Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association

The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association administers sporting events for an estimated 110,000 participants, 374 schools, 4,000 coaches, 3,000 officials, and 5,500 teams in the state of Tennessee. First organized in 1925, the TSSAA oversees athletic functions of both public and private schools. It includes schools throughout the state of Tennessee, as well as a single private school located in Mississippi.

In 2001, the association was a party in the United States Supreme Court case Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association.[6] Brentwood Academy had sued the Association after the school was penalized for "undue influence" in recruiting football players, and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. The court in this case held that a statewide association, incorporated to regulate interscholastic athletic competition among public and private schools, is regarded as engaging in state action when it enforces a rule against a member school.

The fall of 2009 was the first year for the TSSAA to divide into six playoff classifications for football. The new system allowed more teams into the playoffs. The state championship game for football, the BlueCross Bowl, which is held three consecutive days, ending the first Saturday of December, and includes Division I classes 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, and 6A, as well as Div. II A and AA, has been held at Tennessee Tech University's Tucker Stadium in Cookeville since 2009.

Each school chooses to compete in Division I or Division II. Division I schools are schools which generally allow students to attend without payment of tuition, i.e., public schools, except that tuition may be charged to a student who is a resident of the county in which a school is located but outside of a city school district or special school district, in which case the tuition is the difference between the amount of additional funding per student provided by the city or special school district above that provided by the state and county. Division II schools are independent schools which charge tuition to students' families. Financial aid is allowed provided it is limited to a need-based amount, and that the percentage of athletes receiving aid is no greater than for the school's students as a whole. The two divisions compete separately in all sports except cheerleading and girls' wrestling.

Division I schools are divided into three classes, as equally as possible, based on enrollment. A school's enrollment is multiplied by 2 if it is single-sex (the only single-sex school in Division I is Chattanooga Girls' Leadership Academy).

Division II schools whose enrollment (with the single-sex multiplier taken into account) is below the smallest school in Division I Class AA are Class A; larger schools are Class AA.

Finally, any school that wishes to play in a higher class may do so, but must do so for all sports other than football.

A full reclassification is held every four years; at the midpoint, any school that has had a 20% increase or decrease in enrollment will be moved to the class appropriate to its new enrollment (a school that will be moved down may decline).

The TSSAA divides Tennessee's 95 counties, and the state's constituent Grand Divisions, into nine "athletic districts":[8]

• District 1: Carter, Claiborne, Cocke, Grainger, Greene, Hamblen, Hancock, Hawkins, Jefferson, Johnson, Sevier, Sullivan, Unicoi, and Washington counties
• District 2: Anderson, Blount, Campbell, Knox, Loudon, McMinn, Monroe, Morgan, Roane, Scott, and Union counties
• District 3: Bledsoe, Bradley, Grundy, Hamilton, Marion, Meigs, Polk, Rhea, and Sequatchie counties
• District 4: Bedford, Cannon, Clay, Coffee, Cumberland, DeKalb, Fentress, Franklin, Jackson, Lincoln, Marshall, Moore, Overton, Pickett, Putnam, Rutherford, Smith, Van Buren, Warren, White, and Wilson counties
• District 5: Davidson, Macon, Montgomery, Robertson, Stewart, Sumner, and Trousdale counties
• District 6: Cheatham, Dickson, Hickman, Houston, Humphreys, Giles, Lawrence, Lewis, Maury, Perry, Wayne, and Williamson counties
• District 7: Benton, Carroll, Chester, Decatur, Fayette, Hardeman, Hardin, Henderson, Henry, Madison, and McNairy counties
• District 8: Crockett, Dyer, Gibson, Haywood, Lake, Lauderdale, Obion, Tipton, and Weakley counties
• District 9: Shelby County
  • East Tennessee comprises Districts 1, 2, and 3.
  • Middle Tennessee comprises Districts 4, 5, and 6.
  • West Tennessee comprises Districts 7, 8, and 9.

These districts are unrelated to the competitive districts above (although a few sports do use the grand divisions as regions); their primary purpose is to elect the Board of Control (the administrative authority) and the Legislative Council. Each district elects one member to each for a staggered three-year term; in addition, starting in November 2015, three additional members will be chosen to represent non-public schools, one from each grand division.

The sole out-of-state school that is a member of the TSSAA is Northpoint Christian School in Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis. Northpoint votes in the Athletic District 9 elections.

Cities and towns near Tennessee's borders with surrounding states, i.e. Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, or Virginia, such as Bristol, Chattanooga, Clarksville, and Memphis, do have various schools, both public and private, who play nearby out-of-state teams (which are not TSSAA members) on a regular basis, e.g. Heritage High School in Ringgold, Georgia for Chattanooga teams or Virginia High School in Bristol, Virginia for Bristol, TN teams.

• Official Website