Welcome to Football Season

I have said before and will here reiterate, this is a great time of year. Why you ask?

1. High School football is underway
2. College football is underway
3. The NFL season is beginning
4. The NASCAR season is about to hit "The Chase" (Jon, "The Chase" is the NASCAR equivalent of the playoffs)

I'm sure there are other good things too, these are just the ones that come to mind.

So, high school football:

Joplin Globe article on the Webb game at Harrisonville.

Webb City traveled to Class 3 powerhouse Harrisonville. Now Webb has a proud tradition, but in Class 3 Harrisonville has been unbelievably dominant over the last decade - the last time they didn't win the class 3 title was 2004 in a 2OT championship game loss. Suffice it to say their move up to class 4 in 2008 will probably go better than Carl Junction's did a couple of years ago.

First the outcome: Webb won 27-21.

The good: Webb's front 7 or 8 (I can't tell half the time who qualifies as an outside linebacker and who is a strong safety) looked very good. With a couple of specific exceptions where tackles were missed, Harrisonville had very limited success trying to run the ball between the tackles (and even outside was tough going). Braxton Baker looked good in spots. After a fumble on the second play from scrimmage he went on to score all 4 of Webb's touchdowns. I'm not tuned in enough to really see what the linemen are doing, but they must have been handling Harrisonville's front 7 for Baker to break free repeatedly as he did.

The bad: Webb's defensive secondary was picked apart several times. Had I been the Harrisonville Offensive Coordinator I probably wouldn't have run the ball in the 2nd half. In the years I've watched the Cards this has often been the weak point in the D, but often because their front 7 is typically so good. Right now, the d-backs look like they're just not sure what they are doing. That's fixable and will have to be if the Cards want to compete with teams that live through the air - think Carthage and Ozark.

The annoying: Harrisonville's PA announcer was easily the most irritating I've ever had to sit through. I honestly considered going in search of the power tie for the press box just to put a stop to him. It was like he was doing a radio broadcast at the same time as doing PA. So he just talked non-stop. He had some great phrases, "Here's the deal..." (about 40 times), "Kyle, the Senior, brings his (and had about 12 different synonyms right here) squad, battalion, etc. to the line...", "Here we go...", "Armageddon at Memorial Stadium" and the list could go on and on. It was bad.

The irritating: The officials. Yeah, yeah, easy targets. Good chance the outcome isn't as close if the officials had managed the game correctly. Harrisonville was allowed to get on the ball before the play clock ever started again and again and again, but it would start on Webb almost immediately after the previous play ended (which is the correct way to do it). This was partially an issue with people running the clock and was done badly both ways in some cases, but definitely favored the home team. It was well into the second half before Harrisonville got anything other than a procedure penalty - and even those were few. There were multiple instances where the play clock sat on zero for several seconds before a flag was thrown (if it ever was, they got several plays off long after it hit zero). A number of obvious holds and interference calls were just ignored leading to big plays for Harrisonville. I have a feeling that if that game had been played on a neutral site the outcome might have been a 2+ touchdown margin for Webb.

The outlook: I'm a little worried about Webb. They've got some great athletes, but are going to have to continue to improve significantly if they want to be a factor this year. I am glad that the Carthage game is late in the season, in this instance I think that will benefit Webb - who I expect to improve as the season goes on.

One note from the trip: As we were cruising up 71 I came up behind a white car in the left lane, but not really going very fast. It was not right next to the car in the right lane, but there wasn't enough room between them for me to pass on the right (believe me, I'm always looking for that option), so I slowed and waited. After a few seconds of no apparent movement (either for the car to get over or go past the other car and then get over) I flashed my lights. As the young lady driving the car started to change lanes I saw the Missouri State sticker in the back window and thought, "Hmm...Emily Hunholz is from up this way, drives a white car and goes to Mo-State." Sure enough, it was Emily and her boyfriend headed home for Labor Day weekend. I sent her a text thereafter, but got no response. She either didn't know who it was or isn't speaking to me. :(