Three of the Top Six in 6A Live in the Same County. Now They Have to Play Each Other.
The Tennessee Sports Writers Association released its preseason football rankings on Monday, and the top of Class 6A — the largest classification in the state — reads like a Rutherford County school directory.
Oakland is No. 1, carrying 19 first-place votes and 208 points. Riverdale is No. 2 with the other two first-place votes and 190 points. Blackman is No. 6 at 107. Three Murfreesboro high schools hold half of the top six spots in a class that stretches from Memphis to the Tri-Cities, and every single first-place vote cast in 6A went to a school inside the same county.
The rest of the class: Maryville third at 146, Ravenwood fourth at 139, Collierville fifth at 129, Oak Ridge seventh at 65, Antioch eighth at 48, Brentwood ninth at 42 and Southwind tenth at 36. Lebanon was the nearest team outside the ten, at 35. The poll is voted by association members, with ten points for a first-place vote down to one point for a tenth-place vote, covering the top ten in each of the six Division I classes and the top five in three Division II classes.
Two schools that opened the same year
There is a tidy piece of local history buried in the top two. Oakland and Riverdale both opened in 1972, sister schools built on opposite sides of a town that was then a fraction of its current size. Fifty-four years later they are ranked one and two in the state's biggest class, and Blackman — a much younger school on the fast-growing west side — is close enough behind to make it a three-way argument.
Oakland has been the program the rest of 6A measures itself against for most of the last decade, including three consecutive state championships from 2020 through 2022. Riverdale's two first-place votes are a reminder that the writers were not unanimous about it this year.
Week 1: everybody starts on the road except Blackman
The preseason poll is an opinion. The schedule is not, and it starts Friday.
- Oakland at Christ Presbyterian Academy — Friday, August 21, 7 p.m.
- Blackman vs. Clarksville, at home — Friday, August 21, 7 p.m.
- Riverdale at Knoxville Catholic — Saturday, August 22.
Oakland does not play at home until September 4, when Smyrna visits.
The part where the ranking gets settled
Here is what makes this year's poll more than a talking point: all three of these teams share a region, so the argument gets resolved on the field rather than on a ballot.
- September 4 — Riverdale at Blackman, 7 p.m. The first of the three to meet.
- September 25 — Blackman at Oakland, 7 p.m.
- October 30 — Oakland at Riverdale. The region finale, and the one the whole county circles in August.
Look at the rest of Riverdale's region slate and the geography gets even tighter: Blackman, LaVergne, Stewarts Creek, Smyrna, Siegel, Rockvale and Oakland. Every opponent on that list is a Rutherford County school. A team can play its entire region schedule without leaving the county line, which is what happens when a county adds enough people to keep opening high schools.
That growth is the quiet subject underneath the rankings. The same expansion that produced a 53rd school campus in the Blackman community this month is what stocks these rosters, and the district's 2026-27 calendar put students back in classrooms just in time for the first Friday night.
Kickoff for most of the county is 7 p.m. Friday. If you are making a night of it, the restaurants on the Square are the reliable pre-game answer.
