The Jefferson-Thomson playoff game Friday is being moved to the Brickyard in Thomson because Jefferson doesn’t not have the required 4,000 permanent seats, the GHSA announced Tuesday.
The GHSA has minimum requirements for semifinal games in each classification.
Both Class AAAA schools are region champions, which meant a coin toss originally gave Jefferson home-field advantage.
Home-field advantage has proven to be significant this late in the playoffs. According to Georgia High School Football Historians Association records, the home teams are 26-15 in semifinals between region champions since 2008, when the semifinals were taken out of the Georgia Dome and put back onto high school fields.
Thomson has won seven of its last eight playoff games at the Brickyard, which was built in the 1930s. Renovation in 2011 took its capacity to about 4,400 from 3,400.
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