As with any change, there has been plenty of confusion among area coaches and fans concerning the TSSAA’s new four-year classification system that will go into effect in 2009.

When the Board of Control voted in the new plan Wednesday, coaches immediately began scrambling to find out what district they would be placed in and how it would affect their playoff chances.

It will likely take a season of play before everyone is clear on how it works, but the rule was passed to cut down on travel and boost gate receipts by clustering opponents closer together. Many old and new local rivalries should crop up, and stadiums should be fuller as fans won’t have to go as far for games.

For instance, there won’t be any more trips to Knoxville, Maryville or Sparta for league games for Chattanooga public schools.

Each team must play everyone in its district, and if enrollments stay close to where they are now and schools remain in their projected district alignments, district 6-AA and 5-AAA will be loaded in football.

District 6-AA would be made up of Tyner, Boyd-Buchanan, Howard, East Ridge, Brainerd, Hixson, Central and Notre Dame. When the teams are split for the postseason, Tyner, Boyd-Buchanan and Howard would battle for the one automatic berth into the 3A playoffs, while the other five would be playing for two automatic berths into the 4A playoffs.

If any team has reason to complain about the board rulings it is Boyd-Buchanan, which will have to play in the 3A playoffs despite having a 1A enrollment. Because the board voted to keep in place the enrollment multiplier for private schools that compete in Division I, coupled with the new district alignments, the Bucs are at an obvious disadvantage. No school should be forced to play up two classifications.

There may not be a more competitive district in any classification than 5-AAA, which could be Red Bank, Cleveland, Rhea County, McMinn County, Bradley Central, Soddy-Daisy, Ooltewah and Walker Valley. There likely won’t be any unbeaten teams surviving this seven-team district schedule. Red Bank, Cleveland, Rhea County and McMinn County would be playing for the two automatic berths into the 5A playoff bracket, and the other four would be doing the same for the two automatic berths into 6A.

It will also be interesting to see how teams in those two districts fill their nonleague schedules. For instance, Hixson’s biggest gate-receipt games are against Red Bank and Soddy-Daisy, but because the Wildcats are already facing such a tough district schedule, coach Houston White must decide whether to continue playing those two money-making opponents and take a chance on potentially two more losses, or find two smaller schools as opponents and boost his team’s playoff chances.

When Class A splits into 2A and 1A for the playoffs, because there are fewer teams in those classifications, only 24 will advance to the postseason, rather than the 32 in all other classes. Class 2A will be absolutely brutal with potentially seven state champions among the playoff contenders, including six-time champion Trousdale County.

The wild card in the group is Alcoa, which has a 1A enrollment but has elected to play up in class since the 1980s. If the Tornadoes opt to play in the 2A bracket, that would add a program that has won nine state titles, including each of the last four.

Area perennial playoff power South Pittsburg will find that the 1A bracket just got much easier. There won’t be any teams remaining in 1A, other than the Pirates, that have won a state championship since 1989; and only Cloudland, in 2001, has played for a title since then.

For all the good the new system will do in cutting travel costs and sparking new rivalries, the biggest complaint I have with it is that we will now have eight state champions. It’s ridiculous that a state with 334 football-playing schools will now crown eight state champions (six in Division I and two in D-II).

By comparison, Texas has nearly 1,600 high schools and crowns 12 state champions.

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