Considering the jump in gas prices in the last year, some may feel the timing could not have been better for the TSSAA to reclassify its schools.

It’s a process done every four years. It happened that the state organization was scheduled to examine enrollments this year and make changes for next school year when gas prices reached an all-time high.

The TSSAA held a meeting Wednesday involving 48 regional coordinators from Divsion I schools and five from Division II schools. A discussion of future plans for postseason athletics was a topic. Executive director Ronnie Carter said one immediate change was recommended.

“We asked that for volleyball, girls’ soccer, basketball, baseball, softball and boys’ soccer to consider changing all tournaments, district and region, to home sites,” Carter said. “Take for instance the district involving Grace Academy, Tennessee Temple and Copper Basin. Instead of picking a central tournament site like Copper Basin and making Grace and Temple drive there to play, we want to go to a format that eliminates the central tournament site and have home games at the higher-seeded teams.

“Look at what would happen if you put a tournament in Cumberland County and had two schools from the Chattanooga area in the final. We ought to be smarter than that.”

As far as football next year, the TSSAA decided by vote in June to pare its number of Division I classifications in the regular season from five to three. The 5A and 4A classifications will be merged, and so will classes 3A and 2A.

A larger number of teams in each league would help localize regular-season play. For playoff purposes, regions would be split into upper- and lower-enrollment schools with the top two of each earning postseason berths.

Carter said using the proposed format would create 26 or 27 automatic berths. Wild-card berths would go to teams with the next-best records to round out a playoff bracket at 32.

The state would then be divided into quadrants geographically. The eight teams in each would then be seeded.

“We think it’s going to have a feel something like the NCAA basketball tournament selection shows,” Carter said. “We think it will add a little more mystery, a little more excitement. I know it will for us. It probably will for the media, too. I don’t know about the coaches. They don’t seem to like surprises.”

Benny Monroe is in his fourth season at Ooltewah and is one of the state’s winningest football coaches with a 240-61 record. He spent the bulk of his career at Cleveland, where he was 178-33 from 1979 through ’96 with consecutive Class 4A state titles the three previous years before his final season.

“I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Monroe said. “You really don’t know now who you’re going to play. You know what section they’re coming from. The thing I don’t like about the way it is now is that if you win in the first round you might have to turn around and play one of your regional opponents. That never happened when I was in Cleveland. I don’t really know what the best plan would be, but I do know that you shouldn’t be able to get into the playoffs with a poor record like 2-8 or 4-6. ”

It’s possible that Division I state champions could increase from five to six, depending on whether Class 1A remains the same, or becomes subdivided. Carter said if subdivided, the two smaller-school classes would feature 24 playoff teams each. A decision on that is expected to come from the Board of Control meeting Nov. 13.

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