What an exhilarating feeling it is to be in first place looking at the rest of the competitors and realizing you’re on top. That’s what makes this time of year the best for the plethora of football players and their teams and fans that root for them. At this moment the teams are all undefeated, a perfect record. However, for everyone but the professional players none of these teams have played a game.
Still excitement and optimism runs high with the players and fans. “It looks like a great team on paper” is a phrase that’s heard over and over and while sometimes it’s true that the paper model does well in reality, that’s often not the case and sometimes that team that ‘looks good on paper’ gets blasted back to earth with their first resounding defeat.
Both high school football teams in Florence and Waldport are also raring to go. In these towns high school football can be a very big deal, especially if the team is doing well like the Florence footballers have been in recent years. Waldport hasn’t been quite so successful but people in the know say this could be a great year for the Fighting Irish.
On the college level both the University of Oregon and Oregon State are ready to blast off into the season. Both expect big things and with quite a bit of exposure on national television they want to look and play good. Television exposure is good for the schools and for potential recruits so in order to keep being seen on television both schools are working hard to fine tune their teams.
Of course as the season progresses the number of undefeated teams we have right now will shrink and these days there haven’t been too many teams that have gone undefeated through a whole season. If you’ve been lucky enough to be a player on an undefeated team or one of its fans it’s a great experience and one that you most likely will remember forever. But regardless of weather your current first place team remains in first place all season, it the time of year when many folks share a common interest; football.
I usually do two columns about football per year, one at the beginning of the season when everyone is even and right before the Super Bowl which brings the best two professional teams together. So it will be awhile before we talk about this again but best of luck to your team if you have one, and if you don’t check out a couple and maybe you will find one that will be in first place when their season ends!
To reach Rick Schultze email: yarick@pioneer.net