Drawing for State Wrestling Tournament
Voted to instruct the state office to make the draw for the State Wrestling Tournament and not release the draw for Division I until the Sunday preceding the Division I State Wrestling Tournament.
2006 Region Meetings
The Regional Agenda is shown in supplement #1. There were two legislative proposals on the Regional Meeting agenda this year. A report will be provided to the Board of Control.
Heard Review of the 2006 Fall Sports Tournaments
Approved the Legislation of Tennessee General Assembly Regarding Percentage Increase for Retirees whose date of retirement is on or before July 1, 1989.
Voted to permit Notre Dame High School to participate in the post-season in soccer during the 2007 soccer season. By allowing them to do so, Notre Dame will lose three of their regular season playing dates in 2007. They have been placed on probation for a two-year period.
Approved the Membership Request for East Hickman High School.
The addition of three Class 2A schools for the 2007-2008 school year creates a very unique situation for TSSAA football alignments for the last two years of the current classification cycle, which ends at the conclusion of the 2008-2009 school year.
This is the result of Jackson Christian, which moves up from 1A due to a 20% enrollment change and the creation of two Class 2A schools because of the new East Hickman High School. This new school will be in 2A in football and, also, causes Hickman County High School to drop from 4A to 2A.
The problem that is created is that these three new schools are geographically situated in the three largest 2A regions in the state. Region 5 (8 teams), Region 6 (9 teams), and Region 7 (8 teams) are the geographic regions for the placement of these schools. If the schools are placed geographically in the regions, there will be a result of Region 5 having nine teams, Region 6 having 10, and Region 7 having 9.
As a result, the Board of Control, at its November 13 meeting, has created nine regions for Class 2A for the last two years of this classification period. There are no changes in Regions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8. The 28 schools that would be in Regions 5, 6, and 7 have now been placed in four regions. The new region alignments are as follows:
Region 1: Chuckey-Doak, Cumberland Gap, Gatlinburg-Pittman, Happy Valley, North Greene, South Greene, West Greene
Region 2: Alcoa, CAK, Loudon, Oliver Springs, Rockwood, Sweetwater, Wartburg Central
Region 3: Bledsoe County, Boyd-Buchanan, Marion County, Sequatchie County, Tyner
Region 4: Cannon County, Jackson County, Smith County, Upperman, Westmoreland, York Institute
Region 5: CPA, DCA, East Robertson, Ezell-Harding, Franklin Road Academy, Goodpasture
Region 6: East Hickman, Fairview, Harpeth, Hickman County, Lewis County, Loretto, Richland
Region 7: Adamsville, Camden, Houston County, Huntingdon, Riverside, Stewart County, Waverly
Region 8: Dresden, Gibson County, Humboldt, JCS, Milan, Peabody, USJ, Westview
Region 9: Booker T. Washington, George Carver, Memphis South Side, Oakhaven, Treadwell, Westside, Westwood
Football Playoffs
The proposal for selection of the 32 teams qualifying for the football playoffs and the setting of the bracket will deviate from standard procedures that are currently in use, but the selection and seeding of teams will continue to follow the underlying selection philosophy described in the TSSAA football regulations.
The following will show (1) selection of the teams for the playoffs, (2) placement of the teams in the brackets, and (3) seeding the teams in the brackets.
(1) Selection of teams for the playoffs: Obviously, nine regions destroy the symmetry as there is no basic logic for placing nine regions in a 32-team bracket. The plan is to select the top three teams from each region, based on current playoff procedures set forth in the football regulations. This will set 27 of the 32 teams in the playoff series. The remaining five slots will be filled by a wild card selection. These five teams will be selected by the guidelines that are in the football regulations.
The process will be to take all the 2A schools that did not qualify for the playoffs as one of the top three teams from their region, and sort them by overall won-loss records. The top five teams in overall won-loss records will make the playoffs as wild cards. In the event of a tie in overall records for the 32nd position, then factors such as head-to-head (if applicable), opponents with victories over teams winning 50% of their games or more, etc., would determine these five playoff teams.
(2) Placement of teams in the brackets: Here we will deviate from the traditional bracket. Once the 32 teams have been selected for the playoffs the schools will be grouped into four 8-team quadrants. This grouping will be done without regard to region alignments. The grouping will take into account factors such as even distribution of the #3's and wild cards in the four quadrants, geography, etc.
(3) Seeding the teams in the brackets: Once the four quad brackets are created, the eight teams within each bracket will be seeded from 1 - 8. All #1 region finishers in the bracket will be listed in the bracket using standard TSSAA football regulations, i.e., head-to-head (if applicable), overall records, etc. Once the #1 seeds are placed in the bracket, the same procedures will be used for the #2 teams, then the #3 teams, and then the wild card teams. You will also place the teams so that #1's and #2's from the same region would not meet until the quarterfinal round of the playoffs. Once the teams are seeded in the bracket, the home team will always be the higher seeded team.
Major Differences in the Playoff Bracket
Schools will not know until the bracket is released where they will fall or what line they will be placed on. It is possible that a team could play a team from their region in the first round (example: #1 is in first seeded position and #4 is a wild card team placed in the #8 seeded position). Teams in the same region may not be in the same quadrant, depending on wild cards and geographic location of all 32 schools. Also, teams in the same region (probably Region 5) could go to the opposite bracket (upper and lower), depending on wild cards and geographic location of all 32 schools.
Final details of the playoff brackets in Class 2A will be determined by the Board of Control at a later Board of Control meeting prior to the beginning of the 2007 season.
Approved the Recommendation of Division II Committee for Region Alignments in all Sports.
The Board of Control, at its August meeting, approved the classification of Division II to two classifications in all sports except track and field, wrestling, and bowling. The Division II Committee met on Thursday, October 19, to look at all of the options for tournament formats in all sports and realignments.
Took No Action in regards to the Manual for Lobbyists and Employers of Lobbyists.
Approved St. Andrew's Sewanee's request for permission to be allowed to not participate in the football playoffs, and to also permit their basketball team to participate in the basketball tournament series. This request is due to the previous Board action that states if a team does not participate in the football playoffs, they may not participate in the basketball tournament series.
Football Scheduling for 2007-2008
Approved that the first playing date in football for 2007 is August 31 and in 2008 the first playing date is August 29.