West High School football coach Scott Cummings was getting ready to leave for summer vacation when a friend said hello at McGhee Tyson airport.
“Good luck in the SEC South,” the friend said.
The tone conveyed an ominous message: “You’re going to need it.”
The Rebels were dealt one of the toughest hands when the TSSAA revamped districts for the next four school years.

District 4 includes 5A schools West, Catholic and Lenoir City along with 6A schools Maryville, Bearden, Farragut, Heritage and William Blount.
Although the classifications will be separated for the playoffs, a team must finish first in its grouping to receive an automatic bid. Based on overall records, the other teams in the top half of the standings will be eligible for “wild card” bids. In theory, several more teams could qualify for the playoffs than actually get in.

“The district is so incredibly hard and it’s really unfortu•nate,” Cummings said. “Put us in 90 percent of the districts across the state with most schools being the same size and we truly could win them. We are shooting to win this one, too. We won’t back down from anybody, but we’ve already played in a very tough region.”
West has lost to perennial state power Maryville in the playoffs the past two years. The Rebels had the longest active winning streak in the country—74 games—snapped in the 2008 Class 4A state title game. Catholic won a state title. Farragut and Bearden both made the playoffs.
The TSSAA board of directors approved the controver•sial “Z-plan” by a 5-4 vote. It is supposed to reduce travel costs for all sports, but many coaches don’t see it that way.

The split classification system may be flawed because strength of schedule is not a factor. A team that finishes 6-4 against stronger competition could miss the playoffs because a team in another district goes 7-3 against weaker competition.
“Crazy, huh?” Cummings said.

There is a 21-minute video about the new playoff format on www.tssaa.org.
“I have totally adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward the new playoffs,” said Jim Thompson, who has the popular website called coacht.com. “It is just complicated enough that I can’t judge it until I see it in action at the end of this first season. Hopefully it will add some needed excitement to the post-season.”

The TSSAA video is informative, but the material tends to bog down in complicated explanations. It’s almost like trying to figure out a tax return in April.
“It is not as compli•cated as it looks,” said South-Doyle’s Clark Duncan, who is a long-time coach and administrator. “It will help some districts, but for us it will be a big expense traveling to the upper East Tennessee area.”

The prevailing opinion seems to be the needs of many sports outweighed the needs of a few football programs.
“I understand the new districts, but it was confusing initially,” said Bearden athletic director R. Scott Witt. “Our district is a gauntlet, but I am confident that we will be successful with all of our programs in a very tough district.”

Neighboring District 3 has 6A schools Oak Ridge, Karns and Hardin Valley Academy, along with 5A schools Knox Central, Halls, Powell, Anderson County and Campbell County.
“I really like this district format better because now all sports play the same teams,” said Halls athletic director Jason Webster. “Before it was confusing because football had a ‘region’ while the other sports were in a ‘district’ with different schools. For example, Karns was a district game for Halls in every sport except football. The new system only gets complicated at playoff time in football. During the season, it is not bad.”
Powell athletic director Mark Majors has some simple advice for coach Matt Lowe.

“I told Coach Lowe he had to win all of his games so we didn’t have to worry about it,” Majors said. “After this season, when we have it all figured out, the TSSAA will change it again so I try not worry about it.”
Map Quest: The ultimate destination has changed along with the format. The TSSAA Board of Control voted to move the BlueCross Bowl state championship games to Cookeville for the next two years. All eight title games, including Division II, will be played at Tennessee Tech. The Division I games had been played at MTSU since 2000 and Division II since 2005.

TV Timeout: There will be more high school football on television in East Tennessee than ever before.
MyVLT will broadcast the new “Rivalry Thursday” games at 7 pm. Mark Packer will do the play-by-play with analysis by Stanton Stevens and Austin Price. Heather Harrington is the sideline reporter. Their coverage will feature a camera on a 15-foot blimp.
Comcast-CSS will continue to broadcast games on Friday nights at 7. Russell Biven and Todd Kelly will be in the booth.