[HCS]

I don't know that any of them were "county" schools per say. Before consolidation, they were their own Independent school districts.

Examples:

Monroe County was made up of football playing Tompkinsville (who was dang good, and Monroe still plays at their old stadium) and Gamaliel HS that didn't play football.

Lincoln County was made up of football playing Stanford (who was very solid all by their self much like Tompkinsville) and the non football playing schools of Crab Orchard, Waynesburg, Kings.
Mountain, McKinney and Hustonville.

Caldwell County was made up of football playing Princeton Butler (very good, winning WKC Championships in the 50's) and non football playing Fredonia.

I've already mentioned Lawrence County and how Louisa (football playing) merged with Non Football playing Blaine and I think one other non football playing (name slips me).

There are others that fall into the above categories, and then you have places like Graves County where none of the community schools had football (Mayfield was and is their own independent school district) until they all merged (Fancy Farm, Cuba, etc) until they consolidated to make Graves County. Logan County was/is the same exact way.

I don't think they were "independent" districts. Most, I believe, were county schools.
I remember when Graves merged and they were all county high schools. I think the same with Monroe. I'm guessing Caldwell and Lawrence were the same.
So, my point was not many, if any, county teams are worse off than before. Most weren't big enough to even have football.