Tssaa

TSSAA is working overtime on playoff pairings

The office light bulbs at the TSSAA office in Hermitage burned a little longer night Friday. With high school coaches, players, fans and media awaiting the unveiling of the playoff pairings via an 8 a.m. radio broadcast today, the TSSAA needed every available brain to sift through countless playoff scenarios, to select the correct wildcard teams and to place all qualifiers into geographically friendly quadrants.

If it sounds like a massive undertaking, it was.

"We're going to try and get as much sleep as possible (before the radio show), but it's not going to be much," TSSAA assistant director Matthew Gillespie said earlier this week. "We're getting them (the pairings) out much earlier than we expected.

"We're going to have to double- and triple-check things with the playoff seedings. It's going to be the middle of the night or early morning Saturday when we get done."

In previous seasons, the playoff pairings were finalized by midnight on the final night of the regular season. Some coaches could even begin first-round preparations days, sometimes weeks, in advance, because they already knew which team they'd play out of a specific region.

The TSSAA reworked the playoff system into such a quagmire of uncertainty that no one will know who plays whom until today.

Whether the public likes the new way or not, the change increased talk about the playoffs, more so than any recent year. "Wildcard" became the new buzzword.

Coaches and school administrators filled the TSSAA phone board this week with questions, Gillespie said, trying to get the slightest hint of where they could be going or if they could be hosting.

Everyone gets an answer today when the pairings are released. The TSSAA will have a link on its Web site (TSSAA.org) to the audio feed from Nashville's 104.5-FM The Zone, which is broadcasting the brackets.

The pairings also will be posted on TSSAA.org as each bracket is released on air.

"And all this work people have done into predicting and stuff, some people are going to throw their hands up and go, 'Why did I do all that?' said Gillespie. "But that's part of the fun of it, though.

Nominees, Please: Football coaches, volleyball coaches and girls' soccer coaches are asked to begin sending in candidates for the Tennessee Sports Writers Association's All-State teams.

Include as much information as possible about each player, including final-season statistics, awards won, positions played and collegiate plans.

College Bound: Farragut volleyball player Kylann Scheidt will sign with the University of Tennessee on Nov. 17 in a ceremony at Farragut.

Scheidt was the 2008 PrepXtra player of the year.

n Central center fielder Brooklyn Cress will sign to play softball Tusculum College on Nov. 11.

Cress, a left-handed slap hitter and All-District 3-AAA performer, hit .405 last season and was 20-for-20 on stolen-base attempts.

Stiff-Armed Honor: Alexander McCandless (Sevier County), Carter Sandlin (Maryville), Erin McMullen (Sevier County), Jaclyn Ramsey (Greeneville), Jeremy Clift (Carter) and Julia Hsu (Farragut) are state finalists for the Wendy's High School Heisman.

Center Of Attention: Mike McCabe, a former Catholic offensive lineman (1967-71), was selected by a panel of former University of South Carolina football players as one of the program's best all-time players.

McCabe was slotted as the school's best all-time center along with Lou Sossamon. McCabe, at 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds, lettered at South Carolina 1973-75. He anchored an offensive line in 1975 that produced two 1,000-yard rushers (Clarence Williams and Kevin Long). McCabe was drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1976.