High School Football Polls Returns
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RCN or any other agency, organization, employer or company.
Believe me, there were plenty of times over the last few months where I thought this day would never come.
At least, not in the year 2020.
With high school sports shut down until 2021 in many of the RCN viewing areas, including the Delaware Valley and in the DMV, scholastic football and other fall athletics are back in session this week for the Lehigh Valley and District XI.
The official kickoff for the Colonial League football season was last weekend but this Friday marks the return of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference games and, with it, RCN-TV’s first broadcast this fall.
With it, marks the return of RCN SportsTalk High School Football Poll, with a few new wrinkles for this season.
The first and most obvious one is that we will be conducting the poll for fewer weeks this season and we will only be doing it for as long as teams in our coverage area are still playing (if all goes well, that should be through the end of November this year.)
Secondly, with EPC league games limited to teams playing each other within their own county and the Colonial League teams altering their schedules, aka playing opponents based largely on availability and “clean bills of health,” we have altered our two sets of poll.
Instead of having a big school and small school poll as in years past, we are going to break the two polls down into EPC and Colonial League schools. With the reduced schedules, this change for our poll will make things a bit more interesting since many of the top teams within the local conferences will not have the opportunity to actually face each other this fall.
Without the crowning of an official Colonial League and EPC champion, our poll will be an intriguing barometer to who is, in fact, the best team in each conference (and, of course, bragging rights).
So below we have our first week of high school polls for both leagues.
Feel free to email me at Chris.Michael@rcn.net for your thoughts on how you like our new setup for the high school football season and your thoughts on whether this is something we should continue for future years.
Also, if you have any opinions or suggestions on how we might improve our polls for the future, feel free to express those thoughts to me as well.
Let the games begin!
EPC-Lehigh Valley TOP 5
Other schools receiving at least one vote: Emmaus
COLONIAL TOP 5
Other schools receiving at least one vote: Northern Lehigh
RCN-TV Programming Notes:
Coming up on this week’s “SportsTalk” show, our guest will include Easton Athletic Director and EPC Football Chair Jim Prokivsak. Jim will update us on the league’s latest news, the ever-evolving fall football schedules and reasons behind altering the schedules the way they did (which some people, including many in the Allentown School District, are not thrilled with). He’ll also give updates on his Rovers continuing its Thanksgiving Day rivalry game with Phillipsburg, an update on the renovations at Cottingham Stadium and thoughts on being one of the first schools in Pennsylvania to start an organized girls high school wrestling program.
We’ll also have members of the defending District XI girls soccer champions from Freedom High School, whose season kicks off later this week.
And be sure to catch our high school football coverage this weekend. On Friday at 7:00 p.m. we’ll have live coverage of Freedom vs. Northampton.
