Ran across this quote over the weekend from Mark Cousins, assistant UIL athletic director:

There will be a bevy of nine- and 10-team conferences in 5A and possibly 4A.

“There will be several nine-team districts and some with 10 teams,” Mark Cousins said. “It may occur in other conferences, sometimes by policy and others by circumstances warranting more than an eight-team district.”

Would make putting a schedule together easy.

Ten team districts are usually broken up into zones are they not?

Yes, it sure would.

Also makes you wonder with Lindale likely moving up to Class 4A and Mabank leaving the Class 4A district with Athens and likely dropping to 3A, if Lindale and Athens might be grouped with the East Texas schools currently in 4A and form a 10-team district.

Not saying it's going to happen, but it certainly brings it into play with that quote.

UIL Assistant Athletic Director Mark Cousins said there are bound to be some wide eyes when the new alignments are announced at 9 a.m. Thursday.

Zones pretty much became non-existent when multiple playoff teams were implemented.

9 and 10 team conf.???? that is crazy why not have 2 five team districts and just send 3 to playoffs. only reason for the big conf is because 4 make playoffs.

You can only have 32 districts, so you could divide a 10-team district into two districts, but you've got to make up for it somewhere else.

This is killing me. At least two years ago we knew basically where we stood.

hmmm, thats in interesting idea. they had to have been given some imput from the coaches committees.

they must have gotten some favorable input on it, otherwise i don' think they'd have done it.

it would make things nicer for having to schedule preseason.

I suspect that may mean the status quo in East Texas 4A. My thought is the metropolitan areas in 4A & 5A are adding all the new schools. You could have 9 schools in a Hwy 380 District of Mckinney (3) Frisco (3) and Denton (3). Three of the schools I believe would be new.

My guess the cut off numbers will be similar to 2004 realignment.