yellowdog

What is wrong with having a play-off system that virtually guarentees that all teams with winning records get in and there is seeding to some degree? But here is another idea -- let all teams in the play-offs. Every other TSSAA sport gives the opportunity for all teams to participate in state play-offs at the district level. You drop the regular season to 9 games and increase the first round of the play-offs to 64 teams and six games. All Div I classes now have around 50+ teams so this means that some would get a first round bye. Other first round games would generally match up a 9-1 team vs 1-9. In reality it would be a very rare case where the favorite would lose the first round game. This would guarentee that every team in the state would still play at least 10 games so no revenue would be lost. In fact, the 10th game being a play-off game would generally draw more fans. This would allow a situation like Gallatin was in last year where they would have still made the play-offs even after having to forfeit some games.

The only teams that have moved themselves up in my memory did so for money reasons and to get a schedule. Alcoa has traditionally played up for this reason. The football schools in upper middle Tennessee (Trousdale, Jackson, etc.) moved up officially to cut down on travel and increase their gate. The only school that I can ever remember moving up for competition was Brentwood Academy in football. A merit system is a good idea but just not practical. Only a handful of high school teams can sustain the same level of play year after year. Also a merit system only affects 2/3's (A, AA) of the teams in the state as 1/3 (AAA) can't move up because they are already in the highest class.

Here is the state championship picture. The data below does not contain 2003-04 state champions. The data shows the number of state championships won in the LOWEST classification since the classfication was started. For example in football 1A has been in existence for 10 years; A-AA golf for 12 years. Sport Private Public Boys Golf 8 4 A-AA Girls Golf 12 0 A-AA Volleyball 6 7 A-AA Boys Cross Country 10 3 A-AA Girls Cross Country 11 2 A-AA Football 5 5 1A Boys Basketball 6 21 A Girls Basketball 1 26 A Baseball 16 10 A Softball 22 2 A Boys Tennis 5 0 A-AA Girls Tennis 5 0 A-AA Boys Track 16 6 A-AA Girls Track 6 14 A-AA Girls Soccer 2 4 A-AA Soccer 4 2 A-AA All data from TSSAA.org For a grand total of 135 championships for private schools and 106 for public schools. This comes out to 56% championships by around 30 schools. The vast majority of these victories come from schools that will move up in classification due to the multiplier. Many of the A-AA champions will still be private schools. The biggest impact in the multiplier will be seen in Baseball, Softball and Football. Basketball has been dominated by public schools. You could almost make a case that the multiplier will really affect only three sports. [/font]

I don't think the TSSAA has these enrollment numbers yet because the state has not released them.

Silverpie is correct -- the January 2004 (7th month fiscal year) enrollment numbers that the state gives to TSSAA is what will be used for classiciation. There is no fine tuning of numbers at a later date. Independent school enrollments are obtained from those schools themselves along with state/federal schools TSD, TSB and York Institute.

Historically the 7th month (fiscal year) figures from the state are used.

I suspect they will be obtained few months before that -- after the enrollment numbers are obtained the schools have to be put into classification and districts/regions before the fall so schools can start doing scheduling for 2005-6

TSSAA has a staff of around four that sometimes look into "recruiting" of athletes in middle and high school -- this staff also have full time jobs doing regular TSSAA business. So you have a potential staff of 4 for 600 schools and around 100,000 athletes. In contrast, the NCAA has a staff of around 250 that does investigations of less than 200 Division I schools. How do you propose that the TSSAA handle recruiting accusations? If they staffed up for this then the membership would cry foul when fees and tournament expenses are increased to pay for them.

How would you handle the public/private issue if you were in charge?

I suspect the Div I schools affected will take a serious look at whether to move to Div II. They have to weigh a lot of variables -- gate - travel - how it may accect enrollment - competition and school charters. I would think it would be premature for any of these school to make a quick decision as to what to do. They have a few months before making a decision. In my opinion these schools would be very competitive in AA in most sports -- especially spring and fall sports. On the other hand think of CAK now vs. Austin-East. in basketball. Two years ago both Boyd-Buchanan and CPA would have gone far in the 4A football playoffs. This past year neither of the 1A finaliast could have defeated 2A winner Huntingdon or 3A winner Fulton. Changes every year.

Cincinnati Post article on private/public with comments about Tennessee http://www.cincypost.com/2004/01/30/wheele...01-30-2004.html

The multipler and so-called Virginia plan are two separate things. The multipler can be voted in without the Virginia plan or visa-versa. Also the Tennessee new football format is NOT the Virginia plan but a hybrid of many state associations and some new features that are only Tennessee invented.

Good thought there.

