The Chattanooga Christian Chargers take the field before their prep football game against Notre Dame.
TSSAA LogoNASHVILLE – And you thought there was tension between the national conventions for Democrats and Republicans.
By the time most folks were wrapping up lunch Wednesday, the TSSAA’s tone-deaf Board of Control had already put in a full day’s work creating a football playoff system that makes Tennessee a laughingstock for the absurd number of state champions we’ll crown, then topped it off by ensuring an even wider gap in relations between public and private schools.
Stephen has covered sports in the tri-state area for the Times Free Press for more than 25 years and was named Sports Editor in February of 2015 after 10 years as assistant sports editor.Thanks to the board’s decision to add one classification in Division II and keep six classes in D-I (public schools), Tennessee will now have nine football state champions beginning next year.
Nine! That’s the second-most in the nation, and for a state with a membership of only about 340 football-playing schools. By comparison, Texas crowns 10 state champions for its 1,400 member schools and Florida has eight state championships for its 700-plus member schools.
Does anybody believe the Volunteer State’s brand of football requires us to be on par with Texas or Florida? Or even south Georgia for that matter?