U.S.'s High School Season Started Last Night

[Akzag]

And your nation's leading rusher is Todd McCormick of North Pole with 208 yd.s on 29 carries.

That should be shattered a little later today as the other 2/3 of schools play their first game.

(Gotta start the season early up here. School is still out until around week three ...)

[TexasZagFan]

And your nation's leading rusher is Todd McCormick of North Pole with 208 yd.s on 29 carries.

That should be shattered a little later today as the other 2/3 of schools play their first game.

(Gotta start the season early up here. School is still out until around week three ...)

Our season starts 9/7. My kids' HS team (Coppell) is ranked in the top 20 in the Metroplex. Not too bad, considering there's close to 100 5-A schools in Dallas/Fort Worth. A lot of schools, including Coppell, have switched to the spread offense. You don't see that many teams today that rely on their running game.

They're still counting down, but I think #'s 1 & 2 will be Southlake Carroll and Euless Trinity. Carroll's won 79 of their last 80, winning 4 of the last 5 TX state championships.

Not sure if they show this particular Gatorade commercial in AK, but it's the one with Bill Parcells at the toll booth. Gatorade used the Euless Trinity FB team for that commercial.

First home game isn't until 9/21. Always a great night: the drill team has their big fundraiser, a spaghetti dinner before the game. Over the past several years, they've averaged close to 4000 a year.

I'll have mixed emotions this year: first time in 4 years I'll be able to be a simple spectator. My days as a Band Dad/Lariette Dad are over (for now--my youngest starts kindergarten in two weeks!).

[Akzag]

I have seen the Parcells commercial.

Football up here will always be down on the priority (as well as skill) level. The best in the state are able to have satisfactory Big Sky careers, but that's about it. I think about five (yup, literally just a handful) have made it to the NFL. I would imagine a "good" Texas high school team might send five a year (eventually, that is ...).

Normally a team or two will make a trip to play an outside team (in the lower 48). I guess it is a good barometer, as our teams will have already played three games or so, against a team playing their first game, but with superior talent.

I know one team will play in Bothell this year. And I would imagine that Barrow's first home game will get a bunch of publicity;

Last year was the first time Barrow had fielded a team, and their field of gravel and dirt is within a juiced homer from the Arctic Ocean. This summer they went down to Florida to attend some team camps. Out of all of that, a "football mom" in the Sunshine State helped raise enough funds to buy them an artificial field, which then through a variety of donations has made it to the other end of the continent.

[TexasZagFan]

I saw the news piece on the Barrow team...what a great story!

A couple of years back, there was a smaller school near El Paso that, due to redistricting, was put in a district where the closest opponent was in the neighborhood of 350 miles. By the end of the year, their old school bus added over 5000 miles to the odometer.

May not compare to the distances traveled in AK, but I tip my hat to the entire team for sticking it out.

I'll never forget driving from El Paso to Dallas the first time. A small town about an hour west of Abilene had a sign that said "The Heart of West Texas". I'd been driving about 7 hours (400 miles), and my first thought was "WTF?"