The Cost of High School Football

If you have a chance to pick up today's Times-Free Press, there is a terrific piece in the sports section about the costs and struggles to maintain a high school football team. Who knew that painting the lines all season costs $2500 or that outfitting a single player pushes $700.

The article outlines several ways coaches try to either increase revenue (pay to park, increased ticket prices) or decrease costs (re-use helmets, go without new practice uniforms), but there is no getting around the TSSAA decision that is having the greatest impact on football money: the across-the-state districts.

Several schools are mentioned in the piece, including my one-time home Ooltewah. The Owls play in Knoxville and middle Tennessee, so fuel costs for buses will drain a significant amount of the football budget. Many parents cannot even afford to make the trip to see their kids play ball.

The idea of raising ticket prices to offset these costs is hurt by the distance between schools playing. How many students from William Blount are going to travel to Ooltewah to watch their team? The limited attendance means less money even with an extra dollar added per ticket. Anyone who has been to one of these match-ups has seen the empty "Visitor" bleachers that come with them.

Here is the solution the TSSAA needs/must implement for next year: local districts. It will never be fair when schools with varying enrollments play each other, but it isn't fair to have kids missing class and running up huge fuel costs to play a more fair opponent in a game that means nothing to anyone outside of the two teams. We need to restore the local rivalries not just for the game's sake, but for the kids', parents' and environment's sake as well.

My school, McCallie, will play its third game tonight in Nashville. I haven't seen them play other than the jamboree because their games have been in Charlotte and Franklin. What a waste. I've written this before, but things were much better around here before the public/private split when real rivalries existed between schools like McCallie and Brainerd or Baylor and Red Bank. Those rivalries are dead.

Instead, we have games like Brentwood vs. McCallie and Ooltewah vs. William Blount. We have games that are half empty and extremely expensive. It doesn't make any sense.

Off the top of my head, I can list over a dozen schools in the area that ought to be playing each other instead of out-of-town teams: Ooltewah, Central, Hixson, Soddy, Red Bank, Baylor, McCallie, Notre Dame, Brainerd, Howard, Tyner, East Ridge, Bradley, Cleveland, Boyd Buchanan, Grace, Signal Mountain...you get the idea. In the name of fairness, whether that is public vs. public or enrollment sizes being equal, we're watching schools and teams struggle to properly equip their players and parents unable to afford the gas to watch their kids play.

Here is hoping that the TSSAA redraws the districts to make high school football relevant and affordable in the state once again. The playoffs can include trips across the state, but regular season games ought not to include lengthy jaunts that end up excluding students and parents.