It has been a week since my last blog because I spent three days at the School Board Conference in Omaha and spoke at a football coaching clinic in Lincoln Sunday. For speaking, the Nebraska Coaches Association gave Coach Peck and I free tickets to the championship games, so we stayed Monday to watch the Howells game. The tickets in the skybox provided us a good seat to evaluate the game.
With the rout of Giltner (60-6 in the 3rd quarter), we were talking about where Bancroft-Rosalie should end up in the ratings. Since we were the only team to beat Howells, and the only team to actually play them close, it can be argued that a #2 ranking is appropriate. Johnson-Brock can argue that they should be rated higher than B-R because they beat us, but if we all agree that Howells, J-B, and B-R deserve to be rated 1,2,3, then let’s use comparative scores between the three schools to decide 2nd and 3rd. Bancroft-Rosalie beat Howells by 2 points ( yeah I realize their QB didn’t play, but would he have made a 40 point difference in the game?). Johnson-Brock beat B-R by 12 in a game that was tied with 8 minutes left in the game. Howells thumps Johnson-Brock by 40 points in a game that was clearly not a contest. How does that justify J-B getting a higher rating than B-R? To place J-B #2, you would have to say that play-off games count more than regular season. If that is the reasoning, I don’t have an argument. But I can’t see placing Giltner or Palmer ahead of a team that beat the state champions.
Baldwin says that the Lincoln Journal sells more papers in the Johnson-Brock area, so he thinks they will be ahead of us. If that is the case, then politics may put Giltner ahead of us, too. I give Ryly Jane Hambleton at the Journal more credit. She is without a doubt the most thoughtful rater when it comes to the lower classes (C-D). Stu P. at the World Herald came to all three games of the games in question. From his articles, he seems to think that the Howells quarterback would have made a big difference in the B-R game and that will work against us.
I think B-R should be #2, but will probably end up #3.
