By Maurice Patton / The Tennessean
Steps were taken Thursday that will allow a high school football playoff bracket to be redrawn if a mistake is discovered.
The
Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association's Board of Control
voted 8-1 on a five-hour window after brackets are announced for errors
to be reported to the state office.
Because of the misapplication
of a tiebreaker, Cleveland was selected last fall as one of the 32 teams
in the Class 5A bracket. Hours later it was found that Sullivan South
should have been in the field instead.
To impact the fewest teams,
Sullivan South - located in Kingsport in upper East Tennessee - was
placed in Cleveland's bracket position and sent to Columbia for an
opening-round game.
"No one felt worse than the people in this
room when we found out," TSSAA executive director Bernard Childress
said. "But we had to go back and do what the board had instructed us. In
this system, we could have been sending Sullivan South to Memphis. We
needed some direction."
Tiebreakers have been misapplied and teams
have been replaced in prior brackets, according to TSSAA officials.
However, the issues were not as far-reaching under the five-class system
because the teams were selected for postseason play on a regional basis
to start.
With the current six-class system, playoff teams are
determined statewide and then separated into quadrants. Once the mistake
was determined last fall, the only options were to redraw quadrants 1
and 2 - potentially changing the matchups for 16 teams - or send
Sullivan South in Cleveland's place.
Brackets will be announced at
10 a.m. on the Saturday following the completion of Week 10's games on
Friday. Teams will have until 3 p.m. to bring any errors to the state
office's attention.
Another change is that all varsity games
played through Week 10 of the TSSAA season by all opponents will be
considered for tiebreaking purposes. Previously, only the first 10 games
were counted.
One of Sullivan South's opponents, Enka (N.C.),
played an 11-game schedule and finished 5-6. Initially, Enka gave
Sullivan South one less team that had won 50 percent or more of its
games, and Cleveland moved ahead on that tiebreaker. Once Enka's 11th
game was ruled out, the team was 5-5, pushing Sullivan South ahead of
Cleveland for the 32nd spot in 5A.
Extra officials: The
board voted to expand football officiating crews from five to seven for
the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. The extra officials will be
compensated from the TSSAA's playoff shares, and schools will not be
responsible for any increase in pay.
Dollars down: The
football postseason, minus the BlueCross Bowl championships, netted
$30,833 less in 2012 than in 2011. The TSSAA cleared $745,692 for 2012,
after clearing $776,525 the year before. Numbers for the BlueCross Bowl
games were not available Thursday.
Postseason finances were also
down for golf, girls soccer and cross country, relative to 2011.
However, all of the sports made money. Volleyball showed an increase of
$15,000 from 2011, and the cheer and dance competition netted nearly
$6,000 more.
New member: Hendersonville Christian Academy
was approved for membership in 2013-14. The school will compete in
Division II-A and plans to participate in volleyball, boys and girls
basketball, baseball and softball initially.
"We haven't been
ready to make the move to play at the TSSAA level, but we feel we are
ready now," said Hendersonville Christian athletics director and boys
basketball coach John Taylor.
Upcoming schedule: The board
approved the 2013-14 calendar that sets practice and competition dates
in the various sports. Football practice will begin on Monday, July 29,
with Week Zero games on Aug. 23. The BlueCross Bowl championships will
be Dec. 5-7.