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From Staff Reports
Friday, Jul 11, 2008
LEBANON -- The picture of high school football playoffs for 2009-13 is becoming maybe a little bit clearer.
TSSAA assistant executive director Matthew Gillespie presented the possibilities to the Tennessee Sports Writers Association on Thursday in Lebanon, laying out the plan for six playoff brackets divided across three classes.
Under the proposed TSSAA reclassification plan -- approved 5-4 by the TSSAA board -- the newly designed District 6-AAA would have one automatic playoff qualifier for 5A and another for 6A. District 8-AA would have two automatic bids for 4A and one for 3A. And District 7-A would have three automatic qualifiers split between 7-A and 8-A for Class A, and two more to split between the Class AA teams.
The local districts would be the same as was reported last month, if enrollment numbers stay the same. District 6-AAA includes Cookeville, Warren County and Coffee County as members of 6A, and White County and Cumberland County for 5A.
District 8-AA currently is slated to have Livingston Academy, DeKalb County and Macon County from 4A, and Jackson County, Smith County, York Institute and Cannon County from 3A.
The proposed District 7-A would include Monterey, Pickett County, Red Boiling Springs, Clarkrange and Clay County from 1A, and Upperman from 2A. The 1A teams would battle for the three automatic bids along with District 8-A's Merrol Hyde, Mt. Juliet Christian and Gordonsville, while Upperman would battle for two automatic spots along with Watertown, Friendship Christian and Trousdale County.
In addition, the top two finishers of each district would earn a spot in the playoffs.
One topic that has been much discussed is the wild-card situation. Under the current proposal, the 6A playoffs would have 25 automatic bids and 7 wild cards; 5A would have 23 and 9; 4A and 3A would have 24 and 8; 2A would have 19 and 5; and 1A would have 20 and 4.
The reason for the 24 playoff teams in 1A and 2A is the smaller number of football-playing schools. If the school enrollment numbers caused 1A and 2A to have less schools, Gillespie said that class could be combined into one larger class with 32 playoff teams.
Gillespie also said the board voted on measures that would make it impossible for district teams to meet in the first round, unless five teams from the same district qualified for the playoffs.
The proposal was based on recent enrollment numbers, and Gillespie said the TSSAA wants to use the enrollment figures from this fall for the final decision.
credit: www.herald-citizen.com