Whether it's black cleats coming back into style or retro offensive philosophy - plays run from the "wildcat" formation look an awful lot like the old single-wing - football trends, like music and fashion, run in cycles.
That said, it's time for the high school football schedule in Tennessee to revert to the days when teenage boys wore mullets and pencil-thin mustaches and girls had big hair and parachute pants.
While those less than totally awesome fads of the 1980s weren't such a good idea in hindsight, the prep football season kicked off on Labor Day weekend, and that's exactly what the TSSAA needs to make happen again.
I'm as eager for football season to kick off as any other respectable Southerner, but the season begins Aug. 19 this year. With temperatures in the area typically flirting with triple digits that time of year, that is simply unsafe.
According to a study by the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, 24 football players died of heat-related illness in the last decade. Heat-related illnesses are the second leading cause of death for football players; only head injuries cause more.
More than a decade ago, the TSSAA introduced the "week zero" idea to allow prep teams that were having trouble filling their 10-week schedules an extra week to play at the beginning of the season. But according to one TSSAA official, nearly 70 percent of the state's teams now play in the scorching mid-August heat of week zero.
There are 25 Chattanooga-area teams that will kick off their seasons on Aug. 19. Several headliner games are included, such as Cleveland at Alcoa, Soddy-Daisy at Baylor, East Hamilton at Signal Mountain, Polk County at Bradley Central and Chattanooga Christian at Boyd-Buchanan.
If the TSSAA is going to allow teams to play that early, it should absolutely make concessions to help ensure the safety of the student-athletes - especially now that we have a two-week dead period, when the TSSAA mandates that athletes are not allowed to work out on school grounds or have any contact with coaches the last week of June and the first week of July. That leaves football coaches with a three-week window to begin acclimating players to practicing in the heat before putting on about 20 extra pounds of pads for two weeks of intense preparation for the season.
It's a recipe for catastrophe.
By moving the start of the season back two weeks, even if teams want to continue playing in week zero, they will at least have one more week of getting the players used to the heat. Of course, starting the season two weeks later means the championship games would be in mid-December, when the weather can turn inclement and any dual-sport athletes on teams making deep playoff runs would miss the first couple of weeks of basketball. But neither of those potential problems outweigh the heat risk the players currently face.
Under this same proposal the TSSAA also could cut back the number of teams that qualify for the playoffs, eliminating one whole round of postseason play and making the championships just one week after they are currently played. But that likely would never happen since the TSSAA can make as much as $300,000 from the 88 first-round games that are currently played.
The state association reported a net profit of $891,122.82 from the first four rounds of the playoffs.
That's simply too much money to potentially lose, so if it means rolling the dice by playing championships later in December and having kids miss a few days of basketball practice, any option pales in comparison to risking a kid's health.