In my case, it’s not that these high school kids want to become a “power,” but just that they’d like to take the field on Friday nights and not feel like they’re going to be pounded into the turf for nine straight weeks. Give them four or five competitive games where they feel like they have a fighting chance.
I don’t know how to do that. So many of these football programs are just physically and psychically crushed and demoralized … I saw CR Jefferson play a few times last year and this year, and with the transfers and the beat downs and the suspect coaching in 2021 the football team was caught in a spiral of “the team is bad-good athletes won’t go out for the team because it’s bad-the team gets worse-rinse and repeat.” But when they played Davenport Central, you could see they thought they had a shot, they played with intensity, they played hard, and were devastated when they lost in OT. You just want to try to give those programs more games like that.
Is the answer that some of these schools should shut down the football program? Maybe. But it just feels weird if a school like CR Jefferson - one of the biggest high schools in the entire state - just decided not to play anymore. Isn’t there another option?