruiting, and public/private organizations coexsiting. It is an argument about the laws of this land. The actual participants in the Scopes Monkey Trail and Roe vs. Wade, for instance are minor, if not forgotten players, but the laws that came out of courts affected everyone in this nation -- same thing holds true here. So, we are probably looking at a few more years before a final settlement will be made. By the time this case gets settled, there will be a new generation of posters on coacht.com to discuss it -- us current posters will riding into the sunset. In the history of this case, both sides have won, and both have lost. It just so happens that Brentwood Academy wins this latest volley. And, if Brentwood Academy ultimately wins here, they will have won the battle, but lost the war, because the establishment of a new athletic organization that is made up of only public schools is a certainity, and BA would be left with nobody to play but other private schools. Do you think that if BA recruits the best players from Beech, Franklin, Brentwood, etc, that those schools will schedule BA? Also, if BA ultimately wins and can recruit, then other private schools will step up their recruiting - and who do you think would win the recruiting battle if Ensworth, MBA and BA all want the same student?

All tournament teams are listed on the "same statistics" link under the final game. (box score)

Thanks for more insight on what is going on down there. I wouldn't want to be the new coach there. I remember when Nick Hyder (in Carson-Newman Hall of Fame - '56) was hired. When he woke up at his new house the first morning, there were wildcat paw prints painted on his driveway and they stretched all the way to the football field.

I think the big problem facing the winningst high school football team in the nation is that their neighbor Lowndes County is the beneficary of the urban growth in the county. Lowndes County won the state football championship the past two years. Lowndes County's stadium is the huge stadium one sees from the Interstate when passing Valdosta headed to Florida. Valdosta is having a very tough time competing with Lowndes County -- that has been why they have been through a number of coaches the past few years.

Georgia High School News: From the Valdosta, Georgia Newspaper. You may remember Roger Holmes when he coached in Middle Tennessee. Roger Holmes of Dublin was widely believed to be another finalist. On the field, Holmes has gone 38-11 in four seasons at Dublin (the Irish went 3-7 in 2003, but in his other three seasons there, they are 35-4), with a state runner-up finish in 2002. The coach selected was Rick Tomberlin, the head coach at Washington County. He was named the 14th head coach in Valdosta High’s illustrious history Monday night at a specially called Board of Education meeting.