With Baylor and Tyner reaching this week’s BlueCross Bowl at Finley Stadium, the Chattanooga area will have had at least one team play for a TSSAA state title in 10 consecutive football seasons and at least one finalist in 13 seasons in a span of 14 dating to this year. The past four years, the area has also had at least one champion crowned.
Baylor (10-2), which has averaged 40 points per game and has yet to be held to fewer than 31, faces top-ranked Montgomery Bell Academy (12-0) in Thursday night’s Division II-AAA title game. It’s a rematch of their Oct. 21 clash in Nashville, where the host Big Red held on for a 42-34 win as the teams combined for 982 total yards, including 430 passing by Baylor junior Whit Muschamp — whose throw into the end zone as time expired fell incomplete.
It was MBA’s fifth straight win in the series, and senior quarterback Marcel Reed, who has committed to Ole Miss, accounted for the first five of his team’s six touchdowns, running for three and throwing for a pair. He finished with 306 passing yards to go with 83 rushing.
This will be the sixth BlueCross Bowl in a nine-year stretch for the Big Red, who have been runners-up five times since winning the 2014 championship. In the semifinals two weeks ago, MBA stopped McCallie’s 2-point attempt with less than a minute remaining to prevent a potential all-Chattanooga final and end the Blue Tornado’s bid for a fourth straight state title.
“We haven’t won it in a while,” said MBA coach Marty Euverard, who noted Reed — a Tennessee Titans Mr. Football finalist — will be playing in his third title game. “Hopefully our experience in this game will help, because we’ve got our hands full trying to stop Baylor.”
The Red Raiders, who won the program’s only championship in 1973 but finished runners-up in 2010 and 2011, led the regular-season matchup 21-7 in the first half. However, Reed brought his team back to tie by halftime on back-to-back touchdown passes and, after a scoreless third quarter, put his team up for the first time on a 15-yard run early in the fourth, then followed with a 30-yard run for a 35-21 lead midway through the quarter.
“I’m very excited for myself and my team to have this chance,” said Baylor all-state offensive lineman Brycen Sanders, also an Ole Miss commitment. “Our school hasn’t played for a championship in 11 years and hasn’t won it all in almost 50, so there’s a lot of energy around our team.
“Marcel is a great player, and I’m glad I’ll get to play with him for four years in college, but this time we have to find a way to slow him down.”
Class 2A’s Tyner, meanwhile, is back in a title game for the first time since a runner-up finish with a disappointing double-overtime loss in 2017. Saturday’s matchup against Decatur-Riverside will be the third title game in program history for the Rams, who won it all in 1997 and were runners-up in 1996.
This season, the Rams (13-1) have been dominant throughout with the exception of their lone loss at Alcoa, which is playing for an unprecedented eighth consecutive Class 3A championship on Friday. Tyner has outscored opponents by an average of 38-7 and posted a program-record seven shutouts.
Only three teams have managed to score more than seven points against the Rams, who now face an opponent that has avenged regular-season the past two weeks. Riverside’s Panthers (12-2) avenged a one-point loss to Lewis County with a 33-26 quarterfinal win and followed that with an even more impressive 26-13 victory at Huntingdon after having lost by 26 in week four.
This is the first title game for the Panthers, whose best finish had been a loss in the 2019 semifinals to eventual champion Peabody.
There are nine teams that played for a state title last year in Chattanooga returning this week, including reigning champions Alcoa, Oakland (Class 6A) and Nashville’s Lipscomb Academy (DII-AA).
Lipscomb is in its fourth season under the direction of former Super Bowl-winning quarterback Trent Dilfer, who has been hired as head coach at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. UAB announced the hire Wednesday, but The Tennessean reported that Dilfer still planned to coach Lipscomb on Thursday in the first title game of this year’s BlueCross Bowl.
CPA-Lipscomb is one of two rematches from last year’s BlueCross Bowl, with Alcoa-East Nashville the other, and with MBA also back, that means all three Division II runners-up have returned. The runners-up are also back in three Division I classifications, with East Nashville joined by McKenzie (1A) and Page (5A) on that list.
The only classifications with two new finalists are 2A and 4A, where Anderson County faces Pearl-Cohn.
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293. Follow him on Twitter @StephenHargis.
Staff file photo by Robin Rudd / Baylor School offensive lineman Brycen Sanders, pictured, and MBA quarterback Marcel Reed both have committed to Ole Miss. Their teams will meet with the TSSAA Division II-AAA state title on the line Thursday night in the BlueCross Bowl at Finley Stadium.BLUECROSS BOWL
TSSAA state championship games at Finley Stadium
Thursday, Dec. 1
Division II-AA
Christ Presbyterian Academy (8-5) vs. Lipscomb Academy (12-0), 11 a.m.
Division II-A
Friendship Christian (12-0) vs. Nashville Christian (10-2), 3 p.m.
Division II-AAA
Baylor (10-2) vs. Montgomery Bell Academy (12-0), 7 p.m.
Friday, Dec. 2
Class 3A
Alcoa (13-1) vs. East Nashville (12-2), 11 a.m.
Class 1A
Clay County (13-1) vs. McKenzie (14-0), 3 p.m.
Class 5A
Knoxville West (14-0) vs. Page (12-2), 7 p.m.
Saturday, Dec. 3
Class 4A
Anderson County (14-0) vs. Pearl Cohn (12-2), 11 a.m.
Class 2A
Riverside (12-2) vs. Tyner (13-1), 3 p.m.
Class 6A
Beech (13-1) vs. Oakland (13-1), 7 p.m.