What is great about this plan is that if you have a winning record you will probably make the playoffs -- no more 1-9,2-8 teams getting in. The excitement will be finding out who you play. The current setup is pretty well set where the first three games are always against either your region or the one next to yours. Last year 25 of 44 second round games involved teams from the same region and in the third round 13 of 23 games were between teams from the same region. The new way has much less predicitibility to it and roughly seeds the teams. If there is a "Saturday bracket unveiling show" think of the local get togethers by booster clubs and other organizations. Great way for boster club to have "a fund raising breakfast". Great way for a local church to have a community get together to watch the brackets. . Think also of the excitement on the Internet as computers crunch numbers and people try to figure out what will happen. Think of the interest the final couple of weeks where newspapers and other media have contests to figure out how things will pan out. Looks win-win to me

I too remember pre state championship days in football. But things have changed much since those days. Everything was regional then -- very few people knew about any teams outside of their local area. Now with the Internet we know all scores and standings within a day after the games. Newspapers are available online for every part of the state -- the debate on who was the best team would be endless and vocal. Transportation is much better now -- almost anybody in the state can get to middle tennessee three hours -- not many would have to travel on two-lane roads. I don't see how you could keep a regional cap on championships.

Check out this article Hanston, Kansas 8-man football -- Sports Illustrated Article Makes you want to go attend a game -- sounds great to me. What h.s. football should be about.

I ask this question in another thead, but decided to start a topic on it. Why do we have classification? What is it's purpose? Is it to put schools together with common traits (e.g. enrollment, geography, student makeup?) Is it to help schools form a natural rivarly for the sake of building tradtion and helping attendance? Is classification needed? If we didn't have classification there is no way a Red Boiling Springs would ever beat Riverdale in football -- so what steps would you take to give RBS a chance? If you had a clean slate and started from scratch how would you approach classification?

To further clarify (from what I have heard). Schools would play in 16 districts just like they do now. For example, current district 8 looks like this: Coffee Co. Central High School (Manchester) Columbia Central High School (Columbia) Franklin Co. High School (Winchester) Lawrence Co. High School (Lawrenceburg) Lincoln Co. High School (Fayetteville) Shelbyville Central High School (Shelbyville) Tullahoma High School (Tullahoma) Take all teams in AAA and sort by enrollment - the top half are in AAA-Large and bottom half in AAA-Small. In this case Coffee, Franklin Co, Lincoln would be in AAA-Large and Columbia, Lawrence, Shelbyville and Tullahoma would be AAA-Small. Now play the district season. Let's say for the sake of example that the following were the final standings: Lincoln Co 6-0 10-0 Columbia 5-1 8-2 Franklin Co 4-2 7-3 Lawrence Co 3-3 5-5 Coffee Co 2-4 4-6 Shelbyville 1-5 1-9 Tullahoma 0-6 0-10 Here Lincoln count is 1st and gets a home game in AAA-Large. Columbia is 2nd and gets a home game in AAA-Small. All other teams are in the hunt for a wildcard berth. In the wild card formula Franklin Co and Lawrence Co are probably in due to the formula that uses overall wins, opponents wins, victory of teams with winning records + plus a few more criteria (no power points however). So here Franklin gets in as a AAA-Large wildcard and Lawrence gets in as a AAA-small wildcard. If this system is voted in it will probably always have the "Virginia" tag, but it really isn't that plan but rather a hybrid of other states and pices that are only Tennessee. This plan may also be voted in whether or not there is any action taken on the multiplier.

Then lets have no classification! No seriously, please let this discussion group know what your definition of classification is. (if you want it at all). It would be interesting to hear. Probably there should be a single thead on this anyway -- interesting to hear people's perspective.

Does it matter? Are there any public schools in Shelby, Williamson, Davidson, Knox and Hamilton counties that are not open enrollment. Are their any city system schools that do not have open (or tuition) enrollment.

Maryville is a city school system that would have their enrollment multiplied by 1.25. They would be treated the same as the schools in the major counties.

This list would also contain Williamson County and city schools I believe.

In theory a merit system would be best -- but this is high school and things change rapidly. Look at football for example. Coffee County gets beat up by everybody and they get a new coach who has been successful everywhere he goes and the first year he is in the play-offs. Portland is a power for two years and in championship games. If we had a merit system they would be in 4A now -- think they could compete? The point is that many schools have a run of good athletes and coaches but their run only lasts 2-3 years, then they are back to being medicore. But if you had a merit system they would be be put into a higher classification just at the time their athletes ran out. And we haven't even gotten into scheduling and schools being in different classifications for each sport. Merit system for high schools would be a disaster and highly subjective.

Not hardly worth even answering. What perks? What kids go to private schools? who told them to vote the way they did? Answer these questions and you may get someone to listen to you.

Saying districts are the same as for "basketball" while technically correct the new districts will be determined by the following criteria - which will impact basketball as well as other sports. Taking all TSSAA schools and dividing them into three equal classes (If you have 330 schools then 110 would be A, 110 would be AA and AAA would be 110). Then divide these 110 schools into 16 districts. Each district being grouped by geography as much as possible. That is about as fair as you can be.