Footballing: Dragging ourselves through another endless July

Hi gang.

It’s July – the black hole for prep football after the summer practice period but not quite time for the actual season to get started. I love cookouts and fireworks, but after the 4th I’m always ready to get football season going.

Lucky for us Rick Ryan (and myself to a much, much, much lesser extent) has been all over some player features and sprinkled in some news recently. Let’s get caught up, shall we?

Starting with his most recent effort:

• Point Pleasant junior quarterback has been very good so far in his high school career, but has often been overshadowed by talented teammates. He’s the man for the Big Blacks now.
• Drew Joseph was a tackling machine for South Charleston last season. The Black Eagles expect big things out of him this season.
• Wheeling Island Stadium is/was falling apart. Wheeling Park will have to play elsewhere for a few weeks when the season starts, but fixing the damage is not expected to cause any problems for the Super Six state championship games in December.
• It’s a tall task, but Scott Tinsley enters Year 2 as head coach at St. Albans aimed at making progress on the major turnaround project he has on his hands with the Red Dragons – and a few other notebook items. 
• Curon Cordon was a highlight and touchdown machine last season as a junior at South Charleston. The senior receiver has since transferred to Hurricane and the transition, so far at least, has been a smooth one.
• A hefty chunk of Class AAA’s 29 programs are in the Mountain State Athletic Conference, and now several of those teams are having to turn to other state’s to fill their schedules. 

That last one riles up all of my “Disband the MSAC” thoughts. A lot of things (A LOT) the MSAC does do not make much sense, but football scheduling is among the biggest head-scratchers. There is no rhyme or reason from year to year with regard to teams trading home games (for example: Cabell Midland and Huntington have both played Capital in Charleston each of the last two regular seasons). The 11-team league only schedules six conference games each season, so teams like Capital, Hurricane and South Charleston are forced to look out of state and end up playing Kentucky powerhouses. Ask the Cougars and Black Eagles how their trips to eventual Kentucky 4-A state champion Johnson Central worked out for them last season.

I could go on for days about all the things I don’t like about how the MSAC does its business, so I’ll stop there and save it for (what I’m sure will be several) future posts.