The chance of rain lingering in the forecast again has caused several area high schools to move their football games to Thursday.

As of Tuesday night, six area games in Tennessee and one in North Georgia are slated for Thursday. Half of those Tennessee games carry playoff implications: Whitwell at Signal Mountain, Lookout Valley at Marion County and Walker Valley at Bradley Central.

Going into those games, Whitwell is currently the last playoff wild card in Class 1A, Lookout Valley also is a 1A wild card, and Marion County is the final 2A wild card. In 6A, Bradley Central is on the outside looking in.

"We're treating this game like it's a playoff," Marion coach Troy Boeck said. "We know it's either win it or we could be done."

As of now, no games have been postponed until Saturday. If one were, the entire state bracket for that classification would have to wait until that game ended.

"We would hold up the whole bracket until the game was over, if one were to be played on Saturday," TSSAA assistant executive director Matthew Gillespie. "I can't think of a game anywhere that doesn't have some sort of playoff ramifications, so any game that's played late would hold up the entire bracket for that classification and we would just release it that night when the game ended."

The TSSAA will release the playoff brackets Saturday morning, beginning at 8 EDT. Those pairings will be posted at www.timesfreepress.com as they're announced.

Thursday football games

TENNESSEE

(Game time 7:30 unless noted)

Grace Academy at South Pittsburg, 5

Soddy-Daisy at Cleveland

East Ridge at Howard

Whitwell at Signal Mountain

Walker Valley at Bradley Central

Lookout Valley at Marion County, 8

GEORGIA

Lakeview-F.O. at Southeast Whitfield