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Article published Jun 11, 2009 Prep football title games moving to Cookeville
By Ryan Callahan of The Daily Times Staff
George Quarles has enjoyed the run of good fortune his Maryville High School football teams have experienced at the BlueCross Bowl in Murfreesboro.
Gary Rankin has grown accustomed to his Alcoa and Riverdale teams ending their seasons there, too.
This year might not feel quite the same.The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association's Board of Control voted Wednesday afternoon to move the football state championship games from Murfreesboro to Cookeville for the next two years.
The 2009 and 2010 BlueCross Bowls will be played at Tennessee Tech University's Tucker Stadium, which has an official capacity of 16,500. Since 2000, Middle Tennessee State University's 31,000-seat Floyd Stadium had hosted the games.
"Personally, we kind of liked Murfreesboro," joked Quarles, who has led Maryville to eight Class 4A state championship games in the last nine years. "Ever since it moved to Murfreesboro, Maryville has done really, really well. But it doesn't matter. As long as we're playing in it, I don't care where they play it."
Rankin, a seven-time state champion as a head coach, said he was surprised to learn that Cookeville's bid had been accepted over proposals from Chattanooga and Murfreesboro.
"That's a shocker," said Rankin, who has won three state titles in as many years at Alcoa, the five-time defending Class 2A state champion. "It will certainly be different for me personally. I've been in 12 of those things, I think, so it was almost like home to me."
Cookeville's offer was the most lucrative and the most impressive, said Board of Control member Lynn Brown, an assistant principal at Maryville.
All cities attempting to attract the games were asked to submit bids of at least $231,000. Cookeville offered $250,000, Chattanooga bid $241,000 and Murfreesboro bid the minimum.
But the board's decision, Brown said, had little -- if anything -- to do with the money.
"I think the biggest thing was Cookeville's enthusiasm and their desire to put this thing on," he said. "You can tell when somebody wants you and when somebody really doesn't care whether they take you or not. They'll accommodate you, but they really don't care whether they have you or not.
"That feeling is pretty easy to get."
An increasingly strained relationship between the TSSAA and administrators in charge of MTSU's athletic facilities also might have played a part in the board's vote.
"We've had some problems," Brown said. "We think we've become a burden to them. We think we've worn out our welcome."
Cookeville and Tennessee Tech present an intriguing alternative.
The smaller stadium in Cookeville might be more appropriately sized for crowds that typically left thousands of empty seats in Murfreesboro, although Rankin suggested the lower capacity could prevent some fans from seeing highly anticipated games.
Quarles said he likes the idea of a sellout crowd watching two teams play for a state championship.
"When you look at the stands and they're mostly empty, that takes away from it just a little bit," Quarles said. "You play games all year long in front of full stands. I think that adds to it.
"It will be a hotter ticket. It will be more in demand, maybe. If anything, I think it would help the game a little bit, just to make the atmosphere that much better if you're worried about having to squeeze people in there."
Cookeville's location roughly 80 miles northeast of Murfreesboro also makes it a centrally located site for teams throughout the state, Rankin said.
Still, the amenities in Cookeville might not match the ones available in Murfreesboro. Rankin questioned whether Cookeville has enough hotels to accommodate the large crowds, and Brown admitted Tucker Stadium is inferior in some ways to MTSU's facilities.
"The press-box area at Tennessee Tech is not as good as Murfreesboro, but that's one of those things we just felt like we needed to do -- or the majority of the board felt like we needed to do," Brown said.
Quarles and Rankin both said their schools likely would save on travel expenses for a title game in Cookeville, and more fans might be able to make the roughly 100-mile drive.
Still, not many people would have predicted the BlueCross Bowl would leave Murfreesboro any time soon.
Not for Cookeville, anyway.
"If somebody had asked me the top (candidates)," Rankin said, "I would have probably picked that as being the third place they would have picked."