How I Dug Into Tennessee’s Mr. Basketball Mess
So folks kept asking me – “How does this Mr. Basketball Tennessee thing even work for 2025? It seems kinda random!” Honestly? I had no clue either. Thought it was just coaches picking their fav guy over coffee. Figured I should actually, you know, find out. Grabbed my laptop, started typing like my life depended on it.
First stop? Google, obviously. Searched “TSSAA Mr Basketball 2025 selection rules”. Felt like walking into a bureaucratic maze. Found the TSSAA website – man, that thing looks like it was designed in 2005. Clicked around, felt lost faster than a freshman at his first varsity tryout. Sections for “Handbook”, “Awards”, “Athletics”… which one hid the golden ticket? Took coffee and serious determination.
Finally spotted a tiny link – “Division I Boys’ Basketball Awards”. Clicked it. BAM! Hit with a wall of text. Rules about classifications (A, AA, AAA, what?), “nomination windows” (sounds fancy? wait’ll you hear…), voting committees. My eyes started crossing. Felt like reading the phone book. Why’s picking the best baller gotta be this complicated?
Made notes. Had to make sense of this:
- Step 1: Coaches gotta nominate players during a super specific time period, like 2 weeks in January. Miss the window? Tough luck, kid.
- Step 2: Some fancy “nominating committee” checks if the nominees are even eligible. Grades? Enrollment? Check, check, check. Paperwork central.
- Step 3: This is the weird bit. They split nominees based on where the school is located – like East, Middle, West Tennessee. Geography matters? Guess so.
- Step 4: Then, get this, DIFFERENT people vote! A whole new set of folks called the “Mr. Basketball Selection Committee” gets ballots. Who are these people? The website don’t say much. Coaches? Media? Random folks picked off the street? Unclear. Big lack of transparency vibes.
- Step 5: These mystery voters get sent a ballot listing all the nominees (already sorted by geography and school class). They pick ONE name from each class. ONE. Sounds easy? Wait.
- Step 6: They tally up the votes. Winner in each class (A, AA, AAA) gets named Mr. Basketball for that class. There’s no single overall winner. Feels anticlimactic, right?
Found myself muttering “Overcomplicated much?” They got nomination committees, selection committees, ballots based on maps and school size… just to name a few high school players. The whole process feels buried in bureaucracy. Who controls the committee? Who picks THEM? The TSSAA handbook shrugs its shoulders. Major black box energy.
Here’s the kicker. While reading this stuff, I tried shooting hoops in the garage to relax. Totally wiped out an old trophy I got back in ’09 doing a dumb dribbling drill upsetting the dusty shelves. Took ages to sweep up all that cheap plastic rubble. Garage smelled like sweat and regret forever. Point is, chasing basketball glory – whether a trophy or a title – gets messy fast, on and off the court. Now I need a new trophy.