By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

The lead-up to the 2019 edition of the Macon Touchdown Club’s Middle Georgia Kickoff Classic hasn’t been quite as smooth as that of the first three.

For one, the same four teams from the previous year expected to participate on the two-year scheduling cycle won’t be doing so.

For another, officials are very much in a hurry-up mode organization-wise with the new participants rather than working on final details.

Hicks is familiar with the Macon Touchdown Club's Middle Georgia Kickoff Classic from his days at Central.

Video: Michael A. Lough/The Sports Report of Central Georgia, www.centralgasports.com

Four new teams will take to Mercer’s Five Star Stadium in August with Westside facing Southwest and Washington County taking on Baldwin, on Aug. 24.

The change, confirmed in a text by club official King Kemper on Friday, has been in the works for a month.

Touchdown Club officials met with the four coaches on Wednesday at Mercer, the first in-person meeting with all involved since the situation emerged in early April. The group walked through Mercer’s field house and took a look at the locker rooms as well.

Last year, Five Star Stadium had one of its top crowds since opening in 2013, with Dublin and Tattnall in the opener and Northside-Peach County in the nightcap. Dublin rolled to a 55-0 win, and then Peach County edged Northside 27-24.

The stadium passed seating capacity during the Eagles-Trojans game, and that meant a superb payout for all four schools – each ended up make more money than at with a normal home game – in a playoff atmosphere as well as a windfall for the Touchdown Club’s scholarship fund, ostensibly the whole point of the doubleheader.

Last year’s games were played on Saturday, Aug. 25, the second week of the season. Northside, Dublin, and Tattnall had played games a week earlier, on Aug. 17.

The first week for 2019 had been moved up a week, to Aug. 23, part of the GHSA’s regular change every several years, as well as to avoid potential scheduling conflicts with the Atlanta United, the GHSA finals, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, as per what happened last year, completely disrupting the championship schedule. Alas, the GHSA moved the finals from MBS to Georgia State early this month.

The Touchdown Club operated, and sent out contracts, with an Aug. 24 gameday, the 2018 schedule. Teams are in the second year of a scheduling cycle, so all four teams adjusted and put the Classic down for Aug. 30-31. The teams obviously knew about the change as part of normal communication with the GHSA, but the Touchdown Club wasn’t aware of the change, and had the same four teams set for the same weekend – the second week’s Saturday - in 2019.

Except that is the first weekend, not the second, and the teams are playing openers on Aug. 23-24. So the teams were scheduled to play again on the second week this year, but it was a different week on the calendar.

It came to light in early April after an email was sent to the head coaches, noting the Aug. 24 date, as Dublin head coach Roger Holmes explained initially to The Sports Report in late April. The discrepancy wasn’t immediately noticed by the coaches, and not addressed until the Touchdown Club was told.

“Then we started looking in to it,” said Johnny Crawford, primary organizer of the football games for the club. “We’re frustrated. Nobody told us. We as a touchdown club, we wouldn’t have known that.”

An examinations of options began, and options fairly quickly were eliminated.

Three of the four teams had games scheduled on Aug. 23, week one, and changing those around – all three opponents were from outside of Central Georgia – wasn’t too feasible.

The issue then became the facility at Mercer on that different date, the second weekend, Labor Day weekend, and playing the games at Mercer on schedule.

The Bears open the season on Aug. 31 at Western Carolina, and that would lead to staffing issues for such a big event, with many Mercer employees on the road. So that date didn’t work for Mercer.

Among the problems with an alternative location on Aug. 31: the Labor Day weekend and asking dozens of volunteers to work a game that weekend, which is also the first weekend of college football – like Georgia-Vanderbilt, Georgia Southern-LSU, Georgia State-Tennessee, and Duke-Alabama in Atlanta. Crawford is also an SEC official who would be doing a college game that weekend, too.

Thus, attendance would have taken a substantial hit, and the number of volunteers was likely to be much lower.

“I was on the phone with them to try and find different scenarios,” Crawford said. “Once we found out they couldn’t move games … We were just sick about it.”

Last year’s doubleheader was nearly perfect in its general execution, with all four teams and the club making more money an expected, leading all entities to look forward to this year pretty quickly.

“They loved it,” Crawford said of Peach County head coach Chad Campbell and Northside head coach Kevin Kinsler. “They hated that it wasn’t going to work out.”

Each team gets 1,000 tickets to sell, and keeps all the proceeds from those pre-game sales. Then the four teams and the Touchdown Club split the walk-up gate, which last year was particularly strong.

Option B was to explore starting over with new teams that were already scheduled for the weekend. And there were a fair number of options worth exploring: Perry-Houston County, Mount de Sales-Monticello, Veterans-Upson-Lee, among others.

But the four teams picked brought a quality rivalry connection as well as geography. Baldwin and Washington County – and longtime friends Jesse Hicks and Joel Ingram – have played 42 times, nine times since 2006 (Washington County leads 21-19-2), and Westside and Southwest are city rivals, giving Bibb County public-school teams a slot of their own.

The first two years of the games featured FPD, Central, Howard, and Mount de Sales, with the teams rotating opponents each year.

Hicks knew the routine, having been head coach at Central when the Chargers were part of the first two Classics. When Crawford called a few weeks ago, there was no hesitation.

“A great opportunity for our community, for our kids, our coaches, everybody that’s involved with what you do in football,” he said. “Especially since you’re going to kick off the year, coming to a facility like this, give the kids an opportunity to play in a great venue like this.

“Then to also be able to do it for the Macon Touchdown Club, which provides so much scholarship money for young people in Middle Georgia. When you get a chance to play a great team in a great facility with a great atmosphere, this gives you the chance to do that.”

Crawford said that Bibb County schools that hadn’t participated regularly inquire about playing the classic, so Westside and Southwest were happy, and Ingram gave up a home game for the chance to play at Mercer – current home to former Washington County standout Will Coneway, last year’s Bears defensive MVP, as well as signee Mitchell Lord - and spread the Golden Hawk brand a little bit.

The Braves had a wild 2018, starting off 0-5 and then running the Region 3-4A table to win it, losing to state runner-up Cartersville in the quarters.

Washington County is in the rough-and-tumble 3-AA with Dublin, those two teaming with Dodge County to go 31-7 last year.

Westside, of Region 2-3A, went 8-4, opening the season with a 21-0 win over Southwest, which finished 3-7 in Region 3-AA.

“We’ll take it any way we can get it,” Ingram said. “We always felt like we wanted to be one of those teams that played in that game. We play the toughest of the tough around here … It’s always good to get our brand out there – you see that ‘WC’ – and give our kids a chance to play at Five Star Stadium.

“It’s impossible not to be excited.”