MURPHY FAIR, Post Sports
Posted: Sunday, September 5, 2010 7:42 am

“What do we have to do to get into the playoffs?”

That question has for years been a hot topic among high school football enthusiasts, especially once we reach the halfway point of the regular season.

Fans, coaches and players alike have started assembling their own sets of playoff brackets during the month of October, getting ready for the most exciting part of the high school season – the playoffs.

And until last year, this was usually a clearly defined and easily understood process. If your favorite team was among the top four squads in its region, or had a chance of earning one of those positions before the regular season came to an end, they were playoff bound. It was a simple method, one that had been in place for many years.

But last year, all of that changed. We were introduced to a new classification system and playoff formula. The new plan, developed by the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association’s Board of Control, was supposed to generate more excitement in announcing playoff participants and create less travel among teams during the regular season.

In many cases, however, the changes created just the opposite. Coaches and fans alike had problems understanding the new process and for some schools, travel budgets actually increased.

Football coaches, in particular, felt they had not been consulted about the new proposal. Many told me point blank they were first informed about the new system when they read it in the newspaper the day after Board of Control action.

I’ve always considered myself to be a sounding board when it comes to what coaches think about particular issues. I’ve made it my business for more than 20 years to listen to their concerns. All too often, they feel as though nobody is listening to what they think about matters that affect their livelihood.

And for that reason, I asked coaches this past spring what they thought about the new plan, now that they had experienced it for a year. Was the new plan well thought out or did it create a whole new set of problems?

Their answers were not too surprising, at least not to me. More than half of the 259 coaches who responded to the survey for my annual preseason magazine were opposed to the plan. The overwhelming response was that we already had a good plan in place.

Dozens of coaches were in agreement in asking, “If it’s not broke, why fix it?” More than half of the coaches who didn’t like the new system said returning to the old plan was the best way to correct the problems associated with the new formula.

NEXT WEEK: Specific dislikes about the new plan.