The Goo Goo Clusters won by the McCallie School student body in a bet with Montgomery Bell Academy headmaster Bradford Gioia over the 2019 TSSAA Division II-AAA football championship game hadn’t even arrived from Nashville last December when the members of that Blue Tornado team who weren’t seniors met with coach Ralph Potter to discuss the offseason.
“I don’t know if Coach Potter was the first to talk about it or we were,” senior linebacker John David Tessman said earlier this week of the goal to return to another BlueCross Bowl at Tennessee Tech and repeat as champions. “But it was definitely discussed. We’ve definitely vocalized the desire to win it again.”
The chance to complete that goal by earning the program’s second straight TSSAA state title and third overall comes at 8 p.m. Eastern on Thursday against Memphis University School, which nipped McCallie 10-7 in the semifinals two years ago.
If the Blue Tornado (8-3) succeed, MUS (10-2) is expected to send a large batch of Gibson’s doughnuts to settle a bet on the game with McCallie headmaster Lee Burns. Exactly like last year, Burns has agreed to send Moon Pies to the winning team if McCallie loses.
But unlike last year, when McCallie hammered Nashville’s Montgomery Bell Academy 28-7 in the title game, Potter expects his team to face its most difficult test of the year against the surging Owls.