With the start date for Tennessee’s high school football season still up in the air, the uncertainty is creating some very real financial concerns for programs across the state.
The TSSAA approved a proposal last week that allowed a sliding scale for when the season could begin – depending on whether Gov. Bill Lee exempts contact sports such as football and girls’ soccer from his state of emergency order. If Gov. Lee grants the exemption by Friday, football season would still kick off as scheduled on Aug. 21. However, for each week that passes without an exemption, a week of regular-season games would either be eliminated completely or moved back to the end of the schedule, depending on whether they are region contests.
With four weeks still remaining in Gov. Lee’s state of emergency order, that could mean as many as four weeks of regular-season games that get deleted from schedules – only region games set for the first four weeks are guaranteed to be made up at the end of the season, while nonregion games will be eliminated under the TSSAA plan.
With the clocking ticking down on Friday’s deadline, area coaches know that the loss of nonregion home games – which can bring in around $10,000 each – could cripple their programs financially.
No local team would be more affected by the loss of games during the first four weeks than Red Bank, which could potentially lose home gates against nontegion rivals Soddy-Daisy (Aug. 21), Ooltewah (Aug. 28) and East Hamilton (Sept. 11). The Lions’ contest in week three would be a region game at Signal Mountain, which would be made up.