[jetpilot]

Ever lurked on a message board before joining, and then there was that one post that got you to join? This is the one.

I’ll preface the following by saying that, when it comes to comparing Tennessee and Kentucky high school football, there is not much difference. While there is a population gap, that gap is not as great as comparing either state to a Texas, Florida, etc.

With that said, I have found it quite interesting the past few years that Kentuckians have pointed to the last few TN-KY All-Star matchups, or, in this case, last year’s national rankings, as a proxy of the quality of football in each state. Granted, we live in a what-have-you-done-for-me lately society, not to mention that message boards are contained with people of all ages, allowing each person to have his/her own definition of what “historical” means. As such, I can understand this perspective somewhat.

Nevertheless, when you get to the core of the debate, over time, and over pretty much any metric, Tennessee high school football has trumped Kentucky high school football. Whether you look at all-time all-star game results, head-to-head matchups, high school All-Americans, Division I college signees, players in the NFL, etc., there is not one metric in which Kentucky would be deemed a superior high school football state. While the top teams in each state are somewhat comparable, population is contributing largely to that small, yet apparent, disparity. Tennessee, quite frankly, has more breadth of quality programs; i.e., Tennessee has more so-called powerhouse programs, whereas Kentucky has “The Big 3” (T, X, and Male) and a couple of others (Highlands being the most prominent of that bunch). Just take a subject – albeit a fuzzy one – such as national rankings. Over the past 50 years, Kentucky has had 6 different programs make some sort of final national poll; Tennessee has had 18 different programs. Even accounting for the difference in the number of football-playing schools in each state, the ratio is heavily tilted in Tennessee’s favor.

Once again, do I think there is a big difference between the two states? No. And I do I think that bringing up current/recent results is without some merit? No. But, at the end of the day, I like to think of a theory used often in real estate or finance (the stock market in particular) called “reverting to the mean”. One’s house may have gone down in value in the past year, or one’s stock portfolio may have recently tanked in this horrible bear market we are currently experiencing. However, over the long term, real estate increases in value; stocks/mutual funds will produce returns that exceed bank savings rates over time. And, similarly, while Kentucky may have had some success in an all-star game or two recently, or had more nationally ranked programs last year, the test of time has shown that these “events” are more the exception than the rule.

Of course, all of this doesn’t amount to much when it comes to Alcoa vs. Bell County or any other future matchups between the two states, head-to-head or otherwise. But, I think cherry-picking a small segment of a time over a long period of results isn’t exactly a fair assessment of the two states. Still, great football has been played between these two states. While there are feathers in Tennessee’s cap on a more recent basis (the MBA-Trinity series comes to mind), Kentucky has had a few itself. I remember, in 1991, when Tennessee had three classes, Tennessee’s eventual AA (Brentwood Academy) and AAA (Oak Ridge) champs each only had one loss – to a Paducah Tilghman squad that wasn’t even state champs in Kentucky that year.

One more note – the early MaxPreps ratings are seriously flawed. While the first three are fairly legitimate candidates for Tennessee, there is some serious overrating occurring, particularly with Knoxville Central and Trousdale County, and some likely underrating as well (Alcoa, among others).

Excellent! :Thumbs: