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Posted on Sun, Nov. 01, 2009

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High school football fever: Pick it!

BY JOSHUA WOOD

The Wichita Eagle

Some time around 10:30 p.m. Friday, The Eagle's sports copy desk let out a collective cheer.

The reason?

For the first time in anyone's memory, all four portions of the Class 6A and 5A football playoff brackets were decided with relative ease.

Multiple people on the desk had independently come to the same conclusion as to which teams were seeded what and whom they were playing.

No coin flips from the state office in Topeka were necessary (thanks Wichita Heights; sorry, Derby!)

No frantic phone calls to find out the enrollment of a Missouri school to compare against Kansas classifications.

Amazingly, every one of the state's increasingly minutiae-laden tiebreaker steps worked themselves out this year.

And no, none of the steps involved BCS standings — sorry, Big 12.

So now it's here: the month-long competition to crown the best high school football team in Kansas — well seven of them, at least.

While we may complain about the state's bloated system that allows 160 teams to compete without even definitively deciding just which team is the best in all of Eight-Man football, in the end, it's still fantastic.

It's great to see teams from small towns like Smith Center grab a little bit of national attention for the nation's longest active 11-man football winning streak.

It's wonderful to see a town like Hutchinson go from the dregs of high school football just more than a decade ago to the state's biggest juggernaut.

It's incredible to speculate that maybe, just maybe, this is the year the City League breaks through to end its 22-year old championship drought.

The other great part of 153 playoff games? Brackets, brackets and brackets.

We're rolling out a NCAA Tournament-style bracket challenge at VarsityKansas.com this year.

Think of it like a big office pool — or seven office pools, if you'd like.

Get the best score in any particular class, and you'll win pizza and movie tickets.

And while you may not know the difference between Shawnee Mission East and Shawnee Mission West, it won't stop you from picking one of them.

Have no idea where Hill City is? Don't worry — you just have to guess if the Ringnecks (still one of the best nicknames in Kansas) can beat Clifton-Clyde in 8-Man Division I.

Don't be overwhelmed with it, just have fun. See if you can beat the picks by our high school writers Joanna Chadwick and Jonathan Long.

Remember — you probably weren't sure where Morgan State was in March, either, but you didn't pick them to beat Blake Griffin and Oklahoma in the first round.

Can Cinderella lay a block? _ It's certainly tempting to pencil in the usual suspects to win championships this year — Hutchinson, Andale and Smith Center come to mind.

November surprises do happen, though, even to the best programs.

Conway Springs' 9-7 win over Smith Center in the 1998 Class 3A semifinal comes to mind.

Coached by Mark Bliss, the Cardinals were the upstart team, taking out a perennial power on Smith Center's home field.

Of course, that started a dynasty for the Sumner County school, so maybe it was just the changing of the guard.

I'll give you one free tip — look for the 2009 edition of Smith Center to extend its win streak to at least 76 games and make it to Class 2-1A second round.

But hey, I'm sure there are at least 11 guys in the Plainville (1-8) locker room who will disagree.

And I invite each one of them to enter our contest.

Run 'n' Gun is The Eagle sports staff's weekly look at the offbeat side of sports.

Eagle online sports producer Joshua Wood is happy the 2-7 Augusta Orioles are still playing football. Reach him at 316-268-6413 or jwood@wichitaeagle.com