Z Plan?

[1stdown]

Will the Z Plan go into effect for the '09-'10 season. It would make sense for a lot of reasons. I'm sure some of those reasons will be mentioned in this forum as well as some opposition. Let the discussion begin. /thumb[1].gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":thumb:" border="0" alt="thumb[1].gif" />

[JSCOTT]

Will the Z Plan go into effect for the '09-'10 season. It would make sense for a lot of reasons. I'm sure some of those reasons will be mentioned in this forum as well as some opposition. Let the discussion begin. /thumb[1].gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":thumb:" border="0" alt="thumb[1].gif" />

 

I have been told Ronnie Carter is pushing hard for it.

[MarkH]

Forgive my ignorance but I have been sick for the last two days and am not thinking straight. What's the Z plan? I know I have seen something about it but can't recall at the moment.

[rlh]

A quick and dirty answer is that regular season football would be split up into A, AA, and AAA like basketball. This would keep community rivals going and improve attendance at games and reduce travel costs. For the playoffs, AAA would be separated into 5a and 4a, AA would be separated into 3a and 2a while A would become 1a. That is my interpretation anyway.I think Virginia has a similar setup as proposed.

[redzone]

From what I understand, TSSAA has not met as much opposition this around about the Z Plan. I think some coaches like the idea of playing natural rivalries close to home. It makes sense to use the Z plan because of travel. In some cases, teams have to travel over 100 miles to play a region game and they do not get a dime for it. Now, if you are fortunate enough to make the playoffs, making that same 100 mile trek in the playoffs is easier because you will at least get a cut of the profits and pay your travel expenses. The Z plan will not affect as many Metropolitan areas because of the number of schools so close together: Nashville, Clarksville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Jackson. But it will positively affect teams that are on "islands" and have to travel to play region games: Henry County Traveling to Jackson and the teams on the Mississippi River, Livingston Academy traveling to Knoxville, Montgomery Central Traveling to Giles, Marshall, and Page. There are other examples, but I think everyone gets the point. There is no telling what the TSSAA is going to do. It should be interesting. /popcorneater.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":popcorneater:" border="0" alt="popcorneater.gif" />

[warrior2024]

You must not have talked to any AA coaches this year. There is plenty of opposition to the plan but the fact is that the TSSAA has not and will not listen to the people close to the action, the coaches.

[TDCman]

I don't see the Z-plan as a recipe for better football. I could see permanently reducing the number of classifications to four, or even three.

 

I understand what they are trying to do with the Z-plan but I think that would increase the need for a better way to choose the playoff teams. I guess I don't really understand how teams would be selected for the playoffs. Could a '5A' team make the playoffs without ever playing a '5A' school..or just playing a couple?

[JSCOTT]

A 5A team could make the playoff by not playing another team in their class. Dickson County would be an example. If their basketball district remains the same,there would not be another 5A school to play.Clarkville N.E. will be dropping down. The whole purpose of five classes was to keep schools student populations closer together in each class. This defeats the purpose of the 5 class plan.A smaller school could be forced to play much larger schools. I hope they keep things the way they are.

[CAM10]

In the Z plan would the Private schools still be multilpied by 1.8?

[pressman]

In the Z plan would the Private schools still be multilpied by 1.8?

 

 

Yep

[rebelswebsite]

Geez Louise....Haven't we learned a lesson about tinkering with the playoff system? In 1992, if memory serves, they switched from three classes to five and only took three teams from each region. Top seeds got first-round byes, which proved disastrous in some cases because battle tested teams took on teams that had lost their edge. So they abandoned the three-team-per-region deal and allowed four from each region to go, which meant more 1-9 teams got into the mix. An example of the fallacy is in Region 8A where there are only five teams. Win one region game, lose the remainder, and you are in the playoffs. In 2A, teams that had seemingly just played each other, or were in the same regions, were battling in the first and second rounds of the playoffs. It is almost like the basketball shooting game "HORSE," where at the end you have to "prove it" by hitting the same shot twice.

 

The TSSAA tinkered with the basketball playoffs about eight or nine years ago with that silly sectional format and it almost ruined the state basketball tournament. They went back to the old way of doing things, making the substate games mean something instead of having silly three-day events after we had already been districted and regioned to death (not to mention the college conference tournaments and March Madness). People were worn out by hoops.

 

I remember a friend having a poster with a listing of all of Murphy's Laws. Three of those axioms stand out in my mind: If it ain't broke, don't fix it; if you try to please everybody nobody will like it and finally -- DON'T MESS WITH MRS. MURPHY!

[thug dadi]

I remember a friend having a poster with a listing of all of Murphy's Laws. Three of those axioms stand out in my mind: If it ain't broke, don't fix it; if you try to please everybody nobody will like it and finally -- DON'T MESS WITH MRS. MURPHY!

 

I agree with the "pleasing everybody" part, but the "ain't broke" part is probably a little off. I think that the TSSAA has put such restrictions on the players that they are not able to compete for national attention among recruiters. Proof of that is in ESPN's list of Top 150 Recruits for the past 3 years. There have only been 5 players from TN. One this year from Smyrna, four last year, and none the year before that. And it seems that every rule change that TSSAA has implimented is only restricting the practice time more and more. I'm not sure how Texas, Georgia, and Florida regulate their teams practice times or number of games, but from just looking at the number of players from those three states that made the Top 150, I'd think that we need to be imulating them. I do know that their basketball teams have only one week of dead period, and are free to practice, scrimmage, and even play AAU ball together with their head coach. I'd think that their football rules are simular.