Coniglio

DCurtis with the victory! Nice job. 2nd place, 1 point behind, winner against G on a tiebreaker... not bad for someone who hasn't seen a high school girls soccer game in over 3 years.

Well, anyone want to go through the trouble to adding up the scores?

ND 2 Madison 0 CPA 4 GP 2 CAK 3 HF 1 CCS 9 CCo 0 21 goals. After 1 day. Ballgame. It's already over. G, better hope no one scores the rest of the tournament so we can split the spoils.

ND CPA CAK CCS ND CAK CAK 22 goals. I have a strict "don't pick CCS" rule, in place since the genesis of this competition. It's never failed me. If CCS wins, then I'm extremely happy. If CCS loses, I beat G (assuming the private schools don't hold back on those public schools). Oh, and if CCS wins, then I still probably beat G.

Remember that time G mysteriously came up with all the same picks as me? (I mean, they were pretty good right?)

The rules aren't imperfect. Inferior teams do what they can to try and even the playing field. I wouldn't want to watch ugly, boring soccer all night either. But if it is my only chance to win than I'm probably going to try it come playoff time.

Winners only. Greenville Elizabethton Gatlinburg-Pittman CAK Grace East Hamilton CCS Notre Dame Page Hume Fogg White House Page Fairview Westview Dyersburg Chester Co Madison Next round. Greenville CAK East Hamilton CCS White House Page Westview Madison to State Greenville CAK CCS Notre Dame White House Page Fairview Madison

Let's be serious. Beating you, G, is the only thing that keeps me remotely intrigued in these boards anymore.

He does make a valid point, G. It is time for your annual loss to some runner guy.

I wish. But alas, I haven't failed out of school yet so I'm still masquerading as a runner and an academic in at the only university in Cincinnati that matters, Xavier.

Back from the dead to provide a little insight. Every year we see teams that play little sisters of the poor schools all season long, celebrate getting to state like they actually beat a good team, and proceed to get destroyed by the real contenders. It happens every year. Unless an A/AA team is actually a world beater and has beaten some of the best that the entire state has to offer, the team with the best overall record goes home early quite often. These teams meet someone like a Notre Dame or a CAK and if they try to play like normal and attack, lose by 5 goals. If they bunker (i.e. Page v Centennial) they lose by 3. It's really simple. It has happened every single year I've been following soccer, and it's only gotten worse now that USJ, JCS, FRA, Knox Catholic and company left A/AA. Boise St might have a decent team, but if they had to host teams like Alabama game in and game out, their blue turf would turn crimson. Oh, and I never pick those teams to win at state. You can ask G what my record is against him.

So CHAMPDDS, how come you can't beat me in our annual Golden Goose competition?

CAK scored 2 minutes into the 2nd half and that's the way it ended. CCS 2 CAK 1

7th minute CCS 2 CAK 0

TSSAA website says Kingsbury 4, East Hamilton 3. Dunno if that is the actual score or if it's with PKs or something. G just texted me saying CCS scored 30 seconds into the game against CAK.

Technically you two are still at the bottom. You're just also at the top... Notable observations: G loses 2 games on the opening day? That never happens. Reaction picking his own games AND getting them all right? Never in a million years.

Even if it was ratified, it wouldn't have made a difference in cross country. An individual only (Footlocker) and combined (Nike Cross Nationals) already have a sizable hold on the system. And Nike isn't the type of corporation to just let the NFHS run their championship.

Hahaha. I don't think I've seen anyone in basically two years. Not worried.

No. One classification is the way it should be. But too many people in this state aren't concerned with doing things the right way.

I think so.

It wouldn't be a logistical nightmare to create one classification. Everyone gets re-districted into 32 districts. That's double what we have now to account for the A-AA and DII schools joining up with AAA. If they are still too big, then create divisions within the district. Now, to advance to the playoffs, there needs to be 2 teams from each district. The way of determining the top 2 can be left to the district to decide, whether they want to take the top 2 from regular season play, or have a little tournament with the top 4 teams.... whatever. Set up the bracket in the same way that the NCAA basketball bracket is set with 64 teams. It's all madness. Districts next to each other (1,2; 3,4; 15,16; 31,32; etc) play each other in a SINGLE ELIMINATION playoff (2nd team in one district verses 1st in another). Move down the line until you hit 8 teams. Those 8 advance to the finals. Now, in order to make sure that teams from the same district don't meet in that second round, is to move one set of teams to the other side of the bracket. The bracket would look like this: East ------- West West ------- East It could work.

Okay, I'll contend that the final may not be a cupcake. If you haven't paid any attention to things on this board, I don't exactly live here anymore nor have I paid attention all year. Page has been pretty traditionally awful in the grand scheme of things. But who's to say with the random draw that Greenville might get Page first, and then the winner of that game would go on to win the state title by a nice 8 goal showing? The point is that three-quarters of the teams in the state round will be very bad. And that isn't acceptable by any strand of my imagination. It sounds like some of you have a dog in the fight, and you want to see success in the form of a watered down state championship, or even state tournament berth. Now that I'm a little detached I can see what needs to be done for the good of the sport as a whole. And for your stats, there aren't 10-15 good private schools currently in A/AA. There were 5 that qualified this year, and only a couple more might have been good enough. Signal Mntn will be there soon enough as well on the public side. What exactly are you looking for in terms of what is fair? When will the complaining and the divisions end? Public/private? Club/non club? Urban/rural/suburban? Can we play a race card? East/Middle TN vs East Arkansas? The divides will never end and there is only one way to make things as fair as they can be. But I'm sure you can guess what that might be by now.

4 of the 6 don't even count because they are in Division II, which only houses private schools. Both finalists in A/AA were private, yes. Knox Catholic is the only private in AAA and they were not in the finals. So at best, it's 2/4. And again with the semis, 3/8, because you probably shouldn't be counting private school teams in Division II. But I don't really care about the Public/Private split. Having teammates from Indiana in college (one state championship race- I don't know what they do about other sports) has made me realize that one classification is the way to go in all sports. There is no room for debate. If we kicked out the 5 private schools that made the state finals in A/AA, Greenville would have gotten to play 3 cupcake games for a state title. Another school would have made the state finals. They would have been runner up at STATE, which is supposed to be a pinnacle of competition, and would have been destroyed because they are a bad team. Bad teams don't belong anywhere near state. Bad teams shouldn't even make the district tournament, and they wouldn't in my one classification system. Now I kinda wanna actually come up with a proposal and present this to the TSSAA. It would solve sub .500 teams in football making the playoffs too.

Wasn't even born yet.

Congrats to ND on a title that has been a LONG, LONG, LONG time coming. After about 3 years of picking ND, I figured if I didn't pick them, they'd eventually win. And my record moves to 4-0.