Texas HS Football Rankings

Craig looks at Dave Campbell's Texas Football Magazine rankings for the high school area teams.

Episode Transcript

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It's the craig Way Shop with thevoice of the Texas Longhorns and all of
fame broadcasting Craig Way. So herewe are closing in on the weekend here
and we continue on this Friday afternoonon Sports Radio AM thirteen under the Zone.
I mentioned at the start of theprogram, we're going to give you

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some other preseason high school football rankings, and I said, there is some
significance here in that these Dave Campbell'sTexas Football magazine. Here's the significance.
If you're looking in a preseason footballpublication, and I'll include Texas Football in
this, or Athlons or Phil Steeleor Street and the Streets Men still do

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a publication Street and Smith, I'mnot sure if they do. I don't
know if they do. Anyway,if you're if you're looking at a preseason
college football publication or a publication thathas college football rankings in it, and
I've got like a couple here withme, because again Phil Steels, I
don't think has come out yet,so they'll they'll have, you know,

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all power rankings and this and that, and they have individual previews like I
just randomly open it up and thereI'm looking at Tulane and Tulsa on facing
pages there because clearly that's in theAmerican Athletic Conference and they have full it
says, full page previews of allone hundred and thirty four FBS teams.

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Same thing in Dave Campbells Texas Football, where they preview every college football team
in the state of Texas, regardlessof you know, Division Division one FBS
where it has And Greg Tepper wasexplaining this the other day, devoting more
space to a program like Sam Houstonwhich is now Division one FBS and so

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they get the same amount of pagesas the other FBS programs. And next
weekend when I go down to SanAntonio for Coaching School in the Coaching divinsion,
moderate the panel discussion, Casey Keeler, the head coach for Sam Houston,
will be on that same stage,as well as Steve Sarkeesian and Mike
Elco at Texas A and M andDave Rann at Baylor, and Joey McGuire

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at Texas Tech and Sunny Dykes atTCU and RT Lashley at SMU and GJ.
Kenney at Texas State, all ofthe Division one FBS football programs will
have their head coaches up on thatstage. So and Dave Campbell's Texas Football
Magazine does previews of all of thoseteams, but also every other division of

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college football, and I do meanevery other division FCS. We can find
previews of Lamar Steven F. Austinin there, Abilene, Christian Tarleton,
you can find those there. TexasA and m Commerce is jumping to FCS,
they'll have to go through the youknow, through that transition period from

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Division two, but they do haveDivision two previews lone Star Conference like with
the Angelo State and Midwestern State andseveral of those, and then they have
Division three, which includes the AmericanSouthwest Conference that has like Mary Harden Baylor
and Harden Simmons, but also theSouthern Intercollegiate Athletic Association which has Southwestern University

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in Georgetown. We always get JoeAustin on the program before the start of
the year to talk about the PiratesD three journey and they're going into that
new conference, into the SI DoubleA, so we'll get we'll get him
on it, and then they alsothe magazine also previews NAI programs like Texas,
Wesleyan and also junior college programs likeKilgore or Tyler or Navarro several of

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those. So it does all that, but as we all know, more
than half of the magazine are right. At half of the magazine is devoted
to their previews of high school footballbecause there were more than fifteen hundred public
and private high school football programs inthe state of Texas, and so they
have the preseason rankings for all thoseclassifications. Here's the difference from say,

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these other publications, where they allhave rankings and they all pick who they
think are going to win the respectiveconferences Atlons or any of the other ones.
Phil Steele, they have rankings oflike whatever. They rank the programs
all the way through one through Iguess one hundred and thirty four or whatever,
and they have the rankings, butthat is a preseason based on the

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information accumulated in March and April andMay in June, and then they finally
send it off to print and thenthey have it there. But that's it
for them. Their rankings are inthe book looks at that point and the
AP takes over the rankings after that. In the ESPN Coaches Poll, Dave
Campbell's Texas Football magazine does have rankingsfor all of these programs of these classifications.

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But remember it is Dave Campbell's TexasFootball magazine that actually puts together the
weekly poll that comes out. Andthe Associated Pressing AP used to have writers
journalists scattered across the state. Therewere twenty five of us, and I
served on it for gosh, almosttwenty years, I think, as a
voting member of the AP, andwe'd have AP high school top ten in

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six A, five, A four, A, three A two it.
We didn't vote on the six manclassification. That was done by the six
Band Coach Association, I believe,but we did that. But a few
years ago the AP just gave itall up to Texas Football because they have
writers in different parts of the stateand they convene each week, and so
Greg Tepper, our friend, kindof puts it all together and then they

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have the poll. He does.I will tell you, he will ask
me after we get a walk offthe set on a Friday night. He'll
say, what do you think aboutso and so? Should we drop so
and so? Should we put soand so on the top ten? They
would so you'll canvass me for someopinion and some other people. They will
they will do that as well,but then they put out a poll every
week. So their preseason rankings inthe magazine I think carrying more weight for

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what they do for the high schoolthan any other publication themselves included about college,
because when we get to the startof the college season, all it
is really is the AP college rathersixty two of them, I believe,
and they're sixty two people with avote every week. I think Kirk Bowles
hays the vote. He's with theHouston Chronicle now is with the Austin American

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stationment for many years, so youhave different people who vote on the AP
Top twenty five College Football poll.The high school poll is done by the
Dave Campbell staff, the same staffthat puts together their preseason rankings. Were
the differences, and that's where Ithink these rankings perhaps hold a little more
credence. So I give you allthat back drop before presenting these rankings to

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you. Now. The other daywe talked about the six A rankings because
we had Temper on the show acouple of days ago, and in six
A, which of course is notsplit up into the playoffs until the playoffs
in other words, you don't haveDivision one and Division two like you have
in five A, four A,three A, two A, and even
one A the six men classification,they're already split up into the divisions.

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I explain this and have explained itseveral times over the years. The reason
it's not done in six A thereisn't really a need to do that because
they're in such large populated areas thatit doesn't really help in terms of scheduling.
That's where it helped for saving gasolinecost, transportation travel time by going

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Division one and Division two because youcould schedule the schools more close to you
during that time. Six A they'reall pretty closely bunched together anyway. But
it was pointed out on the showthe other day that at least in their
preseason rankings, their thought is isthat those two South Dallas County arch rivals

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De Soto and Duncanville are well positionedto each win another state championship, which
would be a three peat for both. That's never happened at six A,
where you had three peats in bothdivisions in the same year. It's never
happened. In fact, it's neverhappened in back to back years, let
alone in three consecutive years. YetDesta and Duncanville are the preseason favors for

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that. Now, all that said, here's the rest of their rankings.
Now they do a top fifty,so I'm not going to go all the
way through the top fifty on that. That's why they do that. They
do it as a top fifty becausethey only have the one division right now
of six A. When they getto the playoffs, then by population they
split into Division one and Division two, So de SODA's number one in Dunkville's

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number two. They're expecting the Sodato beat Duncanville this year. Remember they
didn't play last year. They hadit, they had lightning, they tried
to, they waited and they couldn't. Then they were going to on Saturday,
and then it just didn't. Sayyou know what, we don't need
to play each other. There's nopoint we're gonna win our we're gonna we're
going separate ways, and they willagain. The Soda has one of the
smallest enrollments of a six A program, and say in fact they have five

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A numbers. But under UIL rules, you can opt up, you can
play up one classification. You can'tplay down. Uh, you have to
play either at your enrollment ranking classificationor you can opt up if it helps
for like scheduling and finances and allthat. So De Soda plus DESTA is
one of the best programs in theStates and we're good enough to play at

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six A in just about every sport. So they opted up and they're the
preseason number one, Dunkville number two, Galena Park, North Shore number three.
These are all very familiar names.Westlake, the highest Austin ara A
team is number four, North Crowley, five, Summer Creek Cove, the
humble last team the Housionary six,South Lake Carol seventh, Lake Travis is
number eight, a task to seatthe number nine Siblo Steel ten. The

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next Greater Austin Area school is Vandergriftat number twenty four and then Dripping Springs
at number twenty nine. That's insix eight five A in two different divisions
has its defending state champions also preseason and one Alito and Division one Port
H's Groves and Division two. Therest of the top ten in five AD

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one Dent and Ryan Highland Park CollegeStation Smithson Valley, which got to the
finals against Aleda. Last year,Frisco lone Star, Richland, Abilene and
A and M consolidated and Port ArthurMemorial ran out the top ten. Wewiss,
which drops from six to eight tofive A, is number eleven in
the five A Division one preseason poll. Cedar Park is number eighteen. I've

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originally said they were the highest ratedteam. They're not. Weiss is the
highest rated team. It's interesting though, because they're in a different region than
Cedar Park, not only a differentdistrict, but a different region. Out
of that division two, Port H'scards is one. South Olk Cliff,
who PMNG beat in the finals toDeny Soka. Three P last year was
number two, Argyle third, andthen Alamo Heights. For Texas High of

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Texas Cannis five, Kylieville, Heriddsix, Richmond Randalls seven, Liberty Hill.
Highest ranked Greater Austin area program isnumber eight, Melissa nine, Fort
Ben Marshall number ten, and that'sit for all of the Greater Austin areas
goes. I do find it interestingin the team that won the four eight
Division one state championship B year agoAnna from up North to Dallas. They

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moved up classification in five A andtheir number twenty the number nineteen in the
preseason poll in five A moving upin division? Are any schools happy moving
up? I mean, obviously theSODO with five six kind of with some
trepidation. It's going to be difficult. Then you get the flip side as
we go to four A Division oneagain there's going to be a new state

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champions. Hanna moved up. Stephenville'sthe preseason number one, Chapel Hill High
the Tyler area number two, FriscoPanther Creek is third, Salina four,
Kilgore five, Davenport of the SanAntoni area six, Brownwood seven, Decatur
eight. LBJ dropping from five Aback to four A. They're happy about

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that. That's the flip side,the inverse of that. Last time they
were in four they went to thestate title game. That's right, lost
to Stephenville and LBJ. Remember optedup in the prior arm to stay close
to the AISD schools. But they'renot the only one from the AISD dropping
down. That's why they went aheadand said you go ahead and drop us.
So their number nine in Bay Cityrounds out the top ten. Lampassas

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is number seventeen. The only otherarea school rated their individual one Division two
Carthage the preseason number one. Theydidn't win it last year. Gilmer,
who beat them last year, isthe defending state champion. They're two.
In Dellville, the team that Gilmerbeat the tight Around is ranked third.
Wimberley is number five, Glenn Rosefour. Wimberley is number five. Of
course, they went fourteen to one, lost in the semifinals last year to

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Belleville. Brock Is six, PleasantGrove of the Texas, Kent Areas seven,
Leavega high, the Waco Areas eight, Gram nine, Centin is ten,
and that's it. Wago Vista checksin at number twenty five, so
that's the only other area team numbertwenty five. In the four A Division
two rankings. Three A preseason numberone is the defending state champion. Malakoff.

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Columbus is two. Franklin, theteam that Malakoff beat is third,
Hitchcock fourth, Edna five, bushLand six, Paradise seven, Grandview eight.
The Zebras Goalie had nine. Sweetwateris number ten, and there are
no area teams in the three ADivision one rankings. Gunter, the two

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time defending state champs trying to makeit a three peat is the preseason number
one three A D two, followedby Dangerfield, Newton, Canadian Both Jacksburgh,
Lexington the highest ranked area team atnumber seven, Holiday Wall and Tyde
Haven to round out the top ten. Blanco is twelfth. To let you
know, uh, and that's itfor the area schools. In three A

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and two A Gadado is number one, followed by Refeio Honey Grove, Timpson,
the defending state champs our number four, Garrison Stamford, Hawley Cooper Mason
at number nine, sun Ray isnumber ten and their other than Mason,
they're just no. Holland is numbertwenty four, okay, and that's it

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for area schools. In two ADone to A D two, Stratford is
preseason number one, followed by AlbanyShiner Mart is number four, Munster,
Bremont Falls City, Winthorst Love LadyWellington, the Skyrockets our number ten.
Chilton is number eleven. They gotto the final four a year ago,
so Granger at number eighteen completes theyear. M Burton at number twenty five

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for the area programs there and finally, in the six man division you have
Gordon, who won the state titlelast year over Abbott, is preseason number
one and one A. Division one, Abbot is number two, followed by
Westbrook, Jonesborough, Whiteface, HappyMay Knock City, Newcastle, Waena Vista
number ten and uh, I thinkthat's it in terms of ones that are

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even remotely close to the area.And then in Division two it's Oglesby who
got to the finals a year agobefore losing to Benjamin Richland Springs two,
followed by Jaydon Kleinback Benjamin is numberfive, Iredell Sidney, Cherokee with Harold
Folette rounds out the top ten.All right, so that's it for your
preseason rankings. One more coming uphere on sports Radio AM thirteen under the

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Zone in the IR Radio app.