View from the cheap seats

A weekly perspective on sports

Edgar’s football team is treating this Thursday’s second and final game of the playoff regional pod like it’s the state championship game, considering it’s playing Iola-Scandinavia in a clash between undefeated teams this season.

The winner of this game won’t be awarded any type of trophy from the WIAA, but even so, it has the right to proclaim itself as state champions this season. I view this as a similar situation to the 2017 college football season, when although Central Florida enjoyed an undefeated season, the college Football Playoff committee didn’t allow it to compete for a national championship.

Florida’s governor officially proclaimed UCF’s football team as a national champion on Jan. 8, 2018. It’s plausible the winner between Edgar and Iola-Scandinavia should also proclaim itself as a state champion this season. Nobody would fault the winner between the Wildcats or Thunderbirds for erecting a banner in their high school gym to declare itself as 2020 football state champions.

There’s a chance the makeup of the football teams in the Marawood Conference is different again next season. There is a rumor Fall Creek wants to leave the Cloverbelt Conference and switch to the Marawood, because the Crickets are tired of losing their top football players to conference foe Eau Claire Regis. There’s word Colby would love to take Fall Creek’s spot and return to the Cloverbelt. These are simply rumors right now and no decisions have yet been made.

There’s also a good shot Marawood football schools Owen-Withee and Thorp choose to play eight-man football next season, because of their declining numbers of players out for the sport. Thorp is also losing talented football players to Eau Claire Regis. For example, Zander Rockow chose to open enroll into Eau Claire Regis and he’s the Ramblers’ leading rusher.

I know the Athens football team’s coaching staff wants to keep playing 11-man football, but the Bluejays might not have a choice but to switch to eightman football in the next few years. Athens’ thin middle school classes are now entering the high school. For example, the Athens football team loses nine seniors after this season to graduation, leaving its high school program with eight juniors, four sophomores and six freshmen back next year.

Calling all hunters, please e-mail me pictures of you with the trophy bucks you either bagged during the bow or gun hunting seasons to caseykrautkramer@ tpprinting.com so they can be printed in The Record-Review. Please provide me with your full name, how many points the buck has, what time and date you killed the buck and what township and county you bagged it in. Stay safe hunting this opening weekend!