I’ve been keeping a watch on Rich Obert’s list of the top 150 AZ football players of 2027. It is a big list–ballooning, even. Still in spite of all that my kid has never made the list. I paid the minimal fee for a short-lived membership to the paper just to see if the kid made it. The list is now up to 30, and no sign of the kid. No clue how the list is chosen either. If it is about players who are getting noticed by colleges, well he ought to be on it with 4 offers, one from a CFP playoff team. If it is about all district honors, he has those as well. We’re only at 30, and sure, I’ll accept the kid isn’t top 30 (though he’s being overshadowed already by lesser players at his position), but I’m expecting to see him in the next 120. If I don’t then it is clearly underdog season loading.
Finally got a clear look at the schedule. The football schedules are largely two-year affairs. You book most of your opponents on a home and home two year deal. Some games are open, giving the team a chance to add a new opponent. This year that opponent is Sandra Day O’Connor High. Good school. My boy played with their 7 on 7 team for a while, so he knows what he is facing. Should be a close match. The rest of the matches don’t quite follow the home and home feel. The last two games are road games against Nogales (at the very edge of the USA) and Corona who features #23 on the aforementioned list, a kid my boy grew up with and who I coached his entire youth career. That too is going to be a fun one.
I want to get into breaking down the rest of it next Wednesday as the Waiver Wire returns in full. For now, I’ll fade into…
Some Thoughts:
- Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Vance hits out at ‘scandalous’ Zelenskiy comments about Hungary’s Orban” I dislike JD Vance and every single thing this man stands for. I won’t begrudge his wife at all, because I don’t know her, but I can tell you that her man’s ‘white victimhood’ is an absolute sham. He’s not the worst part of that entire administration, but he’s possibly the most insidious among them.
- 400. That is a big number. I fail to understand why it means more to me than 309 or 402 or anything like that but this threshold number matters, if only a little bit. Let’s keep it rolling